Vulgar words in The Dramatic Works of John Dryden, Volume 1 - With a Life of the Author (Page 1)
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[9] The _gracioso_ or buffoon, according to Lord Holland, held an intermediate character between a spectator and a character in the play; interrupting with his remarks, at one time, the performance, of which he forms an essential, but very defective part in another.
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The author seems to have apprehended, and experienced, some opposition on account of this second name; and although he deprecates, in the epilogue, the idea of its being a party play, or written to gratify the Puritans with satire at the expense of the Catholics;[17] yet he complains, in the dedication, of the number of its enemies, who came prepared to damn it on account of the title.
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To damn, at once, the poet and his play: But why was your rage just at that time shown, When what the author writ was all his own?
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Otway alone, no longer the friend of Rochester, and perhaps no longer the enemy of Dryden, has spoken of the author of this dastardly outrage with the contempt his cowardly malice deserved: "Poets in honour of the truth should write, With the same spirit brave men for it fight; And though against him causeless hatreds rise, And daily where he goes, of late, he spies The scowls of sullen and revengeful eyes; 'Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear, And serves a cause too good to let him fear: He fears no poison from incensed drab, No ruffian's five-foot sword, nor rascal's stab; Nor any other snares of mischief laid, _Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade_; From any private cause where malice reigns, Or general pique all blockheads have to brains."
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"Though I have known _some of late so insolent to say_, that Ben Jonson wrote his best playes without wit, imagining, that all the wit playes consisted in bringing two persons upon the stage to break jest, and to bob one another, which they call repartie, not considering, that there is more wit and invention required in the finding out good humour and matter proper for it, then in all their smart reparties; for, in the writing of a humour, a man is confined not to swerve from the character, and obliged to say nothing but what is proper to it; but in the playes which have been wrote of late, there is no such thing as perfect character, but the two chief persons are most commonly a swearing, drinking, whoring ruffian for a lover, and impudent, ill-bred tomrig for a mistress, and these are the fine people of the play; and there is that latitude in this, that almost anything is proper for them to say; but their chief subject is bawdy, and profaneness, which they call brisk writing, when the most dissolute of men, that relish those things well enough in private, are choked at 'em in publick: and, methinks, if there were nothing but the ill manners of it, it should make poets avoid that indecent way of writing."
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[28] "Here duly swarm prodigious wights, And strange variety of sights, As ladies lewd, and foppish knights, Priests, poets, pimps, and parasites; Which now we'll spare, and only mention The hungry bard that writes for pension; Old Squib (who's sometimes here, I'm told), That oft has with his prince made bold, Called the late king a saunt'ring cully, To magnify the Gallic bully, Who lately put a senseless banter Upon the world, with Hind and Panther, Making the beasts and birds o'the wood Doubt, what he ne'er understood, Deep secrets in philosophy, And mysteries in theology, All sung in wretched poetry; Which rumbling piece is as much farce all, As his true mirror, the "Rehearsal;" For which he has been soundly banged, But ha'n't his just reward till hanged."
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The blockhead stands excused, for wanting sense; And wits turn blockheads in their own defence."
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Lycoris did not despise her lover for his meanness, but because she had a mind to be a Catholic whore.
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A pedant,--canting preacher,--and a quack, Are load enough to break an ass's back.