Introduction
This little Fable may look like one of Aesop’s ancient morality tales but it was composed by English poet and dramatist John Gay, remembered today for his Beggar’s Opera of 1728. Gay was one of those investors caught out by the South Sea Bubble, and discovered that in Georgian London being popular with the rich and famous was by no means a guarantee against hardship.
FRIENDSHIP, like love, is but a name,
Unless to one, you stint the flame.
The child, whom many fathers share,
Hath seldom known a father’s care.
’Tis thus in friendships; who depend
On many, rarely find a friend.
A Hare who, in a civil way,
Complied with everything, like GAY,*
Was known by all the bestial train
Who haunt the wood or graze the plain;
Her care was never to offend,
And every creature was her friend.
As forth she went, at early dawn,
To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn,
Behind, she hears the hunter’s cries,
And from the deep-mouth’d thunder, flies:
She starts, she stops, she pants for breath;
She hears the near advance of death;
She doubles to mislead the hound,
And measures back her mazy round,
Till, fainting in the public way,
Half dead with fear, she gasping lay.
What transport in her bosom grew,
When first the Horse appear’d in view!
“Let me,” says she, “your back ascend,
And owe my safety to a friend.
You know my feet betray my flight:
To friendship every burden’s light.”
The Horse replied, “Poor honest puss,
It grieves my heart to see thee thus:
Be comforted, relief is near,
For all your friends are in the rear.”
* John Gay was one of thousands who invested in the South Sea Company’s scheme, launched in 1719 amidst a frenzy of publicity and backed by many of the country’s most distinguished politicians, to pay down a huge national debt racked up by Britain’s military adventures around the world. It failed spectacularly — as it deserved to, because one of the chief sources of revenue was Britain’s monopoly on the Atlantic slave trade, recently acquired from Spain. See The South Sea Bubble. Gay lost heavily, and feeling abandoned by his celebrity friends he wrote this little Fable in reproof.
* Nowadays ‘puss’ is familiar as a term of endearment for a cat, but in Gay’s time it was used for a hare, a popular domestic pet. Poet William Cowper (1731-1800) kept three hares, as a cure for depression: Puss, Bess and Tiney.
Précis
Upset over the way his friends had abandoned him, dramatist John Gay told a tale in verse about a popular Hare who, exhausted by her desperate flight from the hunt, appealed to each of her friends in turn for help. The first to pass by was the Horse, who said encouragingly that the Hare had plenty of other friends. (59 / 60 words)
Upset over the way his friends had abandoned him, dramatist John Gay told a tale in verse about a popular Hare who, exhausted by her desperate flight from the hunt, appealed to each of her friends in turn for help. The first to pass by was the Horse, who said encouragingly that the Hare had plenty of other friends.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: because, despite, if, may, not, or, otherwise, whether.
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