erhaps in any other country, any man of his age
vain enough to hope he could be mistaken for him.[6] So that if you
would have made a Parallel, we could not. And yet I fancy, that where
I make it my business to draw likeness, it will be no hard matter to
judge who sate for the picture. For the Duke of Guise's return to
Paris contrary to the king's order, enough already has been said; it
was too considerable in the story to be omitted, because it occasioned
the mischiefs that ensued. But in this likeness, which was only
casual, no danger followed. I am confident there was none intended;
and am satisfied that none was feared. But the argument drawn from our
evident design is yet, if possible, more convincing. The first words
of the prologue spake the play to be a Parallel, and then you are
immediately informed how far that Parallel extended, and of what it is
so: "The Holy League begot the Covenant, Guisards got the Whig, &c."
So then it is not, (as the snarling authors of the Reflections tell
you) a Parallel of the men, but of the times; a Parallel of the
factions, and of the leaguers. And every one knows that this prologue
was written before the stopping of the play. Neither was the name
altered on any such account as they insinuate, but laid aside long
before, because a book called the Parallel had been printed,
resembling the French League to the English Covenant; and therefore we
thought it not convenient to make use of another man's title.[7] The
chief person in the tragedy, or he whose disasters are the subject of
it, may in reason give the name; and so it was called the "Duke of
Guise." Our intention therefore was to make the play a Parallel
betwixt the Holy League, plotted by the house of Guise and its
adherents, with the Covenant plotted by the rebels in the time of king
Charles I. and those of the new Association, which was the spawn of
the old Covenant.

But this parallel is plain, that the exclusion of the lawful heir was
the main design of both parties; and that the endeavours to get the
lieutenancy of France established on the head of the League, is in
effect the same with offering to get the militia out of the king's
hand (as declared by parliament,) and consequently, that the power of
peace and war should be wholly in the people. It is also true that the
tumults in the city, in the choice of their officers, have had no
small resemblance with a Parisian rabble: and I am afraid that both
their faction and