"Prologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... patrols scoured the ground around the chalk 'ummock and drew blank. And so, in the fullness of time there appeared in the Roll of Honour the name of Lieut. John Brinton, of the Royal Loamshires, under the laconic heading of Missing, believed Prisoner of War, which is the prologue of this tale ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... Montreal is knee-deep in snow, and the thermometer below zero. Every hour brings fresh intelligence of the movements of the rebels, or patriots—the last term is doubtful, yet it may be correct. When they first opened the theatre at Botany Bay, Barrington spoke the prologue, which ended ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of life are simple to understand and easy to express, the littlenesses require a vast number of details to explain them. The foregoing events, which may be called a sort of prologue to this bourgeois drama, in which we shall find passions as violent as those excited by great interests, required this long introduction; and it would have been difficult for any faithful historian to shorten the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... banquet. That Thriftiness with Jocoseness, Chearfulness without Obscenity, and learned Stories, ought to season their Feasts. Iambics are bloody. Poets are Men of no great Judgment. The three chief Properties of a good Maid Servant. Fidelity, Deformity, and a high Spirit. A Place out of the Prologue of Terence's Eunuchus is illustrated. Also Horace's Epode to Canidia. A Place out of Seneca. Aliud agere, nihil agere, male agere. A Place out of the Elenchi of Aristotle is explain'd. A Theme poetically varied, and in a different Metre. Sentences are taken from Flowers ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... 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
... of "The Unhappy Favourite; or, the Earl of Essex," was first acted in 1682. The prologue and epilogue were written by Dryden. Speaking of this play, in the Tatler, Sir Richard Steele says, "there is in it not one good line, and yet it is a play which was never seen without drawing tears from some part of the audience; a remarkable instance, that the soul ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... with the fashion of the period, the star had to recite a prologue. An extract from ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... 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 of 'Hope ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... My brothers and I were their schoolfellows. The Barretts were Irish boys; I think (but I speak very doubtfully) from Cork. Eton Barrett was a boy of more than ordinary talent. He was a genius among the lesser lights around him. I remember his writing a play with prologue and epilogue, which was performed before the master and his family, &c., with so much success, that the master prohibited any future dramatic performances, fearing, that he might incur blame for encouraging too much taste for the theatre. Our ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... various repeated characters, despite differences of skin garmenting and decoration, resemble their prototypes of the prologue.) ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London
... that our comedy is new, And what it is, I've shown: who wrote it too, And whose in Greek it is, were I not sure Most of you knew already, would I tell. But, wherefore I have ta'en this part upon me, In brief I will deliver: for the Bard Has sent me here as pleader, not as Prologue; You he declares his judges, me his counsel: And yet as counsel nothing can I speak More than the Author teaches me to say, Who wrote th' oration which I now recite. As to reports, which envious men have spread, That he has ransack'd ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... shock of delight at hearing the first call of the cuckoo in spring or seeing my hawthorn hedge burst into snowy blossoms. I should no longer remark the jolly clatter of the rooks in the February trees which forms the prologue of spring, nor look out for the coming of the first primrose or the arrival of the first swallow. I should cease, it is true, to have the pangs of "Farewell," but I should cease also to have the ecstasy of "Hail." I should have my Grecian urn, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... originally produced by Sandra K. Perry, Perrysburg, Ohio, 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 III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... that kept the mysterious playwright so long fumbling behind the scenes, for it was obvious that it would be no ordinary sort of play, no every-day domestic drama, that would satisfy this young lady, to whom life had given, by way of prologue, the inestimable blessing of wealth, and the privilege, as a matter of course, of choosing as she would among the grooms (that is, the bride-grooms) of the romantic ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... comment on the critical portions of his Account of Shakespeare. When he professes to have taken Shakespeare as his model,(9) which shows that his editorial work had taught him the trick of an occasional line contrary to the normal rules of blank verse. Notwithstanding a brave prologue, he was not able to shake himself free from the rules, which tightened their grip on English tragedy till they choked it. His regard for Shakespeare did not give him courage for the addition of a comic element or an underplot. He must ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... mainly occupied him during the years from 1384 to 1391. Its best stories, those of the Miller, the Reeve, the Cook, the Wife of Bath, the Merchant, the Friar, the Nun, the Priest, and the Pardoner, are ascribed to this period, as well as the Prologue. The framework which Chaucer chose—that of a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury—not only enabled him to string these tales together, but lent itself admirably to the peculiar characteristics of ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... 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
... of our classical age, from Dryden to 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 ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 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
... at the Duke's Theatre in Dorset-Garden; for, being a satire upon a court vice, it was deemed peculiarly calculated for that play-house. The concourse of the citizens thither is alluded to in the prologue to "Marriage-a-la-Mode." Ravenscroft also, in his epilogue to the "Citizen turned Gentleman," acted at the same theatre, disowns the patronage of the courtiers who kept mistresses, probably because they Constituted the minor part of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... thenceforward. Godwin did, however, write another play, "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote the prologue. It was moderately successful. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... production as Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress.' The 'Narrenschiff' was like a glass in which every man saw the reflection of his neighbor; for the old weather-beaten vessel was filled with a crew of fools, who impersonate the universal weaknesses of human nature. In his prologue Brandt says:— ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... 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, 1890, and especially the exceedingly ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... considerations 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
... with the greatest care your time to come in. "Present not your selfe on the stage especially at a new play until the quaking Prologue hath, by rubbing, got [colour] into his cheekes and is ready to give the trumpets their cue that hees upon point to enter; for then it is time, as though you were one of the properties, or that you dropt out of ye hangings, to creepe from behind the arras, with your tripos or three-footed stoole ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Now, in 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 of hours having ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... mending, Le Gardeur 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 wit ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... rock in 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
... Prince, and look at the stage. The play has begun, and some member of the company, we know not who, has recited the archaic prologue, which asks: ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... key, all would have blown over. Unhappily for Lord Belgrave, in that critical moment up rose the one solitary man, to wit, Sheridan, whose look, whose voice, whose traditional character, formed a prologue to what was coming. Here let the reader understand that, throughout the "Iliad," all speeches or commands, questions or answers, are introduced by Homer under some peculiar formula. For instance, replies are ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... nothing, struggle he never so hard. And the superfluous man not only is impotent, but he knows his impotence, so that he is dead in soul as well as in body. This brief sketch of a living corpse, written as early as 1850, forms thus the prologue, as it were, to all his future tragedies. From this depth of nothingness Turgenef, however, soon rises to at least the semblance of strength; and while Rudin is at bottom as impotent as Tchulkaturin, he at least ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... much about Chinatown, except the authorities, and their interference is but perfunctory. The yellow men, after all, are, as Prologue to "Pagliacci" observes, but men like you, for joy or sorrow, the same broad heaven above them, the same wide world before them. They are but men like you, though the sanitary officials may doubt it. They will sleep six ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... could scarcely contain his impatience at the obstacles still in the way of his own elevation. He appears upon the stage, just after the crowning of Edward, burning with repressed hate and jealousy. The prologue is the utterance of the most intense bitterness and satire.' Then, unconsciously assuming the character, Mr. Lincoln repeated, also from memory, Richard's soliloquy, rendering it with a degree of force and power that made it seem like ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... was not great, but to make amends, it was curious; and consequently he was some time in making it; he had the great good fortune hewever, to set off well, in getting Bruscambille's prologue upon long noses, almost for nothing—for he gave no more for Bruscambille than three half-crowns; owing indeed to the strong fancy which the stall-man saw my father had for the book the moment he laid his hands upon it.—There are not three Bruscambilles in Christendom—said ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... the prologue, the overture. If one might be permitted to speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of the instruments. The opera was to come,—the Flying Dutchman ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... flushing head, So vernal love, where all seems dead, Makes beauty abound. Then was that nought, That trance of joy beyond all thought, The vision, in one, of womanhood? Nay, for all women holding good, Should marriage such a prologue want, 'Twere sordid and most ignorant Profanity; but, having this, 'Tis honour now, and future bliss; For where is he that, knowing the height And depth of ascertain'd delight, Inhumanly ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... eloquence and effect. He has dilated on the sufferings, on the abject poverty, of this ill-fated woman, the last of an illustrious race. He tells us that, in the extremity of her distress, Garrick gave her a benefit, that Johnson wrote a prologue, and that the public contributed some hundreds of pounds. Was it fit, he asks, that she should receive, in this eleemosynary form, a small portion of what was in truth a debt? Why, he asks, instead ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which latter was a canon of Bridlington in Yorkshire, of Norman origin, but born in England, and the author of an entire History of his country in French verse, down to the end of the reign of Edward I. Brunne's Chronicle seems to have been written about the year 1303. We extract the Prologue, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... contributed versions of the Manciple's Tale and the Friar's Tale (both here reprinted), and of the Squire's Tale. Elizabeth A. Barrett, afterwards Mrs. Browning, contributed a version of "Queen Annelida and False Arcite." Richard Hengist Horne entered heartily into the venture, modernised the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the Reve's Tale, and the Franklin's, and wrote an Introduction of more than a hundred pages, to which Professor Leonhard Schmitz added thirty-two pages of a Life of Chaucer. Robert Bell, to whom we were afterwards indebted ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... time. On no other terms would he have begun the publication of it. He was not in the least likely to have accepted a story from a man who, though known as an essayist, had not yet published anything in the way of a long story, on the ground merely of three chapters of prologue. Mr Gosse left Braemar on 5th September, when he says nine chapters were written, and Mr Henderson had offered terms for the story before the last of these could have reached him. That is on seeing, say six chapters of prologue. But when Mr Gosse speaks about three chapters ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... toll; Amongst other official employments, Chaucer was Comptroller of the Customs in the Port of London. See his House of Fame; and the beautiful picture of his walks at dawning in the daisy- meadows: Prologue to the Legend of ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... 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 were not so with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... heart." I walked off in disgust. I found a cab at the next corner and, bidding the driver take me to Bancroft's, threw myself back on the cushions. This was a lovely mess! This was a beautiful climax to the first act—no, merely the prologue—of the drama of Hephzy's and my pilgrimage. What would Jim Campbell say to this? I was to be absolutely care-free; I was not to worry about myself or anyone else. That was the essential part of his famous "prescription." And now, here I was, with ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... girl. After they have partaken of the inevitable betel-nut quid, and have offered a drink of sugarcane brew or other beverage to the household, and have discussed a few topics of daily life—it may be about the last wild boar killed, or the capture of a polecat in the snares[1]—the prologue begins. This lasts from one to two days, including often the better part of the nights. Each of the visitors comes in his turn and rattles off, with many a significant haw and cough, in good Manbo style a series of periphrastic platitudes and examples that apparently give no clue to the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... the prolonged and ferocious struggle on the continent between Catholicism and Protestantism a wholesale slaughter of witches and wizards was effected, a fitting prologue to the religious barbarities of the Thirty Years' War. Fires were kindled almost simultaneously in two different places, at Bamburg and Wuerzburg; and seldom, even in the annals of witchcraft, have they burned more tremendously. The prince-bishops of those territories had long been anxious ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... permitted to act in public theatres. Then the gracelessness of the masculine method was acknowledged and deplored. It was the character of Desdemona which was first undertaken by a woman, and the absurdity of the old practice was noticed in the prologue written for this revival of Othello, which was made memorable by the innovation. Some lines in the prologue describe the earlier ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... view of the piece is low humour, and no humour is in it. All the merit is in the situations, which are comic; the heroine has no more modesty than Lady Bridget, and the author's wit is as much manque as the lady's; but some of the characters are well acted, and Woodward speaks a poor prologue, written by Garrick, admirably. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Quinola, a comedy in a prologue and five acts, was presented at the Theatre de l'Odeon, Paris, March 19, 1842. Souverain published it in an octavo volume. Balzac was disposed to complain bitterly of the treatment this play received (note his preface), but of it may be said, as in the case ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... vii.). To Mr. Skene's introduction and notes the curious are referred. Here it may suffice to say that the original MS. of the Latin Chronicle is lost; that of six known manuscript copies none is older than 1480; that two of these copies contain a Prologue; and that the Prologue tells us all that has hitherto been known ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... tragedy. There were also notable revivals of Randolph's The Jealous Lovers, and Fletcher's The Maid in the Mill. The two Companies amalgamated in the autumn, opening at the Theatre Royal, 16 November, for which occasion a special Prologue and Epilogue were written by Dryden. 4 December, Dryden and Lee's famous tragedy, The Duke of Guise, had a triumphant first night. It will be remembered that Mrs. Behn is writing of incidents which ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... was something of a man of science as well as a Christian moralist, points out the influence of wine in producing lasciviousness and sexual precocity. (Paedagogus, Bk. II, Chapter II). Chaucer makes the Wife of Bath say in the Wife of Bath's Prologue:— ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his grandmother's that she had just heard of the fight at Gettysburg, he would feel certain that the words were written a few days after that great battle, even if there were no date anywhere in the manuscript. In the same way, when the Prologue of Shakespeare's Henry V alludes to the fact that Elizabeth's general (the Earl of Essex) is in Ireland quelling a rebellion, we know that this was written between April and September of 1599, the period during ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... "In 1796 the Prologue (erroneously imputed to a convict Barrington, but believed to have been written by an ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... fond and jealous, he never would 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. ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... of this mind, since I first 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
... recognise the divinity of all the sons of the Supreme. Jesus is made to be exclusively Divine, the sole possessor of Divine sonship, and only through him are others put in the way of attaining to the same privilege. "But as many as received him," says the Alexandrian rhapsodist who wrote the prologue to the fourth gospel, "he gave them the power or the faculty to be made the sons of God, as many as believe ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... 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
... Tickell was the real author. A coldness, from this date, began between Pope and Addison. An attempt to reconcile them only made matters worse; and at last the breach was rendered irremediable by Pope's writing the famous character of his rival, afterwards inserted in the Prologue to the Satires,—a portrait drawn with the perfection of polished malice and bitter sarcasm, but which seems more a caricature than a likeness. Whatever Addison's faults, his conduct to Pope did not deserve such a return. ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... The prologue goes off as smoothly as if it had been played for a hundred nights. Miss Terry, clad in Rosamond's magnificent robes, sits in the stalls and watches the effect of the lights upon each group. Sometimes a light is too blue, or too yellow, or too white, and in the first act the rehearsal is stopped ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... (Prologue, super Marc.) says that "it is related of the Blessed Mark* that after receiving the faith he cut off his thumb that he might be excluded from the priesthood." [*This prologue was falsely ascribed to St. Jerome, and the passage ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... words, candid as mirrors, 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
... force, par oultraige et violence, contraignent les compaignons trinquer voyre carous et alluz[119] qui pis est." (Pantagruel, iii., Prologue.) ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... the merest chances, and yet reputations control the fashions. That is a little prologue that would fit the case of all sorts of people. Everywhere around one sees prejudices, scheming, and obtuseness; but little or no justice. Nothing can be done to stem this torrent of evil. It must run its course. It always has been ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... PROLOGUE. Now, for as much as in these latter days, Throughout the whole world in every land, Vice doth increase, and virtue decays, Iniquity having the upper hand; We therefore intend, good gentle audience, A pretty short interlude to ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... the Fourth Gospel used that new form of thought in which to present to his people the personality of our Lord. "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God"—so begins the Fourth Gospel's prologue, in words that every intelligent person in Ephesus could understand and was familiar with, and that initial sermon in the book, for it is a sermon, not philosophy, moves on in forms of thought which the people ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... 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, in the circumstances, wholly inappropriate. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... 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
... what 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
... absolute freedom in his proper element. All that has hitherto been said about the king on the basis of the older source is by means of additions and omissions fashioned into what shall serve as a mere prologue to the proper work of his life, which is now described thoroughly con amore. He himself unfortunately has not been allowed to build the house, having shed much blood and carried on great wars (xxii. 8, xxviii. 3), but he yet in the last year of his reign forestalls ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... 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 placed ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... 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 inquiry into its meaning, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... is in the last and longest segment of the poem that its real power and interest are to be found. Its theme is the second coming of Christ and his experiences in lands professing his religion. In a scene, compared with which the Prologue in Heaven of Faust is decorous, God the Father ironically suggests that the Son would find scope for his friendly feeling to the human kind if he were to pay a visit to the earth. Alighting on the mountain where Satan had tempted ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... 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 ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... This prologue was calculated to conciliate the peasants' confidence in Luther, and to make them listen patiently to the truths he had to tell them. He represented to them that the greater number of their demands were well founded, but that to revolt was to act like heathens; that the duty of a Christian is to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... faults in his servants' new names. It must rather refer to excellences which were heightened and hallowed in them by following Jesus. Probably, therefore, it points to a certain majesty of utterance. Do we not hear the boom of thunder-peals in the prologue to John's Gospel, perhaps the grandest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... in order to render the mythology more conformable to the erroneous notions he appears to have entertained respecting its signification. Be this as it may, the Prose Edda, in its present form, dates from the thirteenth century, and consists of—1. Formali (Fore discourse); or the prologue. 2. Gylfa-ginning (The deluding of Gylfi). 3. Braga-roedur (Conversations of Bragi). 4. Eptirmali (After discourse); or Epilogue. The Prologue and Epilogue were probably written by Snorre himself, and are nothing more than an absurd syncretism of Hebrew, Greek, ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... was implied something more disreputable than that merely of "one who, having no settled cure, was at liberty to be 'hired;'" and in this I am borne out by Chaucer, no mean authority, who, in his well-known picture of the parson, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, amongst the various items of piety and virtuousness with which, in that inimitable piece of character-painting, he credits the "pore persoun of a toun," distinctly states (I quote Mr. ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Phosilampes may be a mystery name of Basilides. Has a commentary on the Gospel of St John been used here, or a commentary on the prologue by Basilides [containing perhaps the teachings of the alleged instructor of Basilides, Glaucias, whose name, rather suggesting the "shining one," may equal "Phosilampes"], which interpreted "In the beginning" as meaning "In the First Concept or in the Monad ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... 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
... judges but as the sun failing round helpless thing, As he sees the farthest he has the most faith, His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things, In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent, He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement, He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... of eleven large folio sheets separately mounted and measuring eighteen by ten inches. It commences with a prologue, with the arms of Portugal supported by two savages, having clubs and shields. Outside the inner frame are three scenes: (1) wild animals in combat; (2) a sea-nymph being rescued; (3) a fight among sylvan savages. Next comes a series of ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... whose name it should be entered; and the rest augmented their little stock, with which they removed to Islington. This was the greatest benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author's descendants; and to this he, who has now attempted to relate his life, had the honour of contributing a prologue[54]. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... 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.
... its piercing steeple. The chapel windows blazed with light. People were flocking in. As they entered, a young lady began to play on an out-of-tune piano, which Judge Josiah Saunders had presented to the church. She played a Moody-and-Sankey hymn as a sort of prologue, although nobody sang it. It was a curious custom which prevailed in the Amity church. A Moody-and-Sankey hymn was always played in evening meetings instead of the morning voluntary ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 'Rabelais is to be blamed for it. I am quoting him, and it is to be found in his Prologue to the Chapters on the 'Moderation of Wishes.' And a propos of 'moderate wishes in point of hatchet,' I want you to understand that I ask but little from Heaven. I fling but the helve after the hatchet that ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... 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 prolonged periods of pregnancy. Without ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... with a 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
... Thus, during the last five years of the Emperor Temmu's reign—namely, from 681—we find no less than nine sumptuary regulations issued. The first was an edict, containing ninety-two articles, of which the prologue alone survives, "The costumes of all, from the princes of the Blood down to the common people, and the wearing of gold and silver, pearls and jewels, purple, brocade, embroidery, fine silks, together with woollen carpets, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of view—and yet we know not. As upon those of more important personages, many doubts rest upon his history. Such as we conceive him to have been, we have drawn him—hoping that the benevolent reader, upon finishing our Tale, will arrive at the same conclusion; and, in the words of the quaint old Prologue to ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... earnestly they had believed in the game! What convictions had weighed upon them, what exaltations had thrilled them—two pitiful little puppets, set here and there by unseen hands! Rehearsing from prologue to curtain the age-long drama, the drama of Sex that had been played from ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the feudal superior. James V. seems 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 pole. I have rather chosen to give them the harsh features of the mercenary ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... and had small love of the mutual criticism, which made the corner stone of Puritan life. That she cared to write had already excited the wonder of her neighbors and Anne stoutly asserted her right to speak freely whatever it seemed good to say, taking her stand afterwards given in the Prologue to the first edition of her poems, in which ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Dunciad, p. 203, where, however, conversation is not mentioned. This sentence of Pope's annoyed many of the Dunces.[14] What the preface says about Swift and Arbuthnot and the Peri Bathous (p. vii) may well be true.[15] Welsted's charge that Pope wrote the Prologue to Cato and then "the Play decried" (p. 12) is simply Dennis's old charge first made in A True Character of Mr. Pope (1716) and repeated in Remarks Upon ... the Dunciad (1729) that Pope had teased Lintot into publishing Dennis's attack on ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... as the judge judges, but as the sun falling around a helpless thing. As he sees the farthest, he has the most faith. His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. In the talk on the soul and eternity and God, off of his equal plane, he is silent. He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement: he sees eternity in men and women,—he does not see men and women as dreams or dots. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul,—it pervades the common people and preserves them: they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There is ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... saw Hook was at Prior's Bank, Fulham, where his neighbors, Mr. Baylis and Mr. Whitmore, had given an "entertainment," the leading feature being an amateur play,—for which, by the way, I wrote the prologue. Hook was then in his decadence,—in broken health,—his animal spirits gone,—the cup of life drained to the dregs. It was morning before the guests departed, yet Hook remained to the last; and a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... a change from the vaudeville show of the restless personal ambitions of vindictive fools and greedy scoundrels, the mischief and adventures of half-witted geniuses and licensed rogues that have been figures of the prologue. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... 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 out, followed by a roar of delighted laughter; and in a flash ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... broken. The corkscrew was disregarded as a useless implement, and whisky-bottles were decapitated against the tent poles. I remember vaguely the crowning episode of the evening when the little major was dancing the Irish jig with a kitchen chair; when Falstaff was singing the Prologue of Pagliacci to the stupefied colonel; when the boy, once of Barts', was roaring like a lion under the mess table, and when the tall, melancholy surgeon was at the top of the tent pole, scratching ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... 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
... to the killing of Abel, and is opened by Cain's ploughboy with a sort of prologue in which he warns the spectators to be silent. Cain then enters with a plough and team, and quarrels with the boy for refusing to drive the team. Presently Abel comes in, and wishes Cain good-speed, who meets his kind word with an unmentionable request. The murder then proceeds, and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... of urging you as a preliminary to read 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... his patriotic prejudices pluck at him at intervals, and suggest that Marlborough's countrymen ought not quite to accept the yoke of the French Academy. When Ambrose Phillips produced the Distrest Mother—adapted from Racine—all Addison's little society was enthusiastic. Steele stated in the Prologue that the play was meant to combine French correctness with British force, and praised it in the Spectator because it was 'everywhere Nature.' The town, he pointed out, would be able to admire the ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... 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 to depreciate spiritual values, and to persuade mortals ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... ether, apart from being supersensibly seen, is also heard, was empirically known to Goethe. See the opening words of the 'Prologue in Heaven" (Faust, I) and the call of the Spirit of the Elements in the first scene of the Second Part of the drama, which follow upon the stage direction: 'The sun announces his approach with ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... Dr. Grennell's fine voice rolled out the last lines of the "Prologue." "Now—" and the curtain went ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... brown stream by which the lawn was edged. For the length of a cricket pitch the hedgerow bounding the highway was visible from where we stood, and as this was not more than four feet high, we were able to observe a scene which was clearly but the prologue to a drama in which ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... 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 ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... to be seated first at the refreshment-table, where the most substantial articles of diet are boiled ham with sugar frosting, cakes flavored with the native lime, and lemon soda. Like the coy nun in Chaucer's "Prologue," she who is most elegant will take care not to spill the food upon her lap, eat with the fingers, or spit out the bones. At wedding feasts the gentlemen are ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... inauguration of his statue in 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 ...
— 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
... 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, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... houses were often up a flight of stairs, and consisted of a single large room with "tables set apart for divers topics." There is a reference to this in the prologue to a comedy ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... period, and had the play been of native origin its uniform seriousness of tone would almost assuredly have been broken by some humorous, or semi-humorous, episodes. While the two plays, with the exception of the Prologue, which is not found in the Dutch, agree speech by speech from beginning to end, the English version is not a slavish translation; indeed, the ease and happiness of the diction, and the freedom with which it moves, give it, until the Dutch text is examined, the tone ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... Roman streets[7] As starres with traines of fier, and dewes of blood Disasters in the sunne; and the moist starre, Vpon whose influence Neptunes Empier stands Was sicke almost to doomesday with eclipse. And euen the like precurse of feare euents As harbindgers preceading still the fates And prologue to the Omen comming on Haue heauen and earth together demonstrated Vnto our ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... his 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
... 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 ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... but infinitely far from the conceit, wit, design, and language of very many plays that I know; so that, but for compliment, I was quite tired with hearing it. It being done, and commending the play, but against my judgment, only the prologue magnifying the happiness of our former poets when such sorry things did please the world as was then acted, was very good. So set Mrs. Pierce at home, and away ourselves home, and there to my office, and then my chamber till my eyes were sore ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... * * * * * Poor, poor Cydilla! was it then to this That all my tale was prologue? Think of Amyntas, think of that poor boy, Bereaved as we are both bereaved! Come, come, Find him, and say that Love himself has sent us To offer our poor service in ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... months of fury and tragedy and disaster? Was it my fault? Was it hers? Was it Paul's? What happened? If I had not done this or that, if Grace had not said—no, it was hopeless. She would break off in despair. Isolated scenes appeared before her, always bound, on either side, by that prologue and that finale, but the scenes would not form a chain. She could not connect; she would remain until the end bewildered as to Grace's motives. She never, until the day of her death, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... adding to the collection other poems as well that had not yet seen the light. This he did, and the completed volume so charmed his friend and patron, Gonzalez Bravo, that he offered of his own accord to write a prologue for the work and to print it at his own expense. But in 1868 came the revolution which dethroned Isabel II, and in the confusion that followed the downfall of the ministry and the hasty withdrawal of Gonzalez Bravo to the French frontier ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... the 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
... to hammer an excuse, To which the sole reply was tears, and sobs, And indications of hysterics, whose Prologue is always certain throes, and throbs, Gasps, and whatever else the owners choose: Alfonso saw his wife, and thought of Job's;[77] He saw too, in perspective, her relations, And then he tried to muster ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... scholar, published in 1737 the Prologue and the Knight's Tale—and he, too, marked at need the Mute E's in his text, but by what rule Tyrwhitt does not intimate, nor do we now distinctly recollect. He courageously holds that the numbers of Chaucer "are always musical, whether they want or exceed the complement." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... way of prologue. On an evening rather later in the same week, Mr Edward Dunning was returning from the British Museum, where he had been engaged in research, to the comfortable house in a suburb where he lived alone, tended by two excellent women ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... Having given this prologue, Balzac went on to speak of the staging of his play, which he promised to arrange in accordance with what he knew of the country's scenery and customs, Russia being, from an artistic point of view, admirable to exhibit theatrically. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... child, and I feel impelled to enlighten your inexperience, and to make you understand, that far from being sure of that virtue which renders you so severe, you are not even sure that you have any at all. This prologue astonishes you, eh? Well, listen with attention, and you will soon be convinced of the truth whereof ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... his icy hammer Stands the hero of this drama, And above the wild-duck's clamor, In his own peculiar grammar, With its linguistic disguises, La! the Arctic prologue rises: "Wall, I reckon 'tain't so bad, Seein' ez 'twas all ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... in the prologue to the play in New York City wearing our new silk suits to give New York a treat on a hot August day. Not that we or any one else ever wears silk suits in any Wichita or Emporia; silk suits are bought by Wichita people ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... The prologue to this somewhat dramatic history was of the simplest. The affair came to a climax, if one may speak metaphorically, in fire and sword and high passion, but it began like the month of March. Mr Bostock (a younger brother of the senior partner in the famous firm ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... never offered more than kissing." "Kissing!" said the lady, with great discomposure of countenance, and more redness in her cheeks than anger in her eyes; "do you call that no crime? Kissing, Joseph, is as a prologue to a play. Can I believe a young fellow of your age and complexion will be content with kissing? No, Joseph, there is no woman who grants that but will grant more; and I am deceived greatly in you if you would not put her closely to it. What would you think, ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... than social conventions, had 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
... long white peruke which he combs, while his valet, who stands behind him, adjusts the curls after the comb has passed through them." Allusions to this practice may be found in the plays from the reign of Charles II. down to the days of Queen Anne. We read in Dryden's prologue ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... said to begin here; his earlier work furnishing the Prologue. On the 25th September, 1519, when he was about two-and-twenty, he joined the Basel Guild of Painters; that same "Guild of Heaven" (Zunft zum Himmel) which his brother Ambrose had joined two years earlier and from which he seems to have passed to the veritable guild of Heaven at about ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... name with that of his opponent, and brought Washington for the moment before the eyes of the world, which little dreamed that this Virginian colonel was destined to be one of the principal figures in the great revolutionary drama to which the war then beginning was but the prologue. ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... the only adversary whom Dryden had to encounter on this occasion. Thomas Shadwell, a man of some talents for comedy, and who professed to tread in the footsteps of Ben Jonson, had for some time been at variance with Dryden and Otway. He was probably the author of a poem, entitled, "A Lenten Prologue, refused by the Players;" which is marked by Mr Luttrel, 11th April, 1683, and contains the following direct attack on "The Duke of Guise," and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... reading of "temple" in the modern editions, naturally induced me to suspect that Tyrwhitt had made the alteration on the authority of the manuscripts of the poem. Of these there are no less than ten in the British Museum, all of which have been kindly examined for me. One of these wants the prologue, and another that part of it in which the line occurs; but in seven of the remaining eight, the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... 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 ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... David 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... mention these characteristics of the actual epoch; and I point them out to legitimatize this prologue I have written, which, for what I know, may after all give more clearness, or may give more obscurity to my ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... fundamentally false note. I am sure that Mr. WELLS is as serious about his new God in the Heart of Man as he was about the Invisible King—I've no sort of intention of sneering—but I cannot credit him with belief in the Adversary, who by arrangement with the Almighty (as set forth in a discreetly flippant prologue with something of the flavour of those irreverent yarns invented and retailed by Italian ecclesiastics about Dominiddio) visits Job Huss, the headmaster of Woldingstanton, with the plagues of his desperate trial. However I take it that the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... away from it; he gave it a child's face, preserving the one striking expression; he made it that of a woman—of an elderly, grave woman. Why, what was this? Barbara Golding! He would not spoil the development of the drama, of which he now held the fluttering prologue, by any blunt treatment; he would touch this and that nerve gently to see what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... your son, ply his old task, Turn the stale prologue to some painted mask; His absence in my ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... 1902, did the Epilogue of the Tragedy of Errors appear. The despatches, with the memorandum "not necessarily for publication," were published in full, as well as the "Secret Orders" given to Warren at Springfield, which were its Prologue. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... his 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 ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... autobiography may be discerned in the direct mention by Shakespeare in 'Henry V' of an exciting episode in current history. In the prologue to act v. Shakespeare foretold for Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, the close friend of his patron Southampton, an enthusiastic reception by the people of London when he should come home ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee |
