Prologue for The Gauntlet
Elizabeth Craven seems to have written only the Prologue and Epilogue for this play, performed in 1804. The main text was translated and adapted from the German of Schiller by her son, Keppel Craven, who was then aged twenty-five. She refers to him in the fourth line as "the modest youthful author". ADDRESS FOR "THE GAUNTLET," A DRAMA, OF THREE ACTS, PERFORMED AT BRANDENBURGH HOUSE. BY THE MARGRAVINE OF ANSPACH. LIKE hail in May, instead of genial show'rs, Despoiling Flora of her fairest flow'rs, He murders Pleasures in their very birth Who nips the bud of Literary Worth: Yet Envy, human frailty's worst disease, Oft blights an author's first attempt to. please. But here, should Envy aim a poison'd dart, To wound a modest youthful writer's heart, Or point at trifling faults in every line, I come to prove that ev'ry fault is mine. By my example, in our n...