the reflections of treachery to a friend, agonize him with compunction and hurry him to despair.

BELVIDERA, unhappy, duteous, tender, and vir tuous, claims our full commiseration, and claims it alone.

PROLOGUE.

IN these distracted times, when each man dreads The bloody stratagems of busy heads :

Whence we had fear'd three years we know not what, 'Till witnesses began to die o' th' rot;

What made our poet meddle with a plot?

Was't that he fancy'd for the very sake

And name of plot, his trifling play might take?
For there's not in't one inch-board evidence;
But 'tis, he says, to reason plain and sense;
And that he thinks a plausible defence.
Were truth by sense and reason to be try'd,
Sure all our swearers might be laid aside.
No; of such tools our author has no need,
To make his plot, or make his play succeed;
He of Black Bills has no prodigious tales,
Or Spanish pilgrims cast ashore in Wales:
Here's not one murder'd magistrate, at least,
Kept rank, like ven'son for a city feast,
Grown four days stiff, the better to prepare
And fit his pliant limbs to ride in chair.
Yet here's an army rais'd, tho' under ground,
But no man seen, nor one commission found:
Here is a traytor too, that's very old,
Turbulent, subtle, mischievous, and bold.

Bloody, revengeful, and—to crown his part, Loves fumbling with a wench with all his heart : 'Till, after having many changes past,

In spite of age (thanks t' heav'n) is hang'd at last ; Next is a senator that keeps a whore,

In Venice none a higher office bore,

To lewdness ev'ry night the leacher ran ;
Shew me, all London, such another man ;
Match him at Mother Creswell's, if you can..
O Poland! Poland! had it been thy lot
T'have heard in time of this Venetian plot,
Thou surely chosen hadst one king from thence,
And honour'd them, as thou hast England since.

B

Officer, Guard, Friar, Executioner, and Rabble.