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The Two Noble Kinsmen - Prologue
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Last updated: Fri, Jul 31, 2015
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The Two Noble Kinsmen - ProloguePrologue
Synopsis:
The audience is welcomed to the play’s opening performance. The speaker apologizes for its inferiority to Chaucer, whose tale provides the plot.
Flourish. ⌜Enter Prologue.⌝PROLOGUE
0001 New plays and maidenheads are near akin:
0002 Much followed both, for both much money giv’n,
0003 If they stand sound and well. And a good play,
0004 Whose modest scenes blush on his marriage day
0005 5 And shake to lose his honor, is like her
0006 That after holy tie and first night’s stir
0007 Yet still is modesty, and still retains
0008 More of the maid, to sight, than husband’s pains.
0009 We pray our play may be so, for I am sure
0010 10 It has a noble breeder and a pure,
0011 A learnèd, and a poet never went
0012 More famous yet ’twixt Po and silver Trent.
0013 Chaucer, of all admired, the story gives;
0014 There, constant to eternity, it lives.
0015 15 If we let fall the nobleness of this,
0016 And the first sound this child hear be a hiss,
0017 How will it shake the bones of that good man
0018 And make him cry from underground “O, fan
0019 From me the witless chaff of such a writer
0020 20 That blasts my bays and my famed works makes
0021 lighter
0022 Than Robin Hood!” This is the fear we bring;
0023 For, to say truth, it were an endless thing
0024 And too ambitious, to aspire to him,
0025 25 Weak as we are, and, almost breathless, swim
0026 In this deep water. Do but you hold out
0027 Your helping hands, and we shall ⌜tack⌝ about
0028 And something do to save us. You shall hear
0029 Scenes, though below his art, may yet appear
0030 30 Worth two hours’ travel. To his bones sweet sleep;
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0031
Content to you. If this play do not keep0032 A little dull time from us, we perceive
0033 Our losses fall so thick we must needs leave.
Flourish. ⌜He exits.⌝