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hugely eclipsed in any heavy hour whatsoever. Nor must the Spectators consult Gresham Colledge whether a body is naturally frighted till he Yawn agen. The Fortune of Greece is not concern'd with these Matters. These are Physical circumstances a Poet may be ignorant in, without 5 any harm to the publick. These slips have no influence on our Manners and good Life, which are the Poets Province.

Rather may we ask here what unnatural crime Desdemona or her Parents had committed, to bring this Judgment 10 down upon her: to Wed a Black-amoor, and innocent to be thus cruelly murder'd by him. What instruction can we make out of this Catastrophe? Or whither must our reflection lead us? Is not this to envenome and sour our spirits, to make us repine and grumble at Providence and 15 the government of the World? If this be our end, what boots it to be Vertuous?

Desdemona dropt the Handkerchief, and missed it that very day after her Marriage; it might have been rumpl'd up with her Wedding sheets: And this Night that she lay 20 in her wedding sheets, the Fairey Napkin (whilst Othello was stifling her) might have started up to disarm his fury and stop his ungracious mouth. Then might she (in a Traunce for fear) have lain as dead. Then might he, believing her dead, touch'd with remorse, have honestly 25 cut his own Throat, by the good leave and with the applause of all the Spectators: Who might thereupon have gone home with a quiet mind, admiring the beauty of Providence, fairly and truly represented on the Theatre.

Oth. Why, how shou'd she be murdered?
Em. Alas, who knows?

Oth. You heard her say her self, it was not I.
Em. She did so; I must needs report a truth.
Oth. She's like a liar gone to burn in Hell.
'Twas I that did it.

Em. O, the more Angel she,

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And you the blacker Devil!

Oth. She turn'd to folly, and she was an Whore.
Em. Thou dost belye her, and thou art a Devil.
Oth. She was false as Water.

Em. Thou art rash as Fire,

To say that she was false: O, she was heavenly true.

In this kind of Dialogue they continue for forty lines farther, before she bethinks her self to cry Murder.

Em.

Help, help, O help!

The Moor has kill'd my Mistress! murder, Murder!

But from this Scene to the end of the Play we meet with nothing but blood and butchery, described much-what to the style of the last Speeches and Confessions of the persons executed at Tyburn; with this difference, that there we have the fact and the due course of Justice, whereas our Poet, against all Justice and Reason, against all Law, Humanity, and Nature, in a barbarous, arbitrary way, executes and makes havock of his subjects, Hab-nab, as they come to hand. Desdemona dropt her Handkerchief; 20 therefore she must be stifl'd. Othello, by law to be broken on the Wheel, by the Poets cunning escapes with cutting his own Throat. Cassio, for I know not what, comes off with a broken shin. Jago murders his Benefactor Roderigo, as this were poetical gratitude. Jago is not yet kill'd, because there yet never was such a villain alive. The Devil, if once he brings a man to be dipt in a deadly sin, lets him alone to take his course; and now when the Foul Fiend has done with him, our wise Authors take the sinner into their poetical service, there to accomplish him and do 30 the Devils drudgery.

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Philosophy tells us it is a principle in the Nature of Man to be grateful.

History may tell us that John an Oaks, John a Stiles, or Jago were ungrateful. Poetry is to follow Nature; 35 Philosophy must be his guide: history and fact in particular

cases of John an Oaks or John of Styles are no warrant or direction for a Poet. Therefore Aristotle is always telling us that Poetry is σπουδαιότερον καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον, is more general and abstracted, is led more by the Philosophy, the reason and nature of things than History, which only 5 records things higlety piglety, right or wrong, as they happen. History might without any preamble or difficulty say that Jago was ungrateful. Philosophy then calls him unnatural. But the Poet is not without huge labour and preparation to expose the Monster, and after shew the 10 Divine Vengeance executed upon him. The Poet is not to add wilful Murder to his ingratitude: he has not antidote enough for the Poison: his Hell and Furies are not punishment sufficient for one single crime of that bulk and aggravation.

Em. O thou dull Moor, that Handkerchief thou
speakest on

I found by Fortune and did give my Husband ;
For often with a solemn earnestness,

More than indeed belong'd to such a trifle,

He beg'd of me to steal it.

Here we see the meanest woman in the Play takes this Handkerchief for a trifle below her Husband to trouble his head about it. Yet we find it entered into our Poets head to make a Tragedy of this Trifle.

Then, for the unraveling of the Plot, as they call it, never was old deputy Recorder in a Country Town, with his spectacles, in summoning up the evidence, at such a puzzle, so blunder'd and be-doultefied, as is our Poet to have a good riddance, And get the Catastrophe off his hands.

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What can remain with the Audience to carry home with them from this sort of Poetry for their use and edification? how can it work, unless (instead of settling the mind and purging our passions) to delude our senses, disorder our thoughts, addle our brain, pervert our affections, hair our 35

imaginations, corrupt our appetite, and fill our head with vanity, confusion, Tintamarre, and Jingle-jangle, beyond what all the Parish Clarks of London with their old Testament farces and interludes, in Richard the seconds 5 time, cou'd ever pretend to? Our only hopes for the good of their Souls can be that these people go to the Playhouse as they do to Church, to sit still, look on one another, make no reflection, nor mind the Play more than they would a Sermon.

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There is in this Play some burlesk, some humour and ramble of Comical Wit, some shew and some Mimickry to divert the spectators; but the tragical part is plainly none other than a Bloody Farce, without salt or savour.

EDWARD PHILLIPS

PREFACE TO THEATRUM POETARUM, OR
A COMPLEAT COLLECTION OF THE POETS

1675

The Preface

To the most Learned, Vertuous, and by Me most honour'd Pair of Friends, THOMAS STANLY, of Cumberlo Green in Hertfordshire, and EDWARD SHERBURN, Clerk of His Majesties Ordinance in the Tower of London, Esq.

AS oft as I seriously consider with My self, most worthy

Associates in Learning and Vertue, and My most honour'd Friends, what a vast difference there is, or at least seems to be, between one part of Mankind and the other, how near the Intelligence of Angels the one, how 5 beneath the Ingenuity and Industry of many Brute Animals the other; how aspiring to the Perfection of knowledge the one, how immers't in swinish sloth and ignorance the other, I am apt to wonder how it could possibly be imagin'd that the same rationality of Soul should inform 10 alike, as we are oblig'd to beleive by the authority of Sacred Scriptures and the Doctrine of the Souls Immortality, the whole mass & frame of Human Nature, and not rather that there should be a gradation of notion from the lowest brute up to the Angelic Region: But that calling to mind the 15 common maxim of Philosophy, that the perfection of Soul is the same in the Infant as in the ripe of age, only acting

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