Prophets God:  the Fooles, and my excuse.  For (in Me) nothing lesse then Fletchers Name Could have begot, or justify’d this flame. Beaumont } Fletcher } Return’d? methinks it should not be. No, not in’s Works:  Playes are as dead as He.  The Palate of this age gusts nothing High; That has not Custard in’t or Bawdery. Folly and Madnesse fill the Stage:  The Scaene Is Athens; where, the Guilty, and the Meane, The Foole ’scapes well enough; Learned and Great, Suffer an Ostracisme; stand Exulate.

Mankinde is fall’n againe, shrunke a degree, A step below his very Apostacye. Nature her Selfe is out of Tune; and Sicke Of Tumult and Disorder, Lunatique.  Yet what World would not cheerfully endure The Torture, or Disease, t’ enjoy the Cure?

This Booke’s the Balsame, and the Hellebore, Must preserve bleeding Nature, and restore Our Crazy Stupor to a just quick Sence Both of Ingratitude, and Providence.  That teaches us (at Once) to feele, and know, Two deep Points:  what we want, and what we owe.  Yet Great Goods have their Ills:  Should we transmit To Future Times, the Pow’r of Love and Wit, In this Example:  would they not combine To make Our Imperfections Their Designe? They’d study our Corruptions; and take more Care to be Ill, then to be Good, before.  For nothing but so great Infirmity, Could make Them worthy of such Remedy.

Have you not scene the Suns almighty Ray Rescue th’ affrighted World, and redeeme Day From blacke despaire:  how his victorious Beame Scatters the Storme, and drownes the petty flame Of Lightning, in the glory of his eye:  How full of pow’r, how full of Majesty? When to us Mortals, nothing else was knowne, But the sad doubt, whether to burne, or drowne.

Choler, and Phlegme, Heat, and dull Ignorance, Have cast the people into such a Trance, That feares and danger seeme Great equally, And no dispute left now, but how to dye.  Just in this nicke, Fletcher sets the world cleare Of all disorder and reformes us here.

The formall Youth, that knew no other Grace, Or Value, but his Title,