"Prologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the fifth act and inserted one of his own composition (probably the last) which not only clarified the plot but also elevated the character of the part he was to play. The company seems to have done its best by the budding dramatist, for Dryden wrote the prologue, a rather unusual one in prose and verse, and Tate supplied the epilogue. Harris professed himself satisfied with the play's reception, but owned that it was Mountfort's acting which ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... not to be put on and laid aside at will, like a garment. Granted that these same doctrines of Zoroaster are faint adumbrations of the Hebrew creed, the Gordian knot is by no means loosed. That prologue in 'Faust' horrified you yesterday; yet, upon my word, I don't see why; for very evidently it is taken from Job, and Faust is but an ideal Job, tempted in more subtle manner than by the loss of flocks, houses, and children. You believe ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Miscellanies—among which his best metrical satires appeared; all Defoe's work, too, as well as Steele's in the Tatler, and Addison's in the Spectator, Arbuthnot's History of John Bull, Churchill's Rosciad, and finally all Pope's poems, including the famous "Prologue" as well as the "Epilogue" to the Satires. It is curious to note how the satirical succession (if the phrase be permitted) is maintained uninterruptedly from Bishop Hall down to the death of Pope—nay, we may ...
— English Satires • Various
... intends to pay a compliment to Lady Margaret, King Edward's daughter, Countess of Pembroke, one of his patronesses. But Warton hesitates to express a decided opinion as to the reference. Chaucer shows his love for the daisy in other places. In his "Prologue to the Legend of Good Women," alluding to the power with which the flowers drive him from ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... Chesterton wished to express an idea and his construction and his dialogue are the best that he could have chosen for the expression of that idea: therefore, I look upon the play as practically perfect. The Prologue seems unnecessary, likewise the magician's love for the young lady. That she should love the magician is well enough, but it materialises him a little too much if he returns that love. I would have preferred her to love him more ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... 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, ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... had taken place the marriage of Mr. Milligan and Miss Parker; and Sherwood, whilst his chief was absent on the honeymoon, had run down to the seaside for a change of air. Tonight, he presented himself unexpectedly, and his face was the prologue ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... rather towards the studious and contemplative than towards the active life. His brother, at this time, appeared to him to be of a more pleasure-loving and adventurous disposition; and there exists a letter to his mother in which, after contrasting, with obvious allusion to Chaucer's "Prologue", the mediaeval ideals of the Knight and the Clerk, he adds: "C. is the Knight and I the Clerk, deriving more keen pleasure from the perusal of a musty old volume than in pursuing adventure out in the world." But about the middle of his Harvard career, ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... agreeable; it was a prologue to that hospitable and truly polite reception which we found at Rasay. In a little while arrived Mr Donald M'Queen himself; a decent minister, an elderly man with his own black hair, courteous, and rather slow of speech, but candid, sensible and well informed, nay learned. Along with him came, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... have hitherto always hung about it. It is now considered to be, beyond all doubt, a genuine Hebrew original, completed by its writer almost in the form in which it now remains to us. The questions on the authenticity of the Prologue and Epilogue, which once were thought important, have given way before a more sound conception of the dramatic unity of the entire poem; and the volumes before us contain merely an enquiry into its meaning, bringing, at the same time, all the resources of modern scholarship ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... impertinent mixture, and dashed the cup so as to spoil the sincere draught of pleasure; they considered it accordingly as their mortal enemy, and gave it no quarter wherever they met with it. This was a prologue not unworthy of the ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... notice of the contents of the Hebrew Canon is that contained in the prologue to the Greek translation of Ecclesiasticus, where it is described as "the law, the prophets, and the other national books," "the law, and the prophecies, and the rest of the books," according to the three-fold division already considered. Chap. 18, No. 4. Josephus, in the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... 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
... I am sure, be offended at an old man recording the amount of talent they exhibited, nor the zeal they manifested in fully carrying out the plan proposed for the public amusement and the welfare of the poor. I recollect there was an admirably written prologue, by Dr. Shepherd, which was as admirably delivered by Mr. J. H. Parr, in the character of Stephen Harrowby, a character which he personated in the play with all the finish of an experienced actor, his exertions drawing forth frequent and loud applause. Dr. Ollapod ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... In the Ztschr. fuer Theol und Kirche, II. p. 189 ff. I have discussed the relation of the prologue of the fourth Gospel to the whole work and endeavoured to prove the following: "The prologue of the Gospel is not the key to its comprehension. It begins with a well-known great object, the Logos, re-adapts and transforms it—implicitly opposing false Christologies—in order to substitute for ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... small 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, ho! another pint ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... upon." "Did not I tell you so?" proudly exclaimed the Chevalier de Grignan, 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 ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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
... weariness, was admitted into the beleaguered fortress, his first words, more homely in expression than Murat's, were to the same dreadful purpose—"Your honour," he said, "all is dished;" and this being uttered by way of prologue, he then delivered himself of the message with which he had been charged, and that was a challenge from the Kandyan general to come out and fight without aid from his artillery. The dismal report was just ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Thus ended the prologue of the sanguinary drama. Our horse had scarcely got together again, and the prisoners, with the captured guns, sent to the headquarters, when dense and still denser masses of the enemy showed themselves in the distance. This was the whole of the Abyssinian ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... Drury Lane became more prosperous than it ever had been. In 1715 a new patent was granted to Sir Richard Steele, and Barton Booth was also added to the management. In 1717 Cibber produced the Nonjuror, an adaptation from Moliere's Tartuffe; the play, for which Nicholas Rowe wrote an abusive prologue, ran eighteen nights, and the author received from George I., to whom it was dedicated, a present of two hundred guineas. Tartuffe became an English Catholic priest who incited rebellion, and there is little ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Villain Still Pursued Her" is an excellent illustration of this point. When this very funny travesty was first produced, it did not have a prologue. It began almost precisely as the full-stage scene begins now, and the audience did not know whether to take it seriously or not. The instant he watched the audience at the first performance, the author sensed the problem he had to face. ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... in the impotence of intellectual knowledge is very closely connected, it is indeed based, upon these "gleams" of ecstasy. The prologue to In Memoriam (written when the poem was completed) seems to sum up his faith after many years of struggle and doubt; but it is in the most philosophical as well as one of the latest, of his poems, The Ancient ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... Hall, on Tuesday, November 13th, 1866. The room used was that which had been occupied by Mr. Arthur Sketchley, adjoining the one in which Mr. Arthur Smith formerly made his appearances. The stage, with the curtain down, had this appearance while Artemus was delivering his prologue: ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... first si has really no conditional force, si qui like [Greek: eitines] merely means "all who," for a strong instance see Ad Fam. I. 9, 13, ed Nobbe, si accusandi sunt, si qui pertimuerunt. Ea nolui scribere, etc.: very similar expressions occur in the prologue to D.F. I., which should be ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... 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
... most balls it is customary for the ladies 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
... which will be given as a Festal Introduction to the 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 of the composer, and the many difficulties ...
— 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
... [This prologue is an afterthought, having been written to provide a part for Mme. de Caylus, a niece of Mme. de Maintenon. It is never spoken on the stage, and rarely, if ever, read in French schools. It is here given for the sake ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... and, as to the second, the work composed by him, so far from being the one in question, was a compendium, bearing the title of "Sumario de los Hechos del Gran Capitan," printed as early as 1527, at Seville, (See the editor's prologue to Pulgar's "Chronica de los Reyes Catolicos," ed Valencia, 1780.) Its author, therefore, remains in obscurity. He sustains no great damage on the score of reputation, however, from this circumstance; as ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... impossible for either of 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
... 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 ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... 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 himself like a gorilla in his native haunts... Outside, the field hospital was ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Sir Humphry Davy was the creator of electro-chemistry—that he was the inventer of the safety-lamp; but few are aware that he was also a poet, and that the chemist wrote the prologue to the Honey Moon. We knew that he was skilful in angling, for he was the author of Salmonia; but we did not know that he was the original Green Man, and went a-fishing in a green dress, with a broad-brimmed green hat stuck with artificial flies, and being, in short, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... during the same year of expectation, we shall see the long prologue to the tragic and memorable 1588 slowly enacting; the same triangular contest between the three Henrys and their partizans still proceeding. We shall see the misguided and wretched Valois lamenting over his victories, and rejoicing over his defeats; forced into hollow alliance with his deadly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 his poetic temper, his dramatic versatility ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... enact a pastoral play in the shrubberies with various entangled curates, with young Sam Worthington from Oxford and friends of his. Mr. Worthington himself, master of the difficult art of declining verse as if it were bad prose, rehearsed the Prologue and Epilogue in a master's gown and mortarboard, which he would retain for the rest of the afternoon. It was in that guise that, his caution deserting him, he allowed himself ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... indignation, and awake the next morning with as much fair wit as nature has blessed thee withal. Only one thing I will warn thee, good Adam, that henceforth and for ever, when thou railest at me for being somewhat hot at hand, and rather too prompt to out with poniard or so, thy admonition shall serve as a prologue to the memorable adventure of ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... and be in some folkes handes." "The hole byble," he declares (Dyalogues, p. 138, ed. 1530), "was long before Wycliffe's days, by vertuous and well learned men, translated into the English tong." And Cranmer, in his prologue to the second edition of the "Great Bible," bears testimony equally explicit to the translation of Scripture "in the Saxons tongue." And when that language "waxed olde and out of common usage," he says, the Bible "was again translated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... stimulating and brief, while the equipoise of dulness may easily render dulness eternal. A developed mythology shows that man has taken a deep and active interest both in the world and in himself, and has tried to link the two, and interpret the one by the other. Myth is therefore a natural prologue to philosophy, since the love of ideas is the root of both. Both are made up of things ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... 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
... in 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 dramatically presents himself, and, when taunted ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... from February 24, or the downfall of Louis Philippe, to May 4, 1848, the date of the assembling of the constitutive assembly—the February period proper—may be designated as the prologue of the revolution. It officially expressed its' own character in this, that the government which it improvised declared itself "provisional;" and, like the government, everything that was broached, attempted, or uttered, pronounced itself provisional. Nobody and ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... with all my heart. Come, come, where's the gentleman who speaks the prologue? This prologue, Mr Fustian, was given me by a friend, who does not care to own it till he tries ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... thought they had hit their white prisoners they uttered a yell of triumph, and Dr Lascelles knew that this terrible scene was only the prologue to one of a far more hideous nature, when, with a fiendish cruelty peculiar to their nature, they would fall upon their victims with their knives, to flay off their scalps and beards, leaving the terribly mutilated bodies to the birds ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... gauzy blue with a soft little trail of light, like laughter. Hedger and his dog were delighted when a star did this. They were quite lost in watching the glittering game, when they were suddenly diverted by a sound,—not from the stars, though it was music. It was not the Prologue to Pagliacci, which rose ever and anon on hot evenings from an Italian tenement on Thompson Street, with the gasps of the corpulent baritone who got behind it; nor was it the hurdy-gurdy man, who often played at the corner in the ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... 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
... right," said Happy Tom, "and this must have been a sort of prologue. But if the prologue was so hot what's the ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... patronage, and in some degree the example of Lorenzo himself, otherwise a friend to true learning, as a sign that the glorious hopes of this century are to be quenched in gloom; nay, that they have been the delusive prologue to an age worse than that of iron—the age of tinsel and gossamer, in which no thought has substance enough to be moulded into consistent and ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... then will we begin the story: only adding thus much to that which hath been said, that it is a foolish thing to make a long prologue, and to be ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... of this stormy year, he had also on his mind the cares of his new Theatre, which opened on the 21st of April, with a prologue, not by himself, as might have been expected, but by his friend General Fitzpatrick. He found time, however, to assist in the rapid manufacture of a little piece called "The Glorious First of June," which was acted immediately after Lord Howe's victory, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... one. The narrator is trying to show that sympathy and mercy are better than selfish ambition, and that war is not only immoral but irrational. The conversation between God, the angels, and the Devil is a mere prologue, intended to bring Napoleon and Ivan-angel on the stage and lay the foundation of the plot. The story-teller's keen sense of fun and humor is shown in many little touches, but he never means to be irreverent. The whole legend is set forth in the racy, idiomatic, highly elliptical language of the ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... group before of maladies, And griefs, and Famine empty as a breeze,— A double monster, with a gloating leer Fix'd on his other half. They drew them near, One after one, led onward by Despair, That like the last of winter glimmer'd there,— A dismal prologue to his brother Death, Which was behind, and, with the horrid breath Of his wide baneful nostrils, plied them on. And often as they saw the skeleton Grisly beside them, the wild phantasies Grew mad and howl'd; the fever of disease Became wild ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... fault with the matrix of this opal is probably blasphemous. But I own that I could do without the Shandean prologue and epilogue of the narrator and his man-servant Daniel Cameron. And though, as a tomfool myself, I would fain not find any of the actions of my kind alien from me, I do find some of the tomfoolery with which Nodier has seasoned the story superfluous. Why call a damsel "Folly Girlfree"? ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Carlovingian Emperor, of whom he regarded himself as the worthy successor. A journey on the banks of the Rhine, a triumphal tour in the famous German cities which the France of the Revolution had been so proud to conquer, seemed to the new sovereign a fitting prologue to the pomp of the coronation. Napoleon was desirous of impressing the imaginations of people in his new Empire and in the old Empire of Germany. He wished the trumpets of fame to sound in his honor on both banks of the ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... tells her, is the language of fairies. He tells her that fairies are not small things, but quite the reverse. After a few sentences have been spoken the prologue comes to an end, and the curtain rises upon the scene of the play, the drawing-room of the Duke. Here is seated the Rev. Cyril Smith, a young clergyman, "an honest man and not an ass." To him enters the Duke's Secretary, to tell him the Duke is engaged ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... wrote the 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) ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... of the following refer of course to The Wrecker, and particularly to a suggestion of mine concerning the relation of the main narrative to the prologue:— ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is; and now he has gone to Liverpool to buy—guano," said the widow, feeling some little shame in coming to so inconsiderable a conclusion after her somewhat stately prologue. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... In Mr. Britling Sees It Through, which is in some sense a prologue to God the Invisible King, we find an emphatic renunciation of the all-good and all-powerful God. "The theologians," says Mr. Britling, "have been extravagant about God. They have had silly, absolute ideas—that he is all powerful. ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... 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 which Essex ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... and said he would adopt all my suggestions. He wrote a new prologue, in which he made the protection of his mother's good name the motive of the hero's silence, and he omitted both the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... 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 ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... great work its due appreciation we must take it as a whole, as the profound genius of Fra Angelico had conceived it. Wishing to give it the unity of a dramatic poem, he placed at the beginning and at the end, like a prologue and an epilogue, two symbolic figures, in the last of which the seven branched candlestick serves as a support to the Old ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... still prevailed; and, had any commonplace member risen to address the house in an ordinary business 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 usually ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 book.... ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... 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
... suburban lovers," says Miss JESSIE POPE in a prologue to The Tracy Tubbses (MILLS AND BOON), "is seldom variegated by so many curious happenings as fell to the lot of Mr. and Mrs. Tracy Tubbs;" and to this statement I can give my unqualified assent. No sooner were the T. T.'s married than they were beset by such wonderful and various ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... this, it is highly probable that he was then that man he could not imagine himself to be; for we find him, on the very next day after his return, in a very treacherous and disloyal manner murdering his own master, and usurping his kingdom; which was but a prologue to the sad tragedy which he afterwards acted ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... great let of the genuine article, at our places of worship. But whether there is or there is not, we have decided to say something about the church and the chapel, the parson and the priest, of each district in the town. This is a mere prologue, and we shall but hint at the general theme ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... in the 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 who had been long with him. There is nothing to ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... and says there is no one like him in the world; in the next stage, he is like an ape, and dances, jests, and talks nonsense, knowing not what he is doing and saying; when thoroughly drunken, he wallows in the mire like a sow.[63] To this legend Chaucer evidently alludes in the Prologue ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... 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 great staircase of a baronial hall,—in ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... custom; we protest against it. But, pray remember, I accuse nobody; for as I would not make a " watery discourse," so I would not put too much vinegar into it; nor would I raise the reputation of my own art, by the diminution or ruin of another's. And so much for the prologue to what ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... 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 ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... only the prologue to the tragedy. Bear with me while I relate it. (Mr. Braham takes out a handkerchief, unfolds it slowly; crashes it in his nervous hand, and throws it on the table). Laura grew up in her humble southern home, a beautiful creature, the joy, of the house, the pride of the neighborhood, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... but one piece of blank verse in the book. This prologue to "Orestes," by Mr. Stephen Phillips, has strength, is firm in outline, somewhat tardy in movement, fit for sonorous declamation. The gravity which I have indicated as a ruling quality of all these youthful compositions makes itself felt here in its proper ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... Scarthey. For the sake of harmonious proportions, and in order to give it its proper atmosphere, it was imperative that in this drama—wherever the intermediate scenes might be placed, whether on the banks of the Vilaine, on the open sea, or in Lancaster Castle—the Prologue should be witnessed on the green islet in the wilderness of sands, even as the Crisis and the Closing Scene of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of their master's metric was the five-stress character of his decasyllabic 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 inevitably have read ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... or the theatre is only the prologue to the evening. Our little party supped at Delgardo's. The play then begins. New York is quite awake by that time, and ready to amuse itself. After the public duty, the public attitudinizing, after assisting at the artificial comedy and tragedy which imitate ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... willing to bring my influences to bear upon Austria, provided you agree to cease mobilization." Was this demand unreasonable? What else could Germany have done, I ask, with the Russian bear standing on the border with the sword already drawn? This moment was the crucial and decisive one in the prologue ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... 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
... allusion to in 'English Bards' his duel with Mr. Moore his review of the 'Giaour' his criticisms on Lord Byron's works his review of Coleridge's 'Christabel' Jersey, Earl of ——, Countess of Jesus Christ Job Jocelyn, Lord, (afterwards Earl of Roden) Johnson, Dr. His prologue on opening Drury Lane theatre His 'Vanity of Human Wishes' His melancholy His 'Lives of the Poets' His 'London' Lord Byron's high opinion of him Jones, Mr., tutor at Cambridge ——, Richard, comedian Jordan, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... court. Joshua the priest, representing the ceremonial service of the polluted temple, is charged by the adversary with uncleanness. Here for the first time in Hebrew literature we catch a glimpse of Satan, who is regarded not as hostile to God but as the prosecuting attorney of heaven. As in the prologue of the book of Job, he is an accredited member of the divine hierarchy. His task is to search out and report to Jehovah the misdeeds of men. In Zechariah's vision, however, the divine judge acquits Joshua of the ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... calculation of the distance of his object, the trajectory of his missile, and the pace of his horse, that the mucous disc smote the ornamental insect fair on the back, laying it out, never to rise again. This was but a ceremonious prologue, intended to deepen the impression of the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... for 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
... crime against history—he simply struck out the yesterday and the day before yesterday of Christianity, and invented his own history of Christian beginnings. Going further, he treated the history of Israel to another falsification, so that it became a mere prologue to his achievement: all the prophets, it now appeared, had referred to his "Saviour."... Later on the church even falsified the history of man in order to make it a prologue to Christianity.... The figure of the Saviour, his teaching, his way of life, his death, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... personage than Oliver Goldsmith wrote, under the title of "The Mystery Revealed," a long pamphlet which was intended both to explain away the disturbances and to defend the luckless Knight. The actor Garrick dragged into a prologue a riming and sneering reference to the mystery; the artist Hogarth invoked his genius to deride it. Yet there were believers in plenty, and there even seem to have been some who thought of preying on the credulous by opening up a ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... that man who wrote with the highest praise against the Arians, should be considered as the translator of this work, which is infected with the corruption of Arianism, and which is not Origen's." [Vol. ii. p. 894.] Erasmus calls the prologue to this treatise on Job "the production of a silly talkative ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... afterwards, it was his own. Some things, but very few, moderately good; 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, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... intended for that royal cake which M. Fouquet proposed to offer his majesty Louis XIV. during the fete at Vaux. Pellisson, his head leaning on his hand, was engaged in drawing out the plan of the prologue to the "Facheux," a comedy in three acts, which was to be put on the stage by Poquelin de Moliere, as D'Artagnan called him, or Coquelin de Voliere, as Porthos styled him. Loret, with all the charming innocence of a gazetteer—the gazetteers of ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... it should do so means that the poet's total mind has been taken up into his art—Browning conveys his doctrine not as such but as an enthusiasm of living; his generalized truth saturates a medium of passion and of beauty. In the Prologue to Fifine at the Fair he compares the joy of poetry to a swimmer's joy in the sea: the vigour that such disport in sun and sea communicates is the vigour of joyous play; afterwards, if we please, we can ascertain ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... French compere, gossip or fellow godfather, sometimes a close friend. Cf. Chaucer, Prologue to Canterbury Tales: ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... [Stz. 80]. "The Fleet then full," etc. —Compare this fine stanza, which might have been written by one who had never been on shipboard, with the still more poetical and at the same time intensely realistic one of Shakespeare ("Henry V.," act iii., prologue), which proves that he must have been at sea on ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... of lansquenet for that night. An ordinary quarrel would have made little impression on those reckless spirits, who had, most of them, at one time or another, "been out" themselves; but they felt that what they had witnessed now was the prologue to a certain tragedy; there was a savor of death in the air; so they dropped off one by one, leaving Guy and Ralph alone; not before the latter had expressed, with much politeness, "his desolation at having been compelled ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... in this condition, in which, moreover, his humour was also in abeyance; and in his next book, Pacchiarotto, &c., he broke away from these morbid subjects, and, with that recovery, recovered also some of his old love of Nature. The prologue to that book is poetry; and Nature (though he only describes an old stone wall in Italy covered with straying plants) is interwoven with his sorrow and his love. Then, all through the book, even in its most fantastic humour, Nature is not altogether neglected ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... the nigh houses, fell upon us, swept up the treasures, and was gone. There was never a more absolute surprise. She came, she took, she vanished, we had not a guess whither; and we remained, with foolish looks and laughter on the empty field. Such was the fit prologue of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jacke of Dover hast thou sold, That hath been twies hot and twies cold. Chaucer: The Coke's Prologue. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... work on women's feelings, and to overcome their scruples, to obtain a hold over them through their curiosity to learn something new, by the temptation of a comfortable, well-furnished, warm room, that was fragrant with flowers, and where a little supper was already served as a prologue to the entertainment. His female pupils would certainly have deserved the first prize in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... she took That 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 rash untried ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... 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 of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the (ranch) library, which is furnished with mounted elk heads (didn't the Elks have a fish fry in Amagensett once?), and the denouement begins. I know of no more interesting time in the run of a play unless it be when the prologue ends. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry |
