If Yet There Be A Few That Take Delight In That Which Reasonable Men Should Write; To Them Alone We Dedicate This Night. The Rest May Satisfy Their Curious Itch With City-Gazettes, Or Some Factious Speech, Or Whate'Er Libel, For The Public Good, Stirs Up The Shrove-Tide Crew To Fire And Blood. Remove Your Benches, You Apostate Pit, And Take, Above, Twelve Pennyworth Of Wit; Go Back To Your Dear Dancing On The Rope, Or See, What's Worse, The Devil And The Pope. The Plays That Take On Our Corrupted Stage, Methinks, Resemble The Distracted Age; Noise, Madness, All Unreasonable Things, That Strike At Sense, As Rebels Do At Kings. The Style Of Forty-One Our Poets Write, And You Are Grown To Judge Like Forty-Eight,[1] Such Censures Our Mistaking Audience Make, That 'Tis Almost Grown Scandalous To Take. They Talk Of Fevers That Infect The Brains; But Nonsense Is The New Disease That Reigns. Weak Stomachs, With A Long Disease Oppress'D, Cannot The Cordials Of Strong Wit Digest. Therefore Thin Nourishment Of Farce Ye Choose, Decoctions Of A Barley-Water Muse: A Meal Of Tragedy Would Make Ye Sick, Unless It Were A Very Tender Chick. Some Scenes In Sippets Would Be Worth Our Time; Those Would Go Down; Some Love That's Poach'D In Rhyme: If These Should Fail-- We Must Lie Down, And, After All Our Cost, Keep Holiday, Like Watermen In Frost; While You Turn Players On The World'S Great Stage, And Act Yourselves The Farce Of Your Own Age.