Their tuneful voice shall raise for your delights; We want not poets fit to sing your flights. But you, bright beauties! for whose only sake Those doughty knights such dangers undertake, 40 When they with happy gales are gone away, With your propitious presence grace our play; And with a sigh their empty seats survey: Then think, on that bare bench my servant sat; I see him ogle still, and hear him chat; Selling facetious bargains, and propounding That witty recreation, call'd dumfounding. Their loss with patience we will try to bear; And would do more, to see you often here; That our dead stage, revived by your fair eyes, 50 Under a female regency may rise. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 65: This prologue was forbid by the Earl of Dorset, then Lord Chamberlain, after the first day of its being spoken.] [Footnote 66: King William was at this time prosecuting the war in Ireland.] * * * * * XLIV. PROLOGUE TO "THE MISTAKES." BY JOSEPH HARRIS, COMEDIAN, 1690. (WRITTEN BY SOME OTHER.) _Enter Mr Bright._ Gentlemen, we must beg your pardon; here's no Prologue to be had to-day; our new play is like to come on, without a frontispiece; as bald as one of you young beaux, without your periwig. I left our young poet, snivelling and sobbing behind the scenes, and cursing somebody that has deceived him. _Enter Mr Bowen._ Hold your prating to the audience: here is honest Mr Williams, just come in, half mellow, from the Rose Tavern. He swears he is inspired with claret, and will come on, and that extempore too, either with a prologue of his own or something like one. Oh, here he comes to his trial, at all adventures: for my part I wish him a good deliverance. [_Exeunt Mr Bright and Mr Bowen._ _Enter Mr Williams._