Yet according to my Talent
As sowre fortune loves to use me
A poore Shepheard I have sent,
In home-spun gray for to excuse me.
And may all my hopes refuse me:
But when better comes ashore,
You shall have better, newer, more.
Til when, like our desperate debters,
Or our three pild sweete protesters
I must please you in bare letters
And so pay my debts; like jesters,
Yet I oft have seene good feasters,
Onely for to please the pallet,
Leave great meat and chuse a sallet.
_All yours_ John Fletcher:
These lines are in A and B.
To the Reader.
If you be not reasonably assurde of your knowledge in this kinde of Poeme,
lay downe the booke or read this, which I would wish had bene the
prologue. It is a pastorall Tragic-comedie, which the people seeing when
it was plaid, having ever had a singuler guift in defining, concluded to
be a play of contry hired Shepheards, in gray cloakes, with curtaild dogs
in strings, sometimes laughing together, and sometimes killing one
another: And misling whitsun ales, creame, wasiel & morris-dances, began
to be angry. In their error I would not have you fall, least you incurre
their censure.
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