All
I can say is only this, that it seems to have succeeded verse by the
general consent of poets in all modern languages; for almost all their
serious plays are written in it; which, though it be no demonstration
that therefore they ought to be so, yet at least the practice first,
and then the continuation of it, shews that it attained the end, which
was to please; and if that cannot be compassed here, I will be the
first who shall lay it down: for I confess my chief endeavours are
to delight the age in which I live. If the humour of this be for low
comedy, small accidents, and raillery, I will force my genius to obey
it, though with more reputation I could write in verse. I know I am
not so fitted by nature to write comedy: I want that gaiety of humour
which is required to it. My conversation is slow and dull; my humour
saturnine and reserved: In short, I am none of those who endeavour to
break jests in company, or make repartees. So that those, who decry my
comedies, do me no injury, except it be in point of profit: reputation
in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend. I beg pardon for
entertaining the reader with so ill a subject; but before I quit that
argument, which was the cause of this digression, I cannot but take
notice how I am corrected for my quotation of Seneca, in my defence of
plays in verse.
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