The Prologue.

Your silence and attention, worthy friends,
That your free spirits may with more pleasing sense
Relish the life of this our active scene:
To which intent, to calm this murmuring breath,
We ring this round with our invoking spells;
If that your listning ears be yet prepard
To entertain the subject of our play,
Lend us your patience.
Tis Peter Fabell, a renowned Scholler,
Whose fame hath still been hitherto forgot
By all the writers of this latter age.
In Middle-sex his birth and his abode,
Not full seven mile from this great famous City,
That, for his fame in sleights and magicke won,
Was calde the merry Friend of Emonton.
If any here make doubt of such a name,
In Edmonton yet fresh unto this day,
Fixt in the wall of that old antient Church,
His monument remayneth to be seen;
His memory yet in the mouths of men,
That whilst he lived he could deceive the Devill.
Imagine now that whilst he is retirde
From Cambridge back unto his native home,
Suppose the silent, sable visagde night
Casts her black curtain over all the World;
And whilst he sleeps within his silent bed,
Toiled with the studies of the passed day,
The very time and hour wherein that spirit