(Do not laugh at it, reader; you tolerate an equal amount of absurdity in modern melodrama).

The very first lines are charmingly suggestive of the starched and stately past.

"Hail to the sun!" says the Prince of Tanais: "Hail to the sun! from whose returning light The cheerful soldier's arms new lustre take To deck the pomp of battle." Playwrights of Rowe's cult loved to hail the sun.

Just why the orb of day had to be saluted with such frequency no one seemed able to determine, but the honour was continually bestowed, to the great edification of the groundlings.

When Young wrote "Busiris," he paid so much attention to old Sol that Fielding burlesqued the learned doctor's weakness through the medium of "Tom Thumb," and wrote that "the author of 'Busiris' is extremely anxious to prevent the sun's blushing at any indecent object; and, therefore, on all such occasions, he addresses himself to the sun, and desires him to keep out of the way." After the Prince of Tanais's homage to the sun we hear something fulsome about the virtues of King William, alias Tamerlane: "No lust of rule, the common vice of Kings, No furious zeal, inspir'd by hot-brain'd priests, Ill hid beneath religion's specious name, E'er drew his temp'rate courage to the field: But to redress an injur'd people's wrongs, To save the weak one from the strong oppressor, Is all his end of war.