Prologue

This play is call’d the Step-Mother. When first

It was presented, such a hurricane,

A tumult so uncommon interven’d,

It neither could be seen nor understood:

So taken were the people, so engag’d

By a rope-dancer!—It is now brought on

As a new piece: and he who wrote the play

Suffer’d it not to be repeated then,

That he might profit by a second sale.

Others, his plays, you have already known;

Now then, let me beseech you, know this too.