Epilogue to "Troilus and Cressida" (Spoken by Thersites)

These cruel critics put me into passion,
For in their low'ring looks I read damnation:
Ye expect a satire, and I seldom fail;
When I'm first beaten, 'tis my part to rail.
You British fools, of the old Trojan stock,
That stand so thick one cannot miss the flock.
Poets have cause to dread a keeping pit,
When women's cullies come to judge of wit.
As we strow ratsbane when we vermin fear,
'T were worth our cost to scatter fool-bane here;
And, after all our judging fops were serv'd,
Dull poets too should have a dose reserv'd;
Such reprobates, as, past all sense of shaming,
Write on, and ne'er are satisfied with damning:
Next, those, to whom the stage does not belong,
Such whose vocation only is to song;
At most to prologue, when, for want of time,
Poets take in for journey-work in rhyme.
But I want curses for those mighty shoals
Of scribbling Chlorisses and Phyllis fools:
Those oafs should be restrain'd, during their lives,
From pen and ink, as madmen are from knives.
I could rail on, but 't were a task as vain
As preaching truth at Rome, or wit in Spain:
Yet to huff out our play was worth my trying;
John Lilburn scap'd his judges by defying:
If guilty, yet I 'm sure o' th' Church's blessing,
By suffering for the plot, without confessing.