To her Royal Highness, the duchess.

Madam,

It is not without fear that I approach your throne, esteeming it a more difficult task to write an epistle dedicatory than to make a play. Last, on the one hand, I should fall into the crime of presumption, or on the other, slip into that of flattery. Confidence, if not impudence, seems to be entailed on poets and ambition, or rather greediness of vain applause, by which they would mount above others, carries them often beyond the limits of all modesty and makes them rudely press into the presence of greatness and majesty. On this rock, I may now seem to run and to have left myself no excuse for daring to set your great name before my poem. But, Madam, it is to your goodness I must fly and that favourable protection, which you afford those who want it, must shield me from the envenomed darts of envious detractors. They will have veneration for your name and stand in awe when they shall know you have seen and approved this play, that you have taken it into your protection and that it is not without your permission, I offer it to your Highness, which I do with all the humility I ought to have and with all the submission and respect I can express. There is some necessity for me to gain so powerful a patroness, considering the smallness of my merits and the niceness of this critical age, in which the greatest wits pass not without censure, nor the most perfect pieces of human invention without being carped at. What would have been current coin in the ages past will now be looked on as debased metal. And that wit which is esteemed but mean and ordinary now would have been then accounted great and miraculous. Wit is refined and ingenuity made bright, not only by the industry of poets and endeavours of the learned, but by the example, of the court and encouragement of princes, who diffuse it like light to all that know them, among whom your Royal Highness, as a star of the first magnitude, shines with the splendour of your mind and enlightens the souls of others. I need not fear to be accused of flattery: since you are a theme too high, all we can say is still below you and there can be no such figure as hyperbole in your description. When I consider all your excellencies, I approach you with admiration and am swallowed up in the sea of your perfections. Your beauty, your extraction, your wit, ingenuity and acquired parts, your goodness, piety, wisdom and generosity, with all your other virtues and accomplishments, deserve each a particular panegyric and are large themes on which the greatest wits may exercise their pens. But Madam, these are things too great for my undertakings and it is now my business only to crave your acceptance of this poem, which may serve for a diversion when wearied with more serious thoughts. I have saved the Persian princesses from the cruelty of Roxana, but it is you only, Madam, that can protect them from the greater tyranny of critics, such as make it their business to find fault with what they cannot mend, who turn the greatest sense into ridicule and burlesque, even the virtues and the graces themselves. Statira flings herself at the feet of your Royal Highness and hopes you will give her a favourable reception, since you have extended your favour to Marianne and showed a more than ordinary kindness to that tragedy, which has hitherto passed under the name of another, whilst I was out of the land. But, Madam, since there is so much glory in it to have pleased Your Highness and to have given satisfaction to many persons in the royal circle, I cannot forbear to own it that your Royal Highness may be the more easily induced to smile on this, which, with myself, I prostrate at your feet, begging your pardon for the presumption of assuming the title of, Madam,

Your Royal Highness’s most humble, most obedient and most devoted servant,

Samuel Pordage.