THE

PREFACE.

OF

F all public fpectacles, that, which should properly be called an Opera, is calculated to give the highest delight. There is hardly an art but what is required to furnish towards the entertainment; and there is fomething or other to be provided that may touch every sense, and please every palate.

The poet has a two-fold task upon his hands in the Dramatic, and the lyric: the architect, the painter, the compofer, the actor, the finger, the dancer, &c. have each of them their several employments in the preparation, and in the execution.

The fame materials indeed, in different hands, will have different fuccefs; all depends upon a skilful mixture of the various ingredients: a bad artist will make but a meer hodgepodge with the fame materials that one of a good taste shall prepare an excellent olio.

The feasoning must be fenfe; unless there is wherewithal to please the understanding, the eye and the ear will soon grow tired.

The French Opera is perfect in the decorations, the dancing, and the magnificence; the Italian excels in the music and voices; but the Drama falls fhort in both.

An English stomach requires something solid and substantial, and will rife hungry from a regale of nothing but sweet

meats.

An opera is a kind of ambigu: the table is finely illuminated, adorned with flowers and fruits, and every thing that the feafon affords fragrant or delightful to the eye or the odour; but unless there is fomething too for the appetite, 'tis odds but the guests break up diffatisfied.

It is incumbent upon the poet alone to provide for that, in the choice of his fable, the conduct of his plot, the harmony of his numbers, the elevation of his fentiments, and the juftnefs of his characters. In this confifts the folid and the fubftantial.

The nature of this entertainment requires the plot to be formed upon fome story in which enchanters and magicians have a principal part in our modern heroic poems, they supply the place of the gods with the ancients, and make a much more natural appearence by being mortals, with the difference only of being endowed with fupernatural power.

The characters should be great and illuftrious; the figure the actor makes upon the ftage, is one part of the ornament; by confequence the fentiments must be suitable to the characters in which love and honour will have the principal share.

The dialogue, which in the French and Italian is set to notes, and sung, I would have pronounced; if the numbers are of themselves harmonious, there will be no need of mufic to set them off; a good verfe, well pronounced, is in itself musical; and fpeech is certainly more natural for dif courfe, than finging.

Can any thing be more prepofterous than to behold Cato, Julius Caefar, and Alexander the great, strutting upon the stage in the figure of songsters, perfonated by eunuchs!

The finging, therefore, fhould be wholly applied to the lyrical part of the entertainment, which by being freed from a tiresome, unnatural recitative, must certainly administer more reasonable pleasure.

The feveral parts of the entertainment should be fo fuited to relieve one another, as to be tedious in none; and the connexion fhould be fuch, that not one should be able to subfift without the other; like embroidery, fo fixt and wrought into the fubftance, that no part of the ornament could be removed, without tearing the stuff.

To introduce finging and dancing, by head and shoulders, no way relative to the action, does not turn a play into an opera; tho' that title is now promifcuously given to every farce sprinkled here and there with a song and a dance. The richest lace, ridiculously set on,

coat.

will make but a fool's

I will not take upon me to criticise what has appeared of this kind on the English ftage: we have feveral poems under the name of Dramatic operas by the best hands; but in my opinion the fubjects for the most part have been improperly chofen; Mr. Addifon's Rofamond, and Mr. Congreve's Semele

tho' excellent in their kind, are rather mafques, than operas. As I cannot help being concerned for the honour of my country, even in the minutest things, I am for endeavouring to out-do our neighbours in performances of all kinds.

Thus, if the fplendor of the French opera, and the harmony of the Italian, were fo fkilfully interwoven with the charms of poetry, upon a regular Dramatic bottom, as to instruct, as well as delight, to improve the mind, as well as ravish the fenfe, there can be no doubt but fuch an addition would intitle our English opera to the preference of all others. The third part of the encouragement, of which we have been fo liberal to foreigners for a confort of music only, mifcalled an opera, would more than effect it.

In the construction of the following poem, the author has endeavoured to fet an example to his rules; precepts are best explained by examples; an abler hand might have executed it better. However, it may serve for a model to be improved upon, when we grow weary of fcenes of low life, and return to a taste of more generous pleasures.

We are reproached by foreigners with fuch unnatural irregularities in our Dramatic pieces, as are fhocking to all other nations; even a Swiss has played the critic upon us, without confidering they are as little approved by the judicious in our own. A stranger who is ignorant of the language, and incapable of judging of the fentiments, condemns by the eye, and concludes what he hears to be as extravagant as what he fees when Oedipus breaks his neck out of a balcony, and Jocata appears in her bed, murdering herself and her children, in stead of moving terror, or compaffion, fuch spectacles only fill the fpectator with horror: no wonder if strangers are shocked at fuch fights, and conclude us a nation hardly yet civilized, that can seem to delight in them. To remove this reproach, it is much to be wifhed our scenes were lefs bloody, and the sword and dagger more out of fashion. To make fome amends for this exclufion, I will be less fevere as to the rigour of fome other laws enacted by the mafters, tho' it is always advifeable to keep as close to them as poffible; but reformations are not to be brought about all at

once.

It may happen that the nature of certain fubjects proper

for moving the paffions, may require a little more latitude, and then, without offence to the critics fure, there may be room for a faving in equity from the feverity of the common law of Parnaffus, as well as of the kings-bench. To facrifice a principal beauty, upon which the fuccefs of the whole may depend, is being too strictly tied down; in such a case, summum jus may be fumma injuria.

Corneille himself complains of finding his genius often cramped by his own rules: "there is infinite difference (fays he) "between fpeculation and practice: let the feverest critic "make the trial, he will be convinced by his own experience, "that upon certain occafions too ftrict an adherence to the "letter of the law, fhall exclude a bright opportunity of shin.

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ing, or touching the paffions. Where the breach is of "little moment, or can be contrived to bc, as it were, imperceptible in the reprefentation, a gentle difpenfation might "be allowed." To thofe little freedoms he attributes the fuccefs of his Cyd but the rigid legiflators of the academy handled him fo roughly for it, that he never durft make the venture again, nor none who have followed him. Thus pinioned, the French muse must always flutter, like a bird with the wings cut, incapable of a lofty flight.

The dialogue of their tragedies is under the fame constraint as the conftruction; not a difcourfe, but an oration; not speaking, but declaiming; not free, natural, and easy, as converfation fhould be, but precife, fet, formal argumenting, pro and con, like difputants in a school. In writing, like dress, is it not poffible to be too exact, too ftarched, and too formal? Pleafing negligence I have feen: who ever faw pleafing formality?

In a word, all extreams are to be avoided. To be a French Puritan in the drama, or an English Latitudinarian, is taking different paths to be both out of the road. If the British mufe is too unruly, the French is too tame; one wants a curb, the other a fpur.

By pleading for fome little relaxation from the utmost feverity of the rules, where the fubject may seem to require it, I am not bespeaking any fuch indulgence for the present performance: tho' the ancients have left us no pattern to

follow of this fpecies of tragedy, I perceive, upon examination, that I have been attentive to their strictest leffons.

The unities are religiously observed: the place is the fame, varied only into different profpects by the power of enchantment: all the incidents fall naturally within the very time of representation: the plot is one principal action, and of that kind which introduces variety of turns and changes, all tending to the fame point: the ornaments and decorations are of a piecee with it, fo that one could not well fubfift without the other every act concludes with fome unexpected revolution: and in the end, vice is punished, virtue rewarded, and the moral is inftructive.

Rhyme, which I would by no means admit into the dialogue of graver tragedy, seems to me the most proper style for representations of this heroic romantic kind, and best adapted to accompany music. The folemn language of a haughty tyrant will by no means become a paffionate lover, and tender fentiments require the fofteft colouring.

The theme must govern the ftyle; every thought, every character, every subject of a different nature, must speak a different language. An humble lover's gentle address to his mistress would rumble strangely in the Miltonic dialect; and the foft harmony of Mr. Waller's numbers would as ill become the mouths of Lucifer and Belzebub. The terrible, and the tender must be fet to different notes of mufic.

To conclude. This Dramatic attempt was the first essay of a very infant mufe, rather as a task at fuch hours as were free from other exercifes, than any way meant for public en tertainment but Mr. Betterton having had a casual fight of it many years after it was written, begg'd it for the stage, where it found fo favourable a reception, as to have an uninterrupted run of at least forty days. The feparation of the principal actors which foon followed; and the introduction of the Italian opera, put a stop to its farther appearance.

Had it been compofed at a riper time of life, the faults might have been fewer: however, upon revising it now, at fo great a distance of time, with a cooler judgment than the first conceptions of youth will allow, I cannot absolutely say, fcripfiffe pudet.