Kitap 1
His playhouse, not of Parian marble made,
Nor was it spread with purple sails for shade;
The stage with rushes or with leaves they strew'd;This idea of the Roman theatres in their infancy, may put us in mind of our own which we read of in the old poets, in Black-friars, the Bull-and-mouth, and Barbican, not much better than the strollers at a country-fair. Yet this must be said for them: that the audience were much better treated; their fare was good, though the house was homely. Which cannot be said of the Roman infant-stage, their wit and their theatres were alike rude; and the Shakspeares and Jonsons of Rome did not appear till the stage was pompous, and the scene magnificent.
No scenes in prospect, no machining god.
120
On rows of homely turf they sat to see,
Crown'd with the wreaths of ev'ry common tree.
There, while they sit in rustic majesty,
Each lover had his mistress in his eye;
And whom he saw most suiting to his mind,
125
For joys of matrimonial rape design'd.
Scarce could they wait the plaudit in their haste;
But ere the dances and the song were past,
The monarch gave the signal from his throne,At which the soldiers were to fall on the women. The poet and his translators make an agreeable description of this rape. Some say there were thirty of these Sabines ravished: others, as Valerius Antius, make the number to be four hundred and twenty-seven: and Jubas, as Plutarch writes in the life of Romulus, swells it to six hundred.
And rising, bade his merry men fall on.
130
The martial crew, like soldiers, ready press'd,
Just at the word (the word too was the best),
With joyful cries each other animate;
Some choose, and some at hazard seize their mate.
As doves from eagles, or from wolves the lambs,
135
So from their lawless lovers fly the dames.
