THE PROLOGUE TO THE STAGE, AT THE COCK-PIT.
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| | We know not how our play may pass this stage, | |
| | But by the best of poets in that age | |
| | THE MALTA-JEW had being and was made; | |
| | And he then by the best of actors play'd: | |
| | In HERO AND LEANDER one did gain | |
| | A lasting memory; in Tamburlaine, | |
| | This Jew, with others many, th' other wan | |
| | The attribute of peerless, being a man | |
| | Whom we may rank with (doing no one wrong) | |
| | Proteus for shapes, and Roscius for a tongue,— | |
| | So could he speak, so vary; nor is't hate | |
| | To merit in him who doth personate | |
| | Our Jew this day; nor is it his ambition | |
| | To exceed or equal, being of condition | |
| | More modest: this is all that he intends, | |
| | (And that too at the urgence of some friends,) | |
| | To prove his best, and, if none here gainsay it, | |
| | The part he hath studied, and intends to play it. | |
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