_'s Tempest first to roar.
That innocence and beauty which did smile
In _Fletcher_, grew on this _Enchanted Isle_.
But _Shakespear_'s Magick could not copied be,
Within that Circle none durst walk but he.
I must confess 'twas bold, nor would you now
That liberty to vulgar Wits allow,
Which works by Magick supernatural things:
But _Shakespear_'s Pow'r is Sacred as a King's.

Prologue to _The Tempest_, as it is alter'd by Mr. _Dryden_.

It is the same magick that raises the Fairies in _Midsummer Night's
Dream_, the Witches in _Macbeth_, and the Ghost in _Hamlet_, with thoughts
and language so proper to the parts they sustain, and so peculiar to the
talent of this Writer. But of the two last of these Plays I shall have
occasion to take notice, among the Tragedies of Mr. _Shakespear_. If one
undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those rules which are
establish'd by _Aristotle_, and taken from the model of the _Grecian_
stage, it would be no very hard task to find a great many faults: But as
_Shakespear_ liv'd under a kind of mere light of nature, and had never
been made acquainted with the regularity of those written precepts, so it
would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of. We are to consider
him as a man that liv'd in a state of almost universal licence and
ignorance: There was no establish'd judge, but every one took the liberty
to write according to the dictates of his own fancy. When one considers
that there is not one play before him of a reputation good enough to
entitle it to an appearance on the present Stage, it cannot but be a
matter of great wonder that he should advance dramatick Poetry so far as
he did. The Fable is what is generally plac'd the first, among those that
are reckon'd the constituent parts of a Tragick or Heroick Poem; not,
perhaps, as it is the most difficult or beautiful, but as it is the first
properly to be thought of in the contrivance and course of the whole; and
with the Fable ought to be consider'd the fit Disposition, Order, and
Conduct of its several parts. As it is not in this province of the _Drama_
that the strength and mastery of _Shakespear_ lay, so I shall not
undertake the tedious and ill-natur'd trouble to point out the several
faults he was guilty of in it. His Tales were seldom invented, but rather
taken either from true History, or Novels and Romances: And he commonly
made use of 'em in that order, with those in