In his prologue to his farce of "The
Deuce is in Him," George Colman, after a lively fashion, points out
the distinction between the classical and the British forms of
prefatory address:
What does it mean? What can it be?
A little patience--and you'll see.
Behold, to keep your minds uncertain,
Between the scene and you this curtain!
So writers hide their plots, no doubt,
To please the more when all comes out!
Of old the Prologue told the story,
And laid the whole affair before ye;
Came forth in simple phrase to say:
"'Fore the beginning of the play
I, hapless Polydore, was found
By fishermen, or others, drowned!
Or--I, a gentleman, did wed
The lady I would never bed,
Great Agamemnon's royal daughter,
Who's coming hither to draw water."
Thus gave at once the bards of Greece
The cream and marrow of the piece;
Asking no trouble of your own
To skim the milk or crack the bone.
The poets now take different ways,
"E'en let them find it out for Bayes!"
The prologue-speaker of the Elizabethan stage entered after the
trumpets had sounded thrice, attired in a long cloak of black cloth or
velvet, occasionally assuming a wreath or garland of bays, emblematic
of authorship.
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