Part 7 (1/2)

Precede the play in mournful verse, As undertakers stalk before the hea.r.s.e; Whose doleful march may strike the harden'd mind, And wake its feeling for the dead behind.

People, indeed, began rather to wonder why they had ever required or been provided with a thing that was now found to be, in truth, so entirely unnecessary.

The prologues of our stage date from the earliest period of the British drama. They were not so much designed, as were the prologues of the cla.s.sical theatre, to enlighten the spectators touching the subject of the forthcoming play; but were rather intended to bespeak favour for the dramatist, and to deprecate adverse opinion.

Originally, indeed, the prologue-speaker was either the author himself in person, or his representative. In his prologue to his farce of ”The Deuce is in Him,” George Colman, after a lively fas.h.i.+on, points out the distinction between the cla.s.sical 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 a.s.suming a wreath or garland of bays, emblematic of authors.h.i.+p. In the ”Accounts of the Revels in 1573-74,” a charge is made for ”bays for the prologgs.” Long after the cloak had been discarded it was still usual for the prologue-speaker to appear dressed in black. Robert Lloyd, in his ”Familiar Epistle to George Colman,” 1761, writes:

With decent sables on his back (Your 'prologuisers' all wear black) The prologue comes; and, if it's mine It's very good and very fine.

If not--I take a pinch of snuff, And wonder where you got such stuff.

Upon this subject, Mr. Payne Collier notes a stage direction in the Induction to Heywood's ”Four 'Prentices of London,” 1615: ”Enter three, in black cloaks, at the doors.” Each of them advancing to speak the prologue, the first exclaims--”What mean you, my masters, to appear thus before your times? Do you not know that I am the prologue?

Do you not see this long black velvet cloak upon my back? Have you not sounded thrice?” So also, in the Induction to Ben Jonson's ”Cynthia's Revels,” two of the children of the chapel contend for the privilege of speaking the prologue, one of them maintaining his claim by pleading ”possession of the cloak.”

The custom of regarding the ”prologuiser” as the author or his representative, seems gradually to have been departed from, and prologues came to be delivered by one of the chief actors in the play, in the character he was about to undertake, or in some other a.s.sumed for the occasion. A certain solemnity of tone, however, was usually preserved in the prologue to tragedy--the goodwill and merciful consideration of the audience being still entreated for the author and his work, although considerable licence was permitted to the comedy prologue. And the prologues acquired more and more of a dramatic nature, being divided sometimes between two and three speakers, and less resembling formal prologues than those Inductions of which the early dramatists, and especially Ben Jonson, seem to have been so unreasonably fond. The prologue to ”The Poetaster” is spoken, in part, by Envy ”rising in the midst of the stage,” and, in part, by an official representative of the dramatist. So, the prologue to Shakespeare's Second Part of ”King Henry IV.” is delivered by Rumour, ”painted full of tongues;” a like office being accomplished by Gower and Chorus, in regard to the plays of ”Pericles” and ”King Henry V.”

It is to be noted that but few of Shakespeare's prologues and epilogues have been preserved. Malone conjectures that they were not held to be indispensable appendages to a play in Shakespeare's time.

But Mr. Collier is probably more correct in a.s.suming that they were often retrenched by the printer, because they could not be brought within the compa.s.s of a page, and because he was unwilling to add another leaf. In addition to those mentioned above, the prologues to ”King Henry VIII.,” ”Troilus and Cressida,” and ”Romeo and Juliet” are extant, and have the peculiarity of informing the audience, after the old cla.s.sical fas.h.i.+on, something as to the nature of the entertainment to be set before them. To the tragedy of ”The Murder of Gonzago,”

contained in ”Hamlet,” Shakespeare, no doubt, recognising established usage, provided the prologue:

For us and for our tragedy Here stooping to your clemency, We beg your hearing patiently.

Steele, writing in _The Guardian,_ in 1713, expresses much concern for the death of Mr. Peer, of the Theatre Royal, ”who was an actor at the Restoration, and took his theatrical degree with Betterton, Kynaston, and Harris.” Mr. Peer, it seems, especially distinguished himself in two characters, ”which no man ever could touch but himself.” One of these was the Apothecary in ”Caius Marius,” Otway's wretched adaptation of ”Romeo and Juliet;” the other was the speaker of the prologue to the play in ”Hamlet.” It is plain that Mr. Peer's professional rank was not high; for these characters are not usually undertaken by performers of note. Steele admits that Peer's eminence lay in a narrow compa.s.s, and to that attributes ”the enlargement of his sphere of action” by his employment as property-man in addition to his histrionic duties. Peer, however, is described as delivering the three lines of prologue ”better than any man else in the world,” and with ”universal applause.” He spoke ”with such an air as represented that he was an actor and with such an inferior manner as only acting an actor, as made the others on the stage appear real great persons and not representatives. This was a nicety in acting that none but the most subtle player could so much as conceive.” It is conceivable, however, that some of this subtlety existed rather in the fancy of the critic than in the method of the player. This story of Mr. Peer is hardly to be equalled; yet Davies relates of Boheme, the actor, that when, upon his first appearance upon the stage, he played with some ”itinerants” at Stratford-le-Bow, his feeling but simple manner of delivering Francisco's short speech in ”Hamlet”--

For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart--

at once roused the audience to a sense of his merits. ”His salary was immediately increased by the manager; and he proved afterwards a great ornament of the stage.”

The delivery of a prologue by an actress--that is to say, of course, by a boy in female dress, personating the character of a woman--appears to have been an unusual proceeding upon the Elizabethan stage. Mr. Collier has noted instances, however. In the case of the prologue to ”Every Woman in her Humour,” 1609, spoken by the heroine Flavia, ”Enter Flavia as a Prologue,” runs the stage direction; and she begins--”Gentles of both s.e.xes and of all sorts, I am sent to bid ye welcome. I am but instead of a prologue, for a she prologue is as rare as a usurer's alms.” And the prologue to s.h.i.+rley's ”Coronation,”

1640, was also delivered by one of the representatives of female character. A pa.s.sage is worth quoting, for its description of ordinary prologue-speaking at this time:

Since 'tis become the t.i.tle of our play, A woman once in a Coronation may With pardon speak the prologue, give as free A welcome to the theatre, as he That with a little beard, a long black cloak, With a starched face and supple leg hath spoke Before the plays this twelvemonth. Let me then Present a welcome to these gentlemen.

If you be kind and n.o.ble you will not Think the worse of me for my petticoat.

It would seem that impatience was sometimes expressed at the poetic prologues and lengthy Inductions of the dramatists. The prologue to Beaumont and Fletcher's ”Woman Hater,” 1607, begins: ”Gentlemen, Inductions are out of date, and a prologue in verse is as stale as a black velvet cloak and a bay garland; therefore you have it in plain prose, thus----.” But the alteration did not please, apparently; at any rate, upon a subsequent production of the play, the authors furnished it with a prologue in verse of the old-established pattern.

The Elizabethan dramatists often took occasion in their prologues to lecture the audience upon their conduct in the theatre, exhorting them to more seemly manners, and especially informing them that nothing of an indecorous nature would be presented upon the scene. The prologue to ”The Woman Hater,” above mentioned, p.r.o.nounces ”to the utter discomfort of all twopenny gallery men,” that there is no impropriety contained in the play, and bids them depart, if they have been looking for anything of the kind. ”Or if there be any lurking amongst you in corners,” it proceeds, ”with table books who have some hope to find fit matter to feed his malice on, let them clasp them up and slink away, or stay and be converted.” Of the play, it states: ”Some things in it you may meet with which are out of the common road: a duke there is, and the scene lies in Italy, as those two things lightly we never miss.” The audience, however, are warned not to expect claptraps, or personal satire. ”You shall not find in it the ordinary and overworn way of jesting at lords and courtiers and citizens, without taxation of any particular or new vice by them found out, but at the persons of them; such, he that made this, thinks vile, and for his own part vows that he never did think but that a lord, lord-born, might be a wise man, and a courtier an honest man.” In the same way Shakespeare's prologue to ”Henry VIII.” welcomes those ”that can pity,” and ”such as give their money out of hope, they may believe.” But they are plainly told they will be deceived who have come to hear a merry graceless play--