"Prologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... facility of composition is well known from many circumstances. He wrote forty pages of the Life of Savage in one night. He composed seventy lines of his Imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, and wrote them down from memory, without altering a word. In the Prologue on opening Drury-Lane theatre, he changed but one word, and that in compliment to Mr. Garrick. Some of his Ramblers were written while the printer's messenger was waiting to carry the copy to the press. Many of the ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... for the imagination to invent so perplexing a mixture of savage barbarism with modern refinement. Savonarola's denunciations[1] and Villani's descriptions of a despot read like passages from Plato's Republic, like the most pregnant of Aristotle's criticisms upon tyranny. The prologue to the sixth book of Matteo Villani's Chronicle may be cited as a fair specimen of the judgment passed by contemporary Italian thinkers upon their princes (Libro Sesto, cap. i.): 'The crimes of despots ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... could not live): the prelude being something about a lonely castle in the heart of the Hartz Mountains, and a prattling golden-haired babe stretching its arms across a ruined moat in the direction of its absent father. This was in the nature of an absurd prologue, but when she finally came to the Solitary she grew serious; for she made him in the bygone days a sensitive child and a dreamy, impetuous youth, with a domineering, ill-tempered father who was utterly unable and unwilling ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... only the prologue to the tragedy. Bear with me while I relate it. (Mr. Braham takes out a handkerchief, unfolds it slowly; crashes it in his nervous hand, and throws it on the table). Laura grew up in her humble southern home, a beautiful creature, the joy, of the house, the pride of the neighborhood, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... one thing I will warn thee, good Adam, that henceforth and for ever, when thou railest at me for being somewhat hot at hand, and rather too prompt to out with poniard or so, thy admonition shall serve as a prologue to the memorable adventure of the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... with a scenic prologue. The scene is the village of Dom Remi; on the left is the Druid oak—on the right, the image of the Virgin in a small chapel. Thibaut d'Arc enters with his three daughters, Margaret, Louison, and Johanna, together ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... "I marvel whose wit 'twas to put a prologue in yond Sackbut's mouth. They might well think he would be out of tune, and yet you'd play upon him too."—Will you have another of the same stamp? "O, I cannot abide these limbs of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... matter, off his own age, and it is very likely that Daniel had only the thinking and languaging parts of a poet's outfit, without the higher creative gift which alone can endow his conceptions with enduring life and with an interest which transcends the parish limits of his generation. In the prologue to his "Masque at Court" he has unconsciously ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... rising at times to the sublimest raptures, and closing on the half-pathetic cadence of that well-known Chorus, "The world's great age begins anew." Of dramatic interest it has but little; nor is the play, as finished, equal to the promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-called Prologue. (Forman, 4 page 95.) This truly magnificent torso must, I think, have been the commencement of the drama as conceived upon a different and more colossal plan, which Shelley rejected for some unknown reason. It shows the influence not only of the Book of Job, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Prologue, a wonderful piece of music, Tonio the Fool announces to the public the deep tragic sense which often is hidden behind a farce, and prepares them for the sad end of the lovers ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Prologue by the Spirit of Patriotism Princess Pocahontas Pilgrim Interlude Ferry Farm Episode George Washington's Fortune Daniel Boone: Patriot Benjamin Franklin Episode Abraham Lincoln Episode Liberty ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... blood of the nobles which reddened their streets, and seemed the only blood worthy of being shed, made them bless their own obscurity. Already had tumultuous scenes and conspicuous assassinations proved the monarch's weakness, the absence and approaching end of the minister, and, as a kind of prologue to the bloody comedy of the Fronde, sharpened the malice and even fired the passions of the Parisians. This confusion was not displeasing to them. Indifferent to the causes of the quarrels which were abstruse for them, they ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Seville at the period in which he lived. All of these romances possess their peculiar merit, and will doubtless always be considered valuable, and be read as faithful pictures of scenes and habits which now no longer exist. In the prologue, the author states that his principal motive for publishing a work written in so strange a language was his observing the damage which resulted from an ignorance of the Germania, especially to the judges and ministers of justice, whose charge it is to cleanse the public from the pernicious ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... lived through that prologue in the Ghetto garret, when, as benevolent master-tailor receiving the highest class work from S. Cohn's in the Holloway Road, he was called upstairs to assist the penniless ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of) was a favorite of Richard III. and a participator in his crimes, but revolted against him, and was beheaded in 1483. This is the duke that Sackville met in the realms of Pluto, and whose "complaynt" is given in the prologue to A Mirrour for Magistraytes (1587). He also appears in Shakespeare's Richard III. His ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, New York, 1871, vol. i, pp. 358 et seq.; and for the treatment of his work by the Church, see the edition of the Index under Leo XIII, 1881. For Abelard, see the Sic et Non, Prologue, Migne, vol. iii, pp. 371-377. For Hugo of St. Victor, see Erudit. Didask., lib. vii, vi, 4, in Migne, clxxvi. For Savonarola's interpretations, see various references to his preaching in Villari's life of Savonarola, English translation, London, 1890, and especially the exceedingly ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in the world; in the next stage, he is like an ape, and dances, jests, and talks nonsense, knowing not what he is doing and saying; when thoroughly drunken, he wallows in the mire like a sow.[63] To this legend Chaucer evidently alludes in the Prologue to the Maniciple's Tale: ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Anaxarete', which I had the good sense to throw into the fire. At Lyons I had composed another, entitled 'La Decouverte du Nouveau Monde', which, after having read it to M. Bordes, the Abbes Malby, Trublet, and others, had met the same fate, notwithstanding I had set the prologue and the first act to music, and although David, after examining the composition, had told me there were passages in ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... there is no reason why that man who wrote with the highest praise against the Arians, should be considered as the translator of this work, which is infected with the corruption of Arianism, and which is not Origen's." [Vol. ii. p. 894.] Erasmus calls the prologue to this treatise on Job "the production of a silly talkative ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... we shoulde resume our Studdies. Felt loath to comply, but did soe neverthelesse, and afterwards we walked manie Miles, to visit some poor Folk. This Evening, Mr. Agnew read us the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. How lifelike are the Portraitures! I mind me that Mr. Milton shewed me the Talbot Inn, that Day we crost the River with ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Tyrwhit makes the following judicious comment: The school of Oxford seems to have been in much the same estimation for its dancing as that of Stratford for its French—alluding of course to what is, said in the Prologue of the French ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... sagacious philosopher (Pandarus) observes, that the harm which is in this world springs as often from folly as from malice. But a deeper feeling animates the lament of the "good Alceste," in the Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women," that among men the betrayal of women is now "held a game." So indisputably it was already often esteemed, in too close an accordance with examples set in the highest places in the land. If we are to credit an old tradition, a poem in which Chaucer narrates the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... included Jonah and Ruth brings the completion after 300 B.C., as already stated. There are no definite allusions to it till the second century B.C. Daniel speaks of a passage in Jeremiah being in "the books" or "writings;"(44) and the prologue of Jesus Sirach presupposes its formation. Such was the second canon, which had been ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... and often sheer fun in their pantomimes. Some were wrestlers, but boxing they left for others. As with the Marquesans to-day, they had a fugleman, or leader, in all songs, who introduced the subject in a prologue, and occasionally gave the cue ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... spoken." I find a piece of secret history enclosed in a letter, with a solemn injunction that it might be burnt. "The king this morning complained of Sir John Eliot for comparing the duke to Sejanus, in which he said implicitly he must intend me for Tiberius!" On that day the prologue and the epilogue orators—Sir Dudley Digges, who had opened the impeachment against the duke, and Sir John Eliot, who had closed it—were called out of the house by two messengers, who showed their warrants for committing them ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... introduced to Oxford, to his later "guide, philosopher, and friend," Bolingbroke, to the gentle and humane Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, to Prior and Parnell, to Arbuthnot, best of men and physicians—some of whom he mentions in the "Prologue to the Satires." ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... unchecked. Many English writers refer to this extraordinary desecration of a consecrated building, and from them we learn that the trading carried on in Paul's Walk included simony and chaffering for benefices. Chaucer, in the prologue to his Canterbury Tales, when ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... Fielding's prologue to his revised Author's Farce (1734), spoken by Mrs. Clive, compares the settled, prosperous former days at Drury Lane with those of 1734, when "... alas! how alter'd is our Case!/ I view with Tears this poor deserted ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas, 1637, the prologue to If you know not me, you know no bodie; Or, The troubles of Queen Elizabeth. ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... hither am I come A prologue arm'd; but not in confidence Of author's pen, or actor's voice; but suited In like conditions as ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... and we all remember that King Alfred visited the camp of Guthram and delighted him with his music. Chaucer, in his Prologue to the 'Canterbury Tales,' speaks of one who played a sort of harp so well that when ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... fleet; a play, ball, and supper, which went off remarkably well. The Iron Chest was the play; the Wags of Windsor the farce. I did not perform being steward of the supper, but merely spoke the prologue. Our stage was very large and scenery very good, and on the whole, nothing could go off with more clat than ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... sexes and all sortes, I am sent to bid yee welcome; I am but instead of a Prologue, for a she-prologue[219] is as rare as an Usurers Almes, non reperitur in usu; and the rather I come woman because men are apt to take kindelye any kinde thing at a womans hand; and wee poore foules are but too kinde if wee be kindely intreated, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... milk-and-watery treatment of the subject through the general mental cowardice and ignorance in intellectual matters which is so predominant in this country. I find a comfort in the hope that this article is the prologue to able exegetical works, combined with a concrete statement of the absurdity, the untruth, and untenableness of the present English conception of inspiration. Do not call me to account too sharply ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... apparent, took place. He left home again soon afterwards, but only for a short period. On the 15th of last October he suddenly returned for good, as he intended; and here begins the tragedy, to which what I have hitherto related was but the prologue. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... our national independence in difficult wars. The preparation, the prologue, was the Holstein war. We had to fight with Austria for a settlement; no court of law could have given us a decree of separation; we had to fight. That we were facing a French war after our victory at Sadowa could not remain in doubt for anyone who knew the conditions of Europe. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... your son, ply his old task, Turn the stale prologue to some painted mask; His absence in my verse is ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... opening sentences of the following refer of course to The Wrecker, and particularly to a suggestion of mine concerning the relation of the main narrative to the prologue:— ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you will think that the prologue is over long for the play; but the foundations must be laid before the building is erected, and a statement of this sort is a sorry and a barren thing unless you have a knowledge of the folk concerned. Be patient, then, while I speak to you of the old friends of my youth, some of whom you ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... exactly plunge into the middle of things; but he spends comparatively little time on the preliminaries of the ironical Prologue to the "very illustrious drinkers," on the traditionally necessary but equally ironical genealogy of the hero, on the elaborate verse amphigouri of the Fanfreluches Antidotees, and on the mock scientific discussion of extraordinarily ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... honey intended for that royal cake which M. Fouquet proposed to offer his majesty Louis XIV. during the fete at Vaux. Pelisson, his head leaning on his hand, was engaged in drawing out the plan of the prologue to the "Facheux," a comedy in three acts, which was to be put on the stage by Poquelin de Moliere, as D'Artagnan called him, or Coquelin de Voliere, as Porthos styled him. Loret, with all the charming innocence of a gazetteer,—the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Johnson. "To begin then with Shakspere," says the former, in his "Essay of Dramatic Poesy," "he was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul." And, in the prologue to his adaptation of "The Tempest," he ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... purpose that long drama of History, in which we seem to see the Hand of the Dramaturgist? Surely, the end of a Fifth Act should be obvious, satisfying to one's sense of the complete: but History, so far, long as it has been, resembles rather a Prologue than a Fifth Act. Can it be that the Manager, utterly dissatisfied, would sweep all off, and 'hang up' the piece for ever? Certainly, the sins of mankind have been as scarlet: and if the fair earth which he has turned ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison's Historical Description of the Island of Great Britain, and Pepys's account of his tour in the summer of 1668. The excellence of the English inns is noticed in the Travels ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by the tree Of knowledge he must pass; there he her met, Scarce from the tree returning; in her hand A bough of fairest fruit, that downy smiled, New gathered, and ambrosial smell diffused. To him she hasted; in her face excuse Came prologue, and apology too prompt; Which, with bland words at will, she thus addressed. Hast thou not wondered, Adam, at my stay? Thee I have missed, and thought it long, deprived Thy presence; agony of love ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... dozen languages, and the great figures he scrawled across the face of the Renaissance have survived the movement that gave them being, and are ranked with the monuments of literature. Himself has given us the reasons in the prologue to the first book, where he tells of the likeness between Socrates and the boxes called Sileni, and discourses of the manifest resemblance of his own work with Socrates. 'Opening this box,' which is Socrates, says he, 'you would have found within ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... when Fred, with a maddening prologue Touching the cause of my sickness, including his fever at Jaffa, Told me that some one was waiting; and could he see me a moment? See me? Certainly not. Or,—yes. But why did he want to? So, in the dishabille of a morning-gown and an arm-chair, ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would rather have seen Chaucer in company with the author of the Decameron, and have heard them exchange their best stories together,—the Squire's Tale against the Story of the Falcon, the Wife of Bath's Prologue against the Adventures of Friar Albert. How fine to see the high mysterious brow which learning then wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, and by the courtesies of genius. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of history, whether gathered from books or from previous plays of the historical series; and where such knowledge was not to be looked for, he would expound the situation in good set terms, like those of a Euripidean Prologue. But the chronicle-play is a species apart, and practically an extinct species: we need not pause to study its methods. In his fictitious plays, with two notable exceptions, it was Shakespeare's constant practice ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Browning's great hymns of faith are those in which he faces the future, like "Prospice," and the prologue of "La Saisiaz," and the epilogue of "Asolando,"—triumphant songs, in which one of the healthiest-minded of human ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... It is for you to send news, and not to receive it, for nothing is interesting just now but what relates to Ireland and the Union. Twelve days bring us to the prologue, to this swelling scene, as Shakspeare calls it. How long it will be before the denouement, and what that denouement will be, and what ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... in Button's coffee house. His poem the 'Messiah' appeared in the 'Spectator' in May 1712; the first draft of 'The Rape of the Lock' in a poetical miscellany in the same year, and Addison's request, in 1713, that he compose a prologue for the tragedy of 'Cato' set the final stamp upon his rank as ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... that they may be counterfeited, and Christ Jesus knows who doth so too; but that will not hinder, or make weak or invalid what hath already been spoken about it. But to forbear to make a further prologue, and to come ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the "turn-over of cover." Don't! All you will find there is a synopsis of the plot, just sufficient to destroy the slender thread of your interest in its development. And I must record a protest against the entirely unneeded Prologue, in which total strangers sit round at a churchyard picnic on the graves of the real protagonists, and speculate as to their history. The tale itself is placed in Sussex (why this invidious partiality of our novelists?), the actors being for the most ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... given for the benefit of the actor's wife, and was called "Rip Van Winkle; or, The Spirits of the Catskill Mountains." Notice of it may be found in the files of the Albany Argus. Winter, in his Life of Joseph Jefferson, reproduces the prologue. Part of the cast ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... door, good John! fatigued I said, Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead. The Dog-star rages! nay, 't is past a doubt, All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out: Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land. Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot: Prologue to the Satires. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... "The Villain Still Pursued Her" is an excellent illustration of this point. When this very funny travesty was first produced, it did not have a prologue. It began almost precisely as the full-stage scene begins now, and the audience did not know whether to take it seriously or not. The instant he watched the audience at the first performance, the author sensed the problem he had to face. ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... the most bathetic lines occur in the parts of the two lovers for which Mrs. Haywood disclaims responsibility, but even the best passages of the play add nothing to the credit of the reviser. Her next dramatic venture was produced after her novels had gained some vogue with the town, as the Prologue spoken ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... is introduced by the poet's declaration in the prologue, that his taste for heroic plays ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... costume), and the other Moors, from which the name comes. The whites, led by the king of Spain, conquer in the combat, and the "bula" is taken and freed amid general rejoicing. At the beginning and end, the Christians declaim a kind of prologue or introduction in accordance with the object of the festa, and a salutation and thanks to those assisting at the end. The costumes are rich, each dancer carries sword and dagger, and the performances (which are enthusiastically ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Barbour be the author of the Legends, then (so does one conclusion hang upon another) he is the author of a Gospel story with the later life of the Virgin, described in the prologue to the Legends and in other passages as a book "of the birth of Jhesu criste" and one "quhare-in I recordit the genology of our ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... books under his arm, felt a peculiar twitching in the nerves, as he turned sharply upon the heavy-looking lad who had spoken the above words, with the prologue and epilogue formed of jeering laughs, which sounded something like the combinations ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... Critic, when Mrs. Dangle thought his piece "rather too long," while he proves his play was "a remarkably short play."—"The first evening you can spare me three hours and a half, I'll undertake to read you the whole, from beginning to end, with the prologue and epilogue, and allow time for the music between the acts. The watch here, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... evening under consideration was "Adrienne Lecouvreur" and in no part had the actress been more natural and effective. Her triumph was secure, for as the prologue says: ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Coverdale borrowed largely from the German interpreters, as was acknowledged on the title-page and in the prologue to the Bible of 1535. Thus Tyndale copied not only most of the marginal notes of Luther's Bible, but also such Teutonisms as, "this is once bone of my bone," "they offered unto field-devils" (Luther, "Felt-teuffem"), "Blessed is the room-maker, Gad" (Luther, "Raum-macher"). The English ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... v, iv, 100 and 109). Hence the technique of the work is largely of the semi-Senecan type with which Kyd and his school had familiarized the English stage. Thus Bussy's opening monologue serves in some sort as a Prologue; the narrative by the Nuntius in Act II, i, 35-137, is in the most approved classical manner; an Umbra or Ghost makes its regulation entrance in the last Act, and though the accumulated horrors of the closing scenes violate every canon of classical art, they had become traditional in ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... the prologue, and waited on the tale. It soon came. Oliphant, it appeared, was the purse-bearer of the household, and woeful straits that poor purse-bearer must have been often put to. I questioned him as to his master's revenues, but could get no clear answer. There were ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Prologue has misplaced all his stops—like a young horse that refuses to stop—also like a child who has not learned to stop the holes ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... now the Peel of Scarthey. For the sake of harmonious proportions, and in order to give it its proper atmosphere, it was imperative that in this drama—wherever the intermediate scenes might be placed, whether on the banks of the Vilaine, on the open sea, or in Lancaster Castle—the Prologue should be witnessed on the green islet in the wilderness of sands, even as the Crisis and the Closing Scene of rest ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... and harp, while beneath are heard fragments of the March theme in the main key on the pizzicato double basses).[238] Berlioz's most pretentious orchestral composition is that called in the full title "Romeo and Juliet, dramatic symphony, with choruses, vocal solos, and a prologue in choral recitative, composed after Shakespeare's tragedy." Notwithstanding many touches of genius, it is a very uneven work and is too much a conglomerate of styles—narrative, lyrical, dramatic, theatric and symphonic—for ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... choose the scenes they want to offer, and to prepare as they decide. In such a voluntary association some members of the class might be uninvited to speak with any group. These then might find their material in prologue, epilogue, chorus, soliloquy, or inserted songs. Nearly every play contains long passages requiring for their effect no second speaker. Shakespeare's plays contain much such material. All the songs from a play would constitute a delightful offering. Nothing in all the acted portion of ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... a more Jesuitical piece of insulting hypocritical cant I never read. Where's your note to Lady Florence? Your compliments, you will be with her at two. There, now the rehearsal's over, the scenes arranged, and I'll dress, and open the play for you with a prologue." ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hwt: for this interjectional formula opening a poem, cf. Andreas, Daniel, Juliana, Exodus, Fata Apost., Dream of the Rood, and the "Listenith lordinges!" of mediaeval lays.—E. Cf. Chaucer, Prologue, ed. Morris, ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... descriptions of these persons, and make them talk as they did talk, his delineations are of inestimable value historically. He has been faithfully true. Like all great masters of the epic art, he doubtless drew them from the life; each, given in the outlines of the prologue, is a speaking portrait: even the horses they ride are as true to nature as those in the pictures of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... to clear up the uncertainties which have hitherto always hung about it. It is now considered to be, beyond all doubt, a genuine Hebrew original, completed by its writer almost in the form in which it now remains to us. The questions on the authenticity of the Prologue and Epilogue, which once were thought important, have given way before a more sound conception of the dramatic unity of the entire poem; and the volumes before us contain merely an enquiry into its meaning, bringing, at the same time, all the resources of modern scholarship and historical ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... is not to be put on and laid aside at will, like a garment. Granted that these same doctrines of Zoroaster are faint adumbrations of the Hebrew creed, the Gordian knot is by no means loosed. That prologue in 'Faust' horrified you yesterday; yet, upon my word, I don't see why; for very evidently it is taken from Job, and Faust is but an ideal Job, tempted in more subtle manner than by the loss of flocks, houses, and children. You believe that Satan was allowed to do his utmost to ruin ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the more truth be called the prologue to the conjugal drama, from the fact that it is vigorously delivered, embellished with a commentary of gestures, ornamented with glances and all the other vignettes with which ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... story is a moral and religious one. The narrator is trying to show that sympathy and mercy are better than selfish ambition, and that war is not only immoral but irrational. The conversation between God, the angels, and the Devil is a mere prologue, intended to bring Napoleon and Ivan-angel on the stage and lay the foundation of the plot. The story-teller's keen sense of fun and humor is shown in many little touches, but he never means to be irreverent. The whole legend is set forth in the racy, idiomatic, highly elliptical language ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... the frequent accusation of coarseness brought against Fielding, we may quote a few lines of the prologue with which he made his literary entry into the world. Here his ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... feeble attempts at the objectivation of personal suffering; and thence to Sonnets, direct communications to particular persons. Thereupon follow the Lyrical Intermezzo and the Return Home, each with a prologue and an epilogue, and with several series of pieces which, like the Songs above mentioned, are printed without titles and are successive sentences or paragraphs in the poet's own love story. This he tells over and over again, without monotony, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... nothing more nor less than bigamy. Having received an assurance to this effect from her, Mr. Parkinson dies, his soul, according to the medium, being escorted to the spheres by 'a band of white-robed spirits.' This is the prologue. The next chapter is entitled 'Five Years After.' Violet Parkinson, the Alderman's only child, is in love with Jack Alston, who is 'poor, but clever.' Mrs. Parkinson, however, will not hear of any marriage till the deceased Alderman ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... watches ticked off the time, until suddenly the heavens were racked by the prologue of the guns. Child's play that baptism of shell fire in the first charge of the war beside later thunders; and these, in turn, mild beside this terrific outburst, with all the artillery concentrated to support the ram in a sudden blast. The passing ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... divine, but as a God who had become human. Moreover, an identification of this pre-existent being with the Logos of the philosopher was gradually approached in the later Epistles, and finally made in the Prologue to ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... appearance of comfort that was doubled by contrast with the drumming of the storm without, which snapped at the window-panes and breathed into the chimney strange low utterances that seemed to be the prologue to some tragedy. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... in history. Men die, man is immortal, practically, even on this earth. We are so impatient, —and we are always watching for the last scene of the tragedy. Now I humbly opine that the drop is only about falling on the first act, or perhaps only the prologue. This act or prologue will be called, in after days, War for the status quo. Such enthusiasm, heroism, and manslaughter as status quo could inspire, has, I trust, been not entirely in vain, but it ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... In the prologue to The Golden Legend, we have the attempt of Lucifer and the Powers of the Air to tear down the cross from the spire of the Strasburg Cathedral, with the remonstrance of ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... to the Vice-Master, and contumacy in taking his punishment, inflicted by him." Whether this punishment was corporeal, as Johnson insinuates in the similar case of Milton, we are ignorant. He certainly retained no very fond recollection of his Alma Mater, for in his "Prologue to the University ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... to Mr. Bainbridge's Gattonside House, and had fireworks in the evening, made by Captain Burchard, a good-humoured kind of Will Wimble.[504] One nice little boy announced to us everything that was going to be done, with the importance of a prologue. Some of the country folks assembled, and our party was enlivened by the squeaks of the wenches and the long-protracted Eh, eh's! by which a Teviotdale ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Author's Note Prologue Chapter One: By the Waters of Death Creek Chapter Two: Sir Andrew D'Arcy Chapter Three: The Knighting of the Brethren Chapter Four: The Letter of Saladin Chapter Five: The Wine Merchant Chapter Six: The Christmas Feast at Steeple Chapter Seven: The Banner of Saladin Chapter ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... and let live is a good maxim, thought I, and there surely never was such a wonderful world as this, and so I came away; and it was then that something occurred which (for everything so far has been sheer prologue) led to these remarks. I was passing the crowd about one of the gentlemen—the more brazenly confident one—who deny the existence of a beneficent Creator, when the words, "Looking like a dying duck in a thunderstorm," clanged ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... his own miracles and life. It may be that he so overworked his brain that he believed that he was visited by St. Peter, and taught a hymn by the blessed Virgin Mary, and that he had taken part in a hundred other prodigies; but the Prologue to the Harleian manuscript (which the learned Editor, Mr. Stevenson, believes to be an early edition of Reginald's own composition) confesses that Reginald, compelled by Ailred of Rievaux, tried in vain for a long while to get the ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... nor our custom; we protest against it. But, pray remember, I accuse nobody; for as I would not make a " watery discourse," so I would not put too much vinegar into it; nor would I raise the reputation of my own art, by the diminution or ruin of another's. And so much for the prologue to what I mean ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... only a wearisome prologue: the first act of the human comedy opens only at the moment when love makes a breach ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... died November 15th, 1839". Boxley village is near the ancient Pilgrims' Road to Canterbury, and here Alfred Tennyson stayed in 1842. Park House, nearer the Medway, was the home of Edward Lushington, who married Tennyson's sister Cecilia, and in its grounds Tennyson found the setting for the prologue to the "Princess". The "happy faces" of "the multitude, a thousand heads", by which the "sloping pasture" was "sown", under "broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime", had probably come from Maidstone on the annual jaunt of that town's Mechanics' Institute. The village ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... piece is the best modern contribution to that series of poetical descriptions by Scottish writers which includes Dunbar's 'Meditatioun in Winter,' Gavin Douglas's Scottish winter scene in the Prologue to his Virgil's Aeneid VII, Hamilton of Bangour's Ode III, and, of course, Thomson's 'Winter' in 'The Seasons.' The details of the piece are given with admirable skill, and the local place-names are used with characteristic effect. The note of regret over winter's ravages, common to all early Scottish ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... entered upon my office. If God will not bear it up, let it sink!—but if a duty be incumbent upon me, to bear my testimony to it, (which in modesty I have hitherto forborne,) I am, in some measure, necessitated thereunto: and therefore that will be the prologue to my discourse. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the prologue for the present and begin the story. For many long moments she sat staring into the brush, her brain plodding toward an opening scene, an opening sentence. At last she began to write. She described the hero. He was walking down the great staircase of a baronial hall,—in which he had lain ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... A short prologue by Master William Canning, informs us that this tragedy of Godwin was designed to vindicate the Kentish earl's memory from prejudices raised against him by monkish writers, who had mistaken his character, and accused him of ungodliness "for that he gifted not the church." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... mentions a man having recourse to one when his son was seriously ill.[61] The poets have, of course, made free use of this supposed prophetic power of the dead. The shade of Polydorus, for instance, speaks the prologue of the Hecuba, while the appearance of the dead Creusa in the AEneid is known to everyone. In the Persae, AEschylus makes the shade of Darius ignorant of all that has happened since his death, and is thus able to introduce his famous description ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... unrelieved by any lightness, and culminating in the evil expression of Antichrist himself. The peace of the gold-flecked landscape only accentuates the horror of the scene of the downfall in the background. The picture is a fit prologue to the terrible Judgment ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... one night this winter, the Abbe Servien, not liking certain praises of the King contained in a Prologue, let slip a bitter joke in ridicule of them. The pit took it up, repeated it, and applauded it. Two days afterwards, the Abbe Servien was arrested and taken to Vincennes, forbidden to speak to anybody and allowed no servant to wait upon him. For form's sake seals were put upon ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... only once in the New Testament, and that is in the passage in the prologue of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the original word is translated 'express image' in our version. Our Lord is the Express Image of the Invisible Father. No man hath seen God at any time. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. The Father ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... 'The prologue of a tale should always be mysterious. It is only the epilogue that must needs be clear. The story may be between the two. The matter of all three is very simple, because it concerns you and me. To be plain, Fraulein, I have come to justify myself in your eyes, to make an ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... that Terence was assisted in his works by Laelius and Scipio [934], with whom he lived in such great intimacy. He gave some currency to this report himself, nor did he ever attempt to defend himself against it, except in a light way; as in the prologue to The Adelphi: ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... come, as long as the present great unrest goes on smouldering in men's hearts, till the hollow settlement of 1815 is burst asunder anew, and men feel that they are no longer in the beginning of the end, but in the end itself, and that this long thirty years' prologue to the reconstruction of rotten Europe is played out at last, and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... rapidly trace the events which led up to this scene,—the prologue to the drama about to be played. The year 1805 was one of threatening peril to England. Napoleon was then in the ambitious youth of his power, full of dreams of universal empire, his mind set on an invasion of the pestilent little ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Garden management, was a piece entitled 'Trafalgar Square, or the Nelson Monument.' We have obtained the following slight information respecting it. The drama is described as 'a grand architectural and historical burletta,' in two acts; and the prologue was to have been spoken by Mr. Widdicomb, as Time. The two acts comprise the commencement and completion, and a lapse of twenty years is supposed to take place between them, in which time 'the boy,' who is ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... lyke, whiche must have the sayd s, well and parfitly sounded and pronounced, for it is nat possyble to fynde a rule so generall and infallible to serue for euery worde as was said aboue in the prologue. ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... termed the prologue to the grand tragedy which was about to be performed in an amphitheatre of many square miles, and to the catastrophe of which we looked forward with an anxiety that had risen to so high a pitch, because, in ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... also be analyzed as consisting of three old documents (the tract on morality, an account of ancient heresies, and a discourse on spiritual progress) put together with a little connecting matter, and provided with a prologue and epilogue.] ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the portrayal of a lasting state, perhaps the reflection of an entire life, generally that of one isolated, or bereft by death or exile of protectors and friends." (Ten Brink, Early Eng. Lit.,I.) Iadopt Brooke's threefold division (Early Eng. Lit., p.356): "It opens with a Christian prologue, and closes with a Christian epilogue, but the whole body of the poem was written, it seems to me, by a person who thought more of the goddess Wyrd than of God, whose life and way of thinking were uninfluenced by any distinctive ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... confirmed as geology advances. But as to the time, the duration, of this successive evolution, it is the idlest of notions that the Scriptures either have, or could have, condescended to human curiosity upon so awful a prologue to the drama of this world. Genesis would no more have indulged so mean a passion with respect to the mysterious inauguration of the world, than the Apocalypse with respect to its mysterious close. 'Yet the six days of Moses!' Days! But is it possible ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... I know want you to write a prologue to a play they are going to get up. It's about Shakespeare—at least, the proceeds go to something of that sort. Do, like a good fellow, toss us off twenty lines. Why don't you write? By the way, I hope there's no truth in a report that has somehow reached me, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the actors was most interesting, except for the autograph fiends, who simply mobbed the Christus, Anton Lang, and Josef Maier, the Christus of the last three performances, who now takes the part of the speaker of the prologue. Those dear people were so obliging that no one was ever refused, consequently thousands of tourists must possess autographs of most of the principals. Not one of our party asked an autograph of anybody. I hope they are grateful to us. I should think they would ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... associated with the rare occurrence of a wedding or a death, intellectual activity is not great. Abstract reasoning is unknown; but a new objective fact connected with the environment is seized upon with great avidity. That shot was felt to be ominous. Was it the prologue to the tragedy? There was to be something ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... the polluted temple, is charged by the adversary with uncleanness. Here for the first time in Hebrew literature we catch a glimpse of Satan, who is regarded not as hostile to God but as the prosecuting attorney of heaven. As in the prologue of the book of Job, he is an accredited member of the divine hierarchy. His task is to search out and report to Jehovah the misdeeds of men. In Zechariah's vision, however, the divine judge acquits Joshua of ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... Garrick against the charges which Walpole so repeatedly brings against him will be found in the estimation in which he was held by the most distinguished of his contemporaries. His friend Dr. Johnson thought well of' his talent in prologue writing: "Dryden," he said, "has written prologues superior to any that David has written; but David has written more good prologues than Dryden has done. It is wonderful that he has been able to write such variety of them. A ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... permit her to see or be seen by any man: and if she took the air in her coach, or went to church, he obliged her to wear a veil. Having learned thus much of the boy, I dismissed him with a present; for he had already inspired me with curiosity, that prologue to love, and I knew not of what use he might be hereafter; a curiosity that I was resolved to satisfy, though I broke all the laws of hospitality, and even that first night I felt an impatience that gave me some wonder. In fine, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon the opening of the Theater Royal, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... mouth at a butterfly on a stem of lignum—sent it with such accurate calculation of the distance of his object, the trajectory of his missile, and the pace of his horse, that the mucous disc smote the ornamental insect fair on the back, laying it out, never to rise again. This was but a ceremonious prologue, intended to deepen the impression of the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... much longer. I have a certain prologue to which he cannot adapt his tag: "There is no perfect happiness; this one is of noble origin, but poor; another of ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... earliest notice of the contents of the Hebrew Canon is that contained in the prologue to the Greek translation of Ecclesiasticus, where it is described as "the law, the prophets, and the other national books," "the law, and the prophecies, and the rest of the books," according to the three-fold division already considered. Chap. 18, No. 4. Josephus, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... line 7. G. thenceforward. Godwin did, however, write another play, "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote the prologue. It was ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... and Envoi to Abbey's Edition of "She Stoops to Conquer" 257 Prologue and Epilogue to Abbey's ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... French compere, gossip or fellow godfather, sometimes a close friend. Cf. Chaucer, Prologue to Canterbury Tales: ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Rogers. Gentlemen," said Grim, with intense scorn, "those unspeakable Corker asses started off with a prologue." ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... Wood, it was not equally successful. It was first tried at the west end of the town, and, as the poet confessed, "would scarce do there." It was then performed in Salisbury Court, but, as it should seem, with no better event. For, in the prologue to the Country Wife, Wycherley described himself as "the late so ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was accustomed to regard as manifesting itself in a sudden and definite upheaval. There might have been prolonged practical piety, deep and true contrition for sin, but these, although the natural and suitable prologue to conversion, were not conversion itself. People hung on at the confines of regeneration, often for a very long time; my Father dealt earnestly with them, the elders ministered to them, with explanation, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... impotence of intellectual knowledge is very closely connected, it is indeed based, upon these "gleams" of ecstasy. The prologue to In Memoriam (written when the poem was completed) seems to sum up his faith after many years of struggle and doubt; but it is in the most philosophical as well as one of the latest, of his poems, The Ancient Sage, that we find this attitude ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... on the all-world stage, The play is unannounced; no prologue's word Gives hint of scene, or voices to be heard; We may be called with tragedy to rage, In comedy or farce we may disport, With feverish melodrama we may thrill, Or in a pantomimic role be still. We may find fame in field, or grace a court, Whate'er the play, forthwith its ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... chorus of red-shirted miners. Wherefore too, he created a comic Yankee who should be eccentric enough to bring a banjo to the camp, and a lover who should be charmed by its touching strains. It required a prologue and three acts to enable him to successfully introduce the banjo. In a somewhat condensed form, these acts and this prologue are here ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... custom; we protest against it. But, pray remember, I accuse nobody; for as I would not make a " watery discourse," so I would not put too much vinegar into it; nor would I raise the reputation of my own art, by the diminution or ruin of another's. And so much for the prologue to what ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton |
