As Johnson states the case: "Men
sometimes suffer by injudicious kindness; Philips became ridiculous,
without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his friends, who
decorated him with honorary garlands which the first breath of
contradiction blasted." Johnson, by-the-way, had at the age of
nineteen written a new epilogue to "The Distressed Mother," for some
young ladies who designed an amateur performance of that still-admired
tragedy. The epilogue was intended to be delivered by "a lady who was
to personate the ghost of Hermione."
But although protests were now and then, as in the case of "The
Distressed Mother," raised against the absurdity of the custom, comic
epilogues to tragic plays long remained in favour with the patrons of
the stage. Pointed reference to this fact is contained in the epilogue
spoken by the beautiful Mrs. Hartley to Murphy's tragedy of "Alzuma,"
produced at Covent Garden in 1773:
Our play is o'er; now swells each throbbing breast
With expectation of the coming jest.
By Fashion's law, whene'er the Tragic Muse
With sympathetic tears each eye bedews;
When some bright Virtue at her call appears.
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