By the way, I find all my scribbling
enemies have a mind to be judges, and chief barons. Proceed,
gentlemen:--"This play, as I am informed by some, who have a nearer
communication with the poets and the players, than I have,--". Which
of the two Sosias is it that now speaks? If the lawyer, it is true he
has but little communication with the players; if the poet, the
players have but little communication with him; for it is not long
ago, he said to somebody, "By G----, my lord, those Tory rogues will
act none of my plays." Well, but the accusation,--that this play was
once written by another, and then it was called the "Parisian
Massacre." Such a play I have heard indeed was written; but I never
saw it[36]. Whether this be any of it or no, I can say no more than
for my own part of it. But pray, who denies the unparalleled villainy
of the papists in that bloody massacre? I have enquired, why it was
not acted, and heard it was stopt by the interposition of an
ambassador, who was willing to save the credit of his country, and not
to have the memory of an action so barbarous revived; but that I
tempted my friend to alter it, is a notorious whiggism, to save the
broader word. The "Sicilian Vespers" I have had plotted by me above
these seven years: the story of it I found under borrowed names in
Giraldo Cinthio; but the rape in my tragedy of "Amboyna" was so like
it, that I forbore the writing.
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