Ben Jonson (1572–1637). The Alchemist.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| Prologue |
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| FORTUNE, that favours fools, these two short hours | |
| We wish away, both for your sakes and ours, | |
| Judging spectators; and desire, in place, | |
| To th’ author justice, to ourselves but grace. | |
| Our scene is London, ’cause we would make known, | 5 |
| No country’s mirth is better than our own: | |
| No clime breeds better matter for your whore, | |
| Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more, | |
| Whose manners, now call’d humours, feed the stage; | |
| And which have still been subject for the rage | 10 |
| Or spleen of comic writers. Though this pen | |
| Did never aim to grieve, but better men; | |
| Howe’er the age he lives in doth endure | |
| The vices that she breeds, above their cure. | |
| But when the wholesome remedies are sweet, | 15 |
| And in their working gain and profit meet, | |
| He hopes to find no spirit so much diseas’d, | |
| But will with such fair correctives be pleas’d: | |
| For here he doth not fear who can apply. | |
| If there be any that will sit so nigh | 20 |
| Unto the stream, to look what it doth run | |
| They shall find things, they’d think or wish were done: | |
| They are so natural follies, but so shown, | |
As even the doers may see, and yet not own.
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