"Prologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Roman boy, amidst more noble and less excusable slaughter, was soon forgotten,—forgotten almost by the parents of the slain, in the growing fame and fortunes of their eldest son,—forgotten and forgiven never by that son himself. But, between that prologue of blood, and the political drama which ensues,—between the fading interest, as it were, of a dream, and the more busy, actual, and continuous excitements of sterner life,—this may be the most fitting time to place before the reader a short and rapid outline of the state and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Indeed, this Play is justly deemed the most pure and innocent of all the Plays of Plautus; and the Company are quite justified in the commendations which, in their Epilogue, they bestow on it, as the author has carried out the premise which he made in the Prologue (with only four slight exceptions), of presenting ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... interesting, and as superior to Guarini's more sophisticate yet still beautiful Pastor Fido as a first thought may be supposed to be to its emulator. The objection of its being too elegant for shepherds he anticipated and nullified by making Love himself account for it in a charming prologue, of which the god ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Oriental costume, picturesque and handsome. The tallest came first, and so on in gradation, so that when ranged in front of the curtain they formed a kind of pyramid. The central figure then began the prologue, an explanation. Then the basso commenced singing an air, during which the Chorus divided, falling back to the sides and kneeling, while the curtain rose, displaying the first tableau. This lasted nearly three minutes, during which time the figures were really perfectly motionless. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... close with some verses that Mickiewicz wrote as an epilogue for Pan Tadeusz, but which he never finally revised and which were never printed during his lifetime. Since his death they have most frequently been inserted as a prologue to the poem rather than as ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... first to have introduced, in addition to the militia furnished from these sources, the service of a small number of mercenaries, who formed a body-guard, called the Foot-Band. The satirical poet, Sir David Lindsay (or the person who wrote the prologue to his play of the Three Estaites), has introduced Finlay of the Foot-Band, who after much swaggering upon the stage is at length put to flight by the Fool, who terrifies him by means of a sheep's skull upon a ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of sportes must needs doe something amisse, or at the least such is the danger and trouble of them, that something in the doing will miscarry, and so be taken amisse, and such was our fortune at this time; for the Prologue (to the great prejudice of that which followed) was most shamefully out, and having but halfe a verse to say, so that by the very sense the audience was able to prompt him in that which followed, yet hee could ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... pilgrims would seem to remain at all in the road after St Thomas's watering until we come to Deptford. The "Knight's Tale" and the "Miller's Tale" have filled, and one would think more than filled that short three miles of road, till in the Reve's Prologue the host began "to spake as ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... Naturae, lib. iv, cap. v; also i, cap. lxvi-lxxi; and for general account, see 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, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... which grows up from the root of Reason is Discretion. For as St. Thomas says thereupon in the prologue to the book of Ethics, to know the order of one thing to another is the proper act of Reason; and this is Discretion. One of the most beautiful and sweetest fruits of this branch is the reverence which the lesser owes to the greater. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales" we know that the observations could not have been recorded except at complete hours, because the construction of the metre will not admit the supposition of any parts ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... transpiercing eye, Shewd like a candle when the Sun is by. The louely boy was taken with the hooke, The more he gazd, the more still was he strooke; A thousand amourous glances he doth throwe, And those recoild, seconds a thousands moe. At last the boy being danted by her feature, Makes his speech prologue to so admir'd a creature: Celestiall goddesse, sprung from heauenly race, Ioues sweetest offpring, shew me but what place Thou doest inhabit, where thy Temple stands, That I may offer with vnspotted hands On thy deere Altar; and vpon thy praise Sing glorious hymnes and sweet ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... the foreground changes into a shell,—the shell opens,—forth steps a Naiad (pretty Mademoiselle Bejart, a well-known actress,—too well known for Moliere's domestic comfort) and declaims verses written by Pellisson for the occasion. Here is a part of this prologue in commonplace prose; Pellisson's verses are of a kind which loses little by translation. The flattery is heavy, but Louis XIV. was not dainty; he liked it strong, and probably swallowed more of it with pleasure and comfort during fifty years than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Orestes. This scene, I think, has been greatly misunderstood by critics. In Aeschylus' Libation-Bearers, which deals with the same subject as the Electra, the scene is at Agamemnon's tomb. Orestes lays his tress there in the prologue. Electra comes bringing libations, sees the hair, compares it with her own, finds that it is similar "wing for wing" ([Greek: homopteros]—the same word as here), and guesses that it belongs to Orestes. She then measures the footprints, ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... from chance opinion takes its rise, And into reputation multiplies. This prologue finds pat applications In men of all this world's vocations; For fashion, prejudice, and party strife, Conspire to crowd poor justice out of life. What can you do to counteract This reckless, rushing cataract? 'Twill ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... while it is complete in itself, is also the first of a trilogy, the scope of which is suggested in the prologue. The story of scientific discovery has its own epic unity—a unity of purpose and endeavour—the single torch passing from hand to hand through the centuries; and the great moments of science when, after ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... and made available through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library <http://www.ccel.org>. I have eliminated unnecessary formatting in the text, corrected some errors in transcription, and added the dedication, tables of contents, Prologue, and the numbers of the questions and articles, as they appeared in the printed translation published by Benziger Brothers. Each article is now designated by part, question number, and article number ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... ushered into any life with any pomp of circumstance or ceremony; there is no overture to our opera, no prologue to our play, and the most momentous meetings occur as if by mere accident. A friend delayed Cornelia a while on the street; and turning, she met Hyde face to face; a moment more, or less, and the meeting had not ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Constantinople in 397. The fifteen (or, if with some editors we include the prologue, sixteen) homilies On the Epistle to the Philippians, (t. 11, p. 189,) were preached in that capital of the empire. The moral instructions turn mostly on alms and riches. The order which prudence prescribes in the distribution of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the cities of Europe. How much of the language of the book of Marco Polo's travels was Marco's, and how much was the worthy Rusticiano's, we are unable to decide. The facts in that famous book were duly vouched for by Marco. The opening chapter, or prologue, inflated and wordy, after the fashion of the times, was undoubtedly Rusticiano's. He began thus: "Great Princes, Emperors, and Kings, Dukes and Marquises, Counts, Knights, and Burgesses! and People of all degree who desire to get knowledge of the various races of mankind ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... world can ever entirely clear up the sacred mystery of the Beyond, but that scene gives us a surety for the salvation of Margaret, and hope for Faust, to every one who has not forgotten the words of the Lord in the second Prologue:— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... "Scribit Herodotus quod mulier cum veste deponat et verecundiam." In Herodotus the saying is attributed to Gyges (Book I, Chapter VIII). We may thus trace very far back into antiquity an observation which in English has received its classical expression from Chaucer, who, in his "Wife of Bath's Prologue," has:— ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Works.— Chaucer's greatest work is the Canterbury Tales. It is a collection of stories written in heroic metre— that is, in the rhymed couplet of five iambic feet. The finest part of the Canterbury Tales is the Prologue; the noblest story is probably the Knightes Tale. It is worthy of note that, in 1362, when Chaucer was a very young man, the session of the House of Commons was first opened with a speech in English; and in the same year an Act of Parliament was passed, substituting the use of English for French ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... 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
... and uncertainty of Ibsen's position in Christiania made him glad to fill a post which the violinist, Ole Bull, offered him during autumn. The newly constituted National Theatre in Bergen (opened Jan. 2, 1850) had accepted a prologue written for an occasion by the young poet, and on November 6, 1851, Ibsen entered into a contract by which he bound himself go to Bergen "to assist the theatre as dramatic author." The salary was ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... fifty, he felt prematurely aged, that his youthful enthusiasm which had carried him on bravely in many an attempt to instruct and benefit his fellows at length forsook him and left him a prey to that weakness of body, and that hopelessness of spirit to which he so pathetically alludes in the Prologue to the Mirror of good Manners. All his best work, all the work which has survived to our day, was executed before this date. But the pen was too familiar to his hand to be allowed to drop. His biographers tell us "that when years came on he spent his time mostly in pious matters, and in reading ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... grinning beast, and became the lawful prize of his conductors. This exhibition was at first rude and simple, but under the influence of Lope de Vega it became a well-defined, popular entertainment, divided into three parts, each distinct from the other. First came the loa, a kind of prologue; then the entremes, a kind of interlude or farce; and last, the autos sacramentales, or sacred acts themselves, which were more grave in their tone, though ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... poetic ravers, Your Hunts, your Tennysons, your Milnes, and these! Shall they compete with him who wrote "Maltravers," Prologue to "Alice or the Mysteries?" No! Even now, my glance prophetic sees My own high brow girt with the bays about. What ho, within there, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Euripides. Possibly they were not intended for the very first lines, since if Milton intended to follow the practice of his model, the lofty lyrical tone of this address should have been introduced by a prosaic matter-of-fact setting forth of the situation, as in the Euripidean prologue. There are other passages in the poem which have the air of being insititious in the place where they stand. The lines in Book iv, now in question, may reasonably be referred to 1640-42, the date of those leaves in the Trinity College MS., in which Milton has written down, with his own hand, various ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Henry's Mephistopheles—a twopence colored part, anyway. Of course he had his moments—he had them in every part—but they were few. One of them was in the Prologue, when he wrote in the student's book, "Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil." He never looked at the book, and the nature of the spirit appeared suddenly in a most uncanny fashion. Another was in the Spinning-wheel ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... air. The dormant things within the boy had awakened. Life spoke; Hope sang; and between them all the world was changed. Yesterday, he had looked upon this day of idling in the country as a pleasant interlude, as a happy prologue to those greater delights that would come when he at last went to Epsom and really saw the famous race for the Derby. To-day, he was sorry that anything—even so great a thing as that—must come to disturb ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... of 'Peter Bell', as the Prologue will show, was composed under a belief that the Imagination not only does not require for its exercise the intervention of supernatural agency, but that, though such agency be excluded, the faculty may be called forth as imperiously and for kindred ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... 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
... were now again waved, and on every side resounded "Viva l'Emperador, l'Emperadriza, la Monarchia!" This enthusiasm having been rewarded by gracious acknowledgments, the drop curtain rose, and an actress came forward to recite a prologue in praise of the Emperor. Then followed a piece of which I understood very little; and the whole was concluded by a ballet, greatly superior to my expectations. During the performance, the Emperor gave audience in his box to many of his ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... devoutness; while his phrases have passed into the constitution of a 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 it ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... them to take Offence. I hope I may be forgiven, that I have not made my Opera throughout unnatural, like those in vogue; for I have no Recitative; excepting this, as I have consented to have neither Prologue nor Epilogue, it must be allowed an Opera in all its Forms. The Piece indeed hath been heretofore frequently represented by ourselves in our Great Room at St. Giles's, so that I cannot too often acknowledge your Charity in bringing it ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... Dionysus himself speaks the prologue. He is on a journey through the world to found a new religion; and the first motive of this new religion is the vindication of the memory of his mother. In explaining this design, Euripides, who ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... this lovely prologue is the production of a dramatic poet, not of a poet writing a drama. On the other hand, I cannot agree with what I read somewhere recently—that Sebald's song, at the opening of the most superb dramatic writing in the whole range of Victorian literature, is, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... you to Willoughby, Clara? You decree me to the part of ball between two bats. The Play being assured, the prologue is a bladder of wind. I seem to be instructed in one of the mysteries of erotic esotery, yet on my word I am no wiser. If Willoughby is to hear anything from you, he will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Plato, the writer of which now avows himself. It is only possible to excuse the 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 for this hope, or it is likely to evaporate simply in pious wishes. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... that "Le Juif" has five acts; but I have not yet committed myself to the assertion that he was in seven tableaux, and possessed a prologue. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... have maundered so slowly through the prologue. I have it! it was simply to say to you, in the form of introduction rife through the Middle West: "Shake ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... feelings were in harmony with the new Longinianism of boldness and bigness, cultivated in one way by Dennis and in another by Addison himself in later Spectators. The tribute to the old writers in Rowe's Prologue to Jane Shore (1713) is of course not simply the result of ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... the most artificial and complicated of all the poetical machines, was not yet brought to perfection; and like those animals which change their state, some parts of the old narrative still adhered. It still had a chorus, it still had a prologue to explain the design; and the perfect drama, an automaton supported and moved without any foreign help, was formed late and gradually. Nay, there are still several parts of the world in which it is not, and probably never may be, formed. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... says the prologue to this play, which is said to be founded on a known true story, and exhibits various witchcrafts practised upon the neighbourhood by one Mother Sawyer, whose portrait with that of her familiar (a dog, called Tom, which is one of the dramatis personae,) is in the title-page. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... adventure? Did I not begin to flag, quail, and wish for safety under a roof? Not so. I still loathed my bed in the school dormitory more than words can express: I clung to whatever could distract thought. Somehow I felt, too, that the night's drama was but begun, that the prologue was scarce spoken: throughout this woody and turfy theatre reigned a shadow of mystery; actors and incidents unlooked-for, waited behind the scenes: I thought so foreboding told ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... certain hymn, for which I had and have an especial affection, came into my mind, and, without prologue or introduction, I ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... line; but in Spenser's day all memory of the syllabic e had long since vanished, and the only rhythm to be extracted from Chaucer's verse was of a four-stress type. Professor Herford quotes a passage from the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales as it appears in Thynne's second edition (1542), which Spenser would ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... repeating the prologue to Faust?" asked he. "Where is your magical compact? Must I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Deep, by Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, 1856 (first performed at Tavistock House, 6th January, 1857), together with the narrative written for Temple Bar, 1874, and Prompt Book of the same play, was sold for L300. A poem written by Charles Dickens, as a Prologue to the same play, and The Song of the Wreck, also written by Charles Dickens, were sold for L11 11s. each. The Perils of Certain English Prisoners, a joint production of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, for the Christmas ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... this Morning, 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 ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... King of France; and in it he endeavours to prove the advantages, both to body and soul, of the manly exercise of which he was a passionate lover. His own death appears to disprove his arguments, which are curious enough. He thus expresses himself in his Prologue:—"I, Gaston, by the grace of God, surnamed Phoebus, Count of Foys, and Lord of Bearn, have, all my life, been fond of three things—war, love, and hunting; in the two first others may have excelled me, and been more fortunate; but, in the last, I ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... prologue I was asked to write. I did not see the play, though. I knew there was a young lady in it, and that somebody was in love with her, and she was in love with him, and somebody (an old tutor, I believe) wanted to interfere, and, very naturally, the young ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... 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 Dance ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... descend to the confines of casuistry in ethics.(270) In the discussion of them Abelard collects passages from the scriptures and from the fathers in favour of two distinctly opposite solutions. He has however prefixed a prologue to the work, which ought to be taken as the explanation of his object.(271) He insists in it on the difficulty of rightly understanding the scriptures or the fathers, and refers it to eight different causes;(272) advising that when these considerations fail to explain the apparent ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... was entitled The Revenge and the Hotel, and Barrington provided the prologue, which for one passage is for ever memorable. Thus ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... 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 Place."[11] With few exceptions, the "place" ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... items—the play, the naval pageant, the scenes of hunting and combat of beasts amongst themselves—these were only the prologue. The real spectacle was at last to commence. For this the Romans thirsted—patricians and plebs alike, rich and poor, man, woman and child. These shows were their very life; they constituted the essence of their entire being; for these they rose at midnight ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Your Prologue to the Nibelungen in course of performance at the Walhalla-Roszavolgyi has royally amused me. [A joke of Mihalovich, who had nicknamed several mutually known people with the names and characters out of the Nibelungen] I wish that Wagner may find in Messrs. Betz, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Prologue affirming of reason, That artificers having exercise, May chaunge & turne by good discretion Shapes & formes, & newly them devise: As Potters whiche to that craft entende Breake & renue their ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... the latter part of the fourth century B.C.,—it incorporates various older poems, for the theme is thought to antedate the Exodus. In the prologue we have a description of Job, a model sheik of the land of Uz, whose righteousness wins such complete approval from God that the Almighty proudly quotes his servant before his assembled council as a perfect man. "The Adversary," Satan, now ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... gave the perfect image of his thought. He was never afraid to ask—never too dignified to admit that he did not know. No man had keener wit or kinder humor. He was not solemn. Solemnity is a mask worn by ignorance and hypocrisy—it is the preface, prologue, and index to the cunning or the stupid. He was natural in his life and thought—master of the story-teller's art, in illustration apt, in application perfect, liberal in speech, shocking Pharisees and prudes, using any word that wit ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... They were indeed talking just outside the window, Monny Gilder and Anthony Fenton. The prologue was evidently over, and the first act was on. It began well, with a touch of human interest certain to please an audience. But unfortunately for every one concerned, this was a private rehearsal for actors only, not a public performance. Biddy and I had ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... bronze by Schaller of Munich, which is fixed for the 25th; secondly, on the evening of the 25th, Handel's "Messiah"; thirdly, on the 28th, the anniversary of Goethe's birth, a remarkably successful Prologue made, ad hoc, for that day by Dingelstedt, followed by the first performance of Wagner's "Lohengrin." This work, which you certainly will not have the opportunity of hearing so soon anywhere else, on account of the special position of the composer, and the many difficulties in its performance, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... appeared on the scene in this prologue to the drama of the University's history. Less than six years after the arrival of the first settlers, the first number of the Western Emigrant appeared on October 18, 1829. Like all country journals of that period it was far more interested in national politics and even foreign affairs than local ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... Prologue spoken by Harriet; curtain drew back, and Catiline and Aurelia appeared. Fanny had dressed Francis, from Kennet's Antiquities, out of an old rag-chest, and a more complete little Roman figure I never saw, though made up no mortal ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... talk is not to be had for the asking. Humours must first be accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; hour, company and circumstance be suited; and then, at a fit juncture, the subject, the quarry of two heated minds, spring up like a deer out of the wood. Not that the talker has any of the hunter's ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the prologue; the curtain trembled on the rise; the story of Fate was beginning. But they had no eyes except for each other, paid no heed save to ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 of the Grand ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as to scene in Venice. Whether because of the success of "Eastward Hoe" or for other reasons, the other three comedies declare in the words of the prologue to "The Alchemist": ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... prologue to this rare and charming little volume how true and genuine a bibliomaniac was Richard de Bury, for he tells us there, that a vehement love amor excitet of books had so powerfully seized all the faculties of his mind, that dismissing all ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... 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 ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... without stuffing. The good-humour of his visage was fully equalled by the protuberance of his stomach; and if the "totus in se teres atque rotundus" of Horace, is the poet's definition of a good man, the actor rose to the summit of human virtue. The best prologue, since the days of Garrick, ushered in this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Garden was probably not Handel but Mlle Salle, a French dancer who had been engaged by Rich. The first performance at the new theatre was a ballet, Terpsichore, in order that she might inaugurate the season. Terpsichore, which includes songs and a chorus, served as prologue to Il Pastor Fido. The next opera was Oreste, a pasticcio made up by Handel himself from his own works; on January 8, 1735, he produced his Ariodante, an opera over which he had spent the unusually long time of ten weeks. The score was begun on August ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... and partial success, in which the new struggles with the old without conquering it, and the opposite tendencies in the conflicting views of the world interplay in a way at once obscure and wayward, is to be classed as the epilogue of the old era or the prologue of the new. The simple solution to take it as a transition period, no longer mediaeval but not yet modern, has met with fairly general acceptance. Nicolas of Cusa (1401-64) was the first to announce fundamental principles of modern philosophy—he ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the same popular tradition in the first scene of the last act of Fletcher's The Noble Gentleman. So, too, in the Prologue to Beaumont and Fletcher's, or Fletcher and Massinger's, The False One, a tragedy dealing with Caesar ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... that country at large this climax meant simply a brief and arrogant chastisement of a cruel little nation; the generals would have been quite justified in sending their dress clothes and golf sticks on to Havana; but North knew that this officious "police duty" was the noisy prologue to a new United States, possibly to the birth of ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Chaucer's "A good man ther was of religioun, That was a poure persone [parson] of a town." Prologue ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... in Latin has been consulted, inserted in the Novus Orbis of Grinaeus, published at Bath in 1532. The letter contains a spirited narrative of four voyages which he asserts to have made to the New World. In the prologue he excuses the liberty of addressing king Rene by calling to his recollection the ancient intimacy of their youth, when studying the rudiments of science together, under the paternal uncle of the voyager; and adds that if the present narrative should not ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... centuries can show! Poor little puppets, in whose persons national interests were supposed to be centred, were made to lisp out their roles in international dramas whose final acts rarely were consistent with the promise of the prologue. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Tragedy of Mustapha. A volume of his works appeared in 1633, another of Remains in 1670, and his biography of Sidney in 1652. He wrote two tragedies on the Senecan model, Alaham and Mustapha. The scene of Alaham is laid in Ormuz. The development of the piece fully bears out the gloom of the prologue, in which the ghost of a former king of Ormuz reveals the magnitude of the curse about to descend on the doomed family. The theme of Mustapha is borrowed from Madeleine de Scudery's Ibrahim ou l'illustre Bassa, and turns on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Prologue (erroneously imputed to a convict Barrington, but believed to have been written by an ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... fair boy and always blushing; and the rest of the characters found able representatives. Every half-holiday was devoted to rehearsals, and nothing could exceed the amusement and thorough fun which all the preparations elicited. All went well; Vivian wrote a pathetic prologue and a witty epilogue. Etherege got on capitally in the mask scene, and Poynings was quite perfect in Jack Maggot. There was, of course, some difficulty in keeping all things in order, but then Vivian Grey was such an excellent manager! ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... 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 always hinder and often neutralize the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... it true that the expedition of the Ten Thousand forms "an epilogue to the invasion of Xerxes and a prologue to the conquests ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... And many a Jacke of Dover hast thou sold, That hath been twies hot and twies cold. Chaucer: The Coke's Prologue. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... lingering. Her father was not aware of these interviews. There had been some coolness between him and the young hunter; and the lovers were apprehensive that he might not approve of their conduct. This was the prologue of the hunter's story. The epilogue I give in his own words: "'Twar a mornin'—jest five months ago—she had promised to meet me here—an' I war seated on yonder log waitin' for her. Jest then some Injuns war comin' ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... likely (alas!) that their history will be dated A.D. (After Drinkwater) and that the honour will be given to "Abraham Lincoln." I like to think that in this event my ghost will haunt them. Make-Believe appeared with a Prologue by the Manager, lyrics by C.E. Burton, and music by Georges Dorlay. As the title-page states that this book is, in the language of children's competitions, "my own unaided work," I print the play with a new Prologue, ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... known to himself, appeared to be acting with a view toward partial conciliation. The Chevalier did not wholly ignore this advance. D'Herouville would fight fair as became a gentleman, and that was enough. Since they were soon to set about killing each other, what mattered the prologue? ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... fond of "supping full of horrors" is a devilled drama, interspersed with hydraulics— consisting, in fact, of spirits and water, sweetened with songs and spiced with witches. It is, we are informed by the official announcements, "a romantic burletta of witchcraft, in two acts, and a prologue, with entirely new scenery, dresses, and peculiar appointments, imagined by, and introduced under the direction of, Mr. Yates." Now, any person, entirely unprejudiced with a taste for devilry and free from hydrophobia, who sees this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... your son, ply his old task, Turn the stale prologue to some painted mask; His absence in my verse ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... sprawling, too scattered, to get firm hold on the reader. There are seventy-four specifically indicated characters, not to mention groups of dumb figures. And while the title page speaks of five acts and a prologue, there are in reality seventeen distinct scenes. Each scene may be dramatically valuable, but the constant passage from place to place, from one set of characters to another, ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... de Repentigny! You are worthy to belong to the Grand Company! But you shall have my toast. We have drank it twenty times already, but it will stand drinking twenty times more. It is the best prologue to wine ever devised by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... scenery is good, it is difficult, perhaps to single out one set for especial praise; but my advice is, on no account miss the Second Scene of the Prologue, "on the Battlements of a Castle in Normandy," painted by W. TELBIN. "Rosamond's Bower," by HAWES CRAVEN, is equally perfect in another and of course totally distinct line. To pronounce upon Professor STANFORD'S music when "the play's the thing" is impossible. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... play-writing; and the friendly fortune which seemed to serve Addison at every turn reached its climax in the applause which greeted the production of 'Cato.' The motive of this tragedy, constructed on what were then held to be classic lines, is found in the two lines of the Prologue: it ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 part clerical. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... the reverend John Genest; examine the mass of commendatory verses in the twenty-one-volume editions of Shakspere; examine also the commendatory verses in the nine-volume edition of Ben. Jonson. Here is the result: Langbaine calls attention to the prologue in question as an excellent prologue, and Genest repeats what had been said one hundred and forty years before by Langbaine. There is not the slightest hint ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... 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
... plays, intended to be performed on four successive evenings, entitled The Rhine Gold (a prologue to the other three), The Valkyries, Siegfried, and Night Falls On The Gods; or, in the original German, Das Rheingold, Die ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... reaches its fullest expression in Lillo: the desire to lower the social level of the characters in order to make the tragedy more moving; and the desire to defend the stage by demonstrating its religious and moral utility. In his prologue to The Fair Penitent (l703), Rowe gave expression to the first: the "fate of kings and empires", he argues, is too remote to engage our feelings, for "we ne'er can pity that we ne'er can share"; therefore ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... formerly attached (as menin) to the person of Monseigneur, on hearing his master's exploits lauded; "for my part, I am not surprised." Racine had exaggerated the virtues of Monseigneur in the charming verses of the prologue of Esther: ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the cook's in King Street (where I find the master of the house hath been dead for some time), and there dined, and thence by one o'clock to the King's house: a new play, "The Duke of Lerma," of Sir Robert Howard's: where the King and Court was; and Knepp and Nell spoke the prologue most excellently, especially Knepp, who spoke beyond any creature I ever, heard. The play designed to reproach our King with his mistresses, that I was troubled for it, and expected it should be interrupted; but it ended all well, which salved all. The play a ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of "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. He knew, then, that he would have to tell the next audience ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... the Prologue to the Book of Foundations, Father Garcia de Toledo, her confessor at St. Joseph's Convent, is said to be responsible for the order to rewrite the "Life"; but in the Preface to the "Life" St. Teresa speaks of her "confessors" ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... 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 ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... subsided after some ten or fifteen minutes and soon we heard the motor racing back through the streets while a musician in the car sounded on a bugle the "prologue" or the signal that the raid was over. The invaders had been driven back. All of us in the ward tried to sleep. But nerves tingled from this more or less uncomfortable experience and wounds ached and burned. Sleep was almost out of the question, and in the darkened ward I soon noticed the red glow ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... Hesper Friends. . . old friends If it should come to be From the brake the Nightingale In the waste hour Crosses and troubles London Voluntaries Grave Andante con Moto Scherzando Largo e Mesto Allegro Maestoso Rhymes and Rhyhms Prologue Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade We are the Choice of the Will A desolate shore It came with the threat of a waning moon Why, my heart, do we love her so? One with the ruined sunset There's a regret Time and the Earth As like the Woman ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... ridicule these attacks brought down at their hands on his own head, from Pope in "Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis," and "damnation to everlasting fame" in "Dunciad"; he became blind, and was sunk in poverty, when Pope wrote a prologue to a play produced for his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Garrick brought out his tragedy at Drury Lane. Dr. Adams was present at the first night of the representation of "Irene," and gave me the following account. "Before the curtain drew up, there were catcalls and whistling, which alarmed Johnson's friends. The prologue, which was 'written by himself in a manly strain, soothed the audience, and the play went off tolerably till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs. Pritchard, the heroine of the piece, was to be strangled on the stage, and was to speak two lines ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... The prologue to the 1897 volume contained his platform, which, so far as I know, he has never seen cause to change. Despite the title, he is not an infant crying in the night; he is a full-grown man, whose voice of resonant hope and faith is heard in the darkness. His chief reason for believing in God ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... In his prologue "excusynge the rudenes of his translacion," he professes to have purposely used the most ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... seen in a sort of picture in the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales; which is already pregnant with the promise of the English novel. The characters there are at once graphically and delicately differentiated; the Doctor with his rich cloak, his careful meals, his coldness to religion; the Franklin, whose white beard was so ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... of the 'Canterbury Tales.'—Whilst, however, there is not one of the Canterbury Tales which fails to bring vividly before the reader one aspect or another of the life of Chaucer's day, it is in the prologue that is especially found evidence of the close connection which existed between different ranks of society. Men and women of various classes are there represented as riding together on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... Lyndsay. But the authors of the songs of the people have been forgotten. In a droll poem entitled "Cockelby's Sow," ascribed to the reign of James I., is enumerated a considerable catalogue of contemporary lyrics. In the prologue to Gavin Douglas' translation of the AEneid of Virgil, written not later than 1513, and in the celebrated "Complaynt of Scotland," published in 1549, further catalogues of the popular ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... by discomfort, and not by the pain and hideous sorrow of the world surrounding him, that he is affected. He is like Satan in the Book of Job, except that he is offering his victim luxuries instead of pains. In the prologue in Heaven he speaks with such a jaunty air that Professor Blackie's translation has omitted the passage as irreverent. He is the spirit that denies—sceptical and cynical, the anti-Christian that is in us all. His business is ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... rock, was heard a rich, powerful voice speaking to the American people of the changes and vicissitudes that the rock has witnessed since "far primordial ages." Fit prologue it was from the "corner-stone ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... succeeded so well, considering how long our British audiences have been accustomed to murder, racks, and poison, in every tragedy; but it affected the heart so much, that it triumphed over habit and prejudice. All the women cried, and all the men were moved. The prologue, which is a very good one, was made entirely by Garrick. The epilogue is old Cibber's; but corrected, though not enough, by Francis. He will get a great deal of, money by it; and, consequently, be better able to lend you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... to my little play. Pretty prologue, isn't it?—but commonplace. The play proper isn't! The same conditions affect men differently. When I learned what I have told—after the first awful five minutes—I don't like to think of them, even now!—I became the most deliberate man on the face ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... a divine work is spread out for the poet, and approach this author too, in the hope of finding the field at length fairly entered on, you will hardly dissent from the words of the prologue, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... ordinance of fate or only a seeming one—because interest in a subject makes us observant. Am reading Greek with Julia. We began the sixth book of the Iliad. Tuesday.—Fifty lines in Homer; Companion proofs; Schleiermacher; the prologue and first scene of Terence's comedy of Andria; two Nos. of N. Nickleby, and walked round the Common with Julia twice. Wednesday.—Studies the same as yesterday, except that I read less of Schleiermacher ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... this he persists in looking upon those hours from ten to six as "the day," to which the ten hours preceding them and the six hours following them are nothing but a prologue and epilogue. Such an attitude, unconscious though it be, of course kills his interest in the odd sixteen hours, with the result that, even if he does not waste them, he does not count them; he regards them simply ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... several theological books, and he also wrote the prologue to the second edition of the 'Great Bible,' printed in 1540. His works were collected and arranged by H. Jenkyns, and published in four volumes at Oxford in 1833. There is a portrait of the Archbishop, at the age of fifty-seven, by G. Fliccius in the National Portrait Gallery, and ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... all very well for Lamartine to explain, in his original prologue, that the touching, fascinating and pathetic story of Raphael was the experience of another man. It is well known that these feeling pages are but transcripts of an episode of his own heart-history. That the tale is one of almost feminine sentimentality is due, in some measure, perhaps, ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the conception had then assumed in Milton's mind as the nucleus of a religious drama on the pattern of the mediaeval mystery or miracle play. Could he have had any vague knowledge of the autos of Calderon? In the second and more complete draft Gabriel speaks the prologue. Lucifer bemoans his fall and altercates with the Chorus of Angels. Eve's temptation apparently takes place off the stage, an arrangement which Milton would probably have reconsidered. The plan would have given scope for much splendid poetry, especially where, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... does not advance so quickly as we wish. Or again, instead of beginning with the action, and having our curiosity excited bit by bit about the plot, at the outset some one comes in and tells us the whole thing in the prologue. Prologues we feel, are out of date, and the Greeks ought to have known better. Or again, of course we admit that tragedy must be tragic, and we are prepared for a decent amount of lamentation, but when an antiphonal lament goes on for pages, we weary and wish that the chorus would ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... these Miracles consisted of short dramatic representations of many single passages of the sacred story. The whole would occupy about three days. It began with the Creation, and ended with the Judgment. That for which the city of Coventry was famous consists of forty-two subjects, with a long prologue. Composed by ecclesiastics, the plays would seem to have been first represented by them only, although afterwards it was not always considered right for the clergy to be concerned with them. The hypocritical ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... 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 has ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... its artful preparation for and relation to what it precedes. It shows the forethought and skill of its author in the construction or opening out of his play, both in respect to the story and the feeling; yet even here, in this half-declamatory prologue, the poet's dramatic art is also evident. His poet and painter are living men, and not mere utterers of so many words. Was this from intuition?—or because he found it easy to make them what he conceived them, and felt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... moralist, who, in the following year, proposed him as a member of the Literary Club, and always spoke of his character and genius with praise. Nor was Sheridan wanting on his part with corresponding tributes; for, in a prologue which he wrote about this time to the play of Sir Thomas Overbury, he thus alludes to Johnson's Life of its ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... this began to vociferate "Prologue! prologue! prologue!" when Wignell, finding them resolute, without betraying any emotion, pause, or change in his voice and manner, proceeded as if it ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... Creutz? [Antea, vol. v. pp. 356-358; Wilhelmina.] This is the same Creutz; of whom we have never spoken more, nor shall again, now that his rich Daughter is well married to Hacke, a favorite of his Majesty's and ours. It was the Duke's first sight in Berlin; February 26th; prologue to the flood ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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, l. 853: ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... night, and found to be merely a translation of one of the feeblest plays of Thomas Corneille. This play was long believed to be by Boswell, but his part was merely the providing the translator with a prologue, nor was the fact revealed till long ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... 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
... devout child, brother of Pippa and of Theocrite; the evolution of this harping shepherd-boy into the illuminated prophet of Christ was the splendid achievement of the later years.[33] And to all this more acutely Christian work the Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850) served as a significant prologue. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... 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 island across the channel which ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... In the 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 Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... drawn us to each other—Octave and Clemence. Here, she was the Baroness de Bergenheim, and I the Vicomte de Gerfaut. I must from necessity enter the ordinary route, begin the romance at the first page, without knowing how to connect the prologue with it. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... morn when first they parted: 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 till now Not felt, nor shall be twice; for never more Mean I to try, what ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... (psychomantia), and also 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 of the battle of Salamis; but Darius, ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... literature that gives young people inspiration, but too much of it, like college life, ends with a commencement. "And then they were married and lived happily ever after"—is the familiar closing as the novelist rings down the curtain after reciting only the prologue in the life drama of his two lovers. We need more literature that does not end with the wedding march, but which gives young people the successful solution of the problems after marriage. Some such is ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... society. A short satire on the Dutch, written to animate the people of England against them, appeared in 1662.[46] It is somewhat in the hard style of invective, which Cleveland applied to the Scottish nation; yet Dryden thought it worth while to weave the same verses into the prologue and epilogue of the tragedy of "Amboyna," a piece written in 1673, with the same kind ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... theatre, it was no derogation to the dignity of the Staffordshire squire's grandson to do as much. Accordingly, in the following year he brought out a better comedy, 'The Double Dealer,' with a prologue which was spoken by the famous Anne Bracegirdle. She must have been eighty years old when Horace Walpole wrote of her to that other Horace—Mann: 'Tell Mr. Chute that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted with me this morning. As she went out and wanted her clogs, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... 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 to the handling ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to skip 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 Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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 the constructive ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... son of a saddler in London, born 1657, was a mediocre writer, and rather better critic of the time, with whom Pope came a good deal into collision. Addison's tragedy of Cato, for which Pope had written a prologue, had been attacked by Dennis. Pope, to defend Addison, wrote an imaginary report, pretending to be written by a notorious quack mad-doctor of the day, entitled The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Frenz of F. D. Dennis replied to it by his Character of Mr. Pope. Ultimately Pope gave ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... Piece where all requires to be forced, like the subject of it."—What a pity none of us has read this fine Farce! "One Paris did the part of MUSCADIN (Little Coxcomb), which name represents his character: in short, it can be said the Farce was well given. The Author ennobled it by a Prologue for the Occasion; which he acted very well, along with Madame Dufour as BARBE (Governess Barbara),—who, but for this brilliant action, could not have put up with merely being Governess to Piggery. And, in fact, she disdained the simplicity of dress which her part required;—as did the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... superstitious beliefs of the Middle Age. It is not always easy to determine when the poet is serious in his statement of religious belief, occasionally he appears to be so, and then a line or so shows us that he has a legend in mind. In the prologue of the poem ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... was a man, soul and body, heart, hand, and spirit, stood beside the other, who was a shadow, and beside her, who was a woman—and the tragedy began in the prologue of contrast. Strength to weakness, motion to immobility, the grace and carriage of manly youth to the sad restfulness of helpless, hopeless limbs that never again could feel and bear weight; that was the contrast from which there was no escaping. ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... for orchestra, chorus, and solo voices, and is in six scenes or parts, the first of which is described as being "in the nature of a prologue, wherein a dream of Columbus is pictured. Evil spirits and sirens hover about the sleeping mariner threatening and taunting him. The Spirit of Light appears, the tormentors vanish, and a chorus of angels join the Spirit of Light in a song ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various |
