Here you will find the Poem Prologue To Sophonisba; Spoken at Oxford, 1680 of poet John Henry Dryden
Thespis, the first professor of our art, At country wakes, sung ballads from a cart. To prove this true, if Latin be no trespass, Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis. But Æschylus, says Horace in some page, Was the first mountebank that trod the stage: Yet Athens never knew your learned sport, Of tossing poets in a tennis-court. But 'tis the talent of our English nation, Still to be plotting some new reformation; And few years hence, if anarchy goes on, Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne, Knock out a tub with preaching once a day, And every prayer be longer than a play. Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot, For disbelieving of a Popish Plot; Nor should we scape the sentence, to depart, Even in our first original, a cart; Your poets shall be used like infidels, And worst, the author of the Oxford bells; No zealous brother there would want a stone, To maul us cardinals, and pelt Pope Joan. Religion, learning, wit, would be supprest, Rags of the whore, and trappings of the beast; Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin, must go down, As chief supporters of the triple crown; And Aristotle's for destruction ripe; Some say, he called the soul an organ-pipe, Which, by some little help of derivation, Shall then be proved a pipe of inspiration.
