Thespis, the first professor of our art, <br />At country wakes, sung ballads from a cart. <br />To prove this true, if Latin be no trespass, <br />Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis. <br />But Æschylus, says Horace in some page, <br />Was the first mountebank that trod the stage: <br />Yet Athens never knew your learned sport, <br />Of tossing poets in a tennis-court. <br />But 'tis the talent of our English nation, <br />Still to be plotting some new reformation; <br />And few years hence, if anarchy goes on, <br />Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne, <br />Knock out a tub with preaching once a day, <br />And every prayer be longer than a play. <br />Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot, <br />For disbelieving of a Popish Plot; <br />Nor should we scape the sentence, to depart, <br />Even in our first original, a cart; <br />Your poets shall be used like infidels, <br />And worst, the author of the Oxford bells; <br />No zealous brother there would want a stone, <br />To maul us cardinals, and pelt Pope Joan. <br />Religion, learning, wit, would be supprest, <br />Rags of the whore, and trappings of the beast; <br />Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin, must go down, <br />As chief supporters of the triple crown; <br />And Aristotle's for destruction ripe; <br />Some say, he called the soul an organ-pipe, <br />Which, by some little help of derivation, <br />Shall then be proved a pipe of inspiration.<br /><br />John Dryden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prologue-to-sophonisba-spoken-at-oxford-1680/
