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Prologue   Listen
verb
Prologue  v. t.  (past & past part. prologued; pres. part. prologuing)  To introduce with a formal preface, or prologue. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prologue" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 for an "Annotated Edition of the English Poets," ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... gathering together in one volume all his scattered verse and of 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 the volume of poems was lost. ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... be 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 ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... the sake of harmonious proportions, and in order to give it its proper atmosphere, it was imperative that in this drama—wherever the intermediate scenes might be placed, whether on the banks of the Vilaine, on the open sea, or in Lancaster Castle—the Prologue should be witnessed on the green islet in the wilderness of sands, even as the Crisis and the Closing Scene of rest ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... 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 passions ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... him, may be well added the words of the Lady of Mura, written only a few weeks before the poet's death. Asolo is a sequestered town, which Browning said that he discovered, and in which he fell under the glamour of very Italy. In the prologue to his last volume, written in September before the letter ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... Envoi to Abbey's Edition of "She Stoops to Conquer" 257 Prologue and Epilogue to ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... available through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library <http://www.ccel.org>. I have eliminated unnecessary formatting in the text, corrected some errors in transcription, and added the dedication, tables of contents, Prologue, and the numbers of the questions and articles, as they appeared in the printed translation published by Benziger Brothers. Each article is now designated by part, question number, and article number ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... that 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 Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh

... The prologue of sorting the clothes and removing the stains being at an end, we are ready for the real "business" of the wash day—the washing itself—unless the laundress prefers to soak the clothes overnight. If so, dampen, soap well, ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... means that He who was all through the growing ages of brightening revelation of old, named 'Jehovah,' is now named Jesus Christ. I believe that from the beginning He whom we call, according to the teaching of the great prologue of John's Gospel, the 'Word of God,' was the Agent of all Divine revelation. But whether that be so or no, whether we have the right to say that the same Person who was revealed as 'Jehovah' is now revealed as 'Jesus Christ,' the 'Word made flesh,' or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... 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

... "Now you can have no remorse; for a more Jesuitical piece of insulting hypocritical cant I never read. Where's your note to Lady Florence? Your compliments, you will be with her at two. There, now the rehearsal's over, the scenes arranged, and I'll dress, and open the play for you with a prologue." ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Fielding's prologue to his revised Author's Farce (1734), spoken by Mrs. Clive, compares the settled, prosperous former days at Drury Lane with those of 1734, when "... alas! how alter'd is our Case!/ I view with Tears this poor deserted Place."[11] With few exceptions, the "place" continued strangely in decline ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive

... and also mentions a man having recourse to one when his son was seriously ill.[61] The poets have, of course, made free use of this supposed prophetic power of the dead. The shade of Polydorus, for instance, speaks the prologue of the Hecuba, while the appearance of the dead Creusa in the AEneid is known to everyone. In the Persae, AEschylus makes the shade of Darius ignorant of all that has happened since his death, and is thus able to introduce his famous description ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley

... handkerchiefs were now again waved, and on every side resounded "Viva l'Emperador, l'Emperadriza, la Monarchia!" This enthusiasm having been rewarded by gracious acknowledgments, the drop curtain rose, and an actress came forward to recite a prologue in praise of the Emperor. Then followed a piece of which I understood very little; and the whole was concluded by a ballet, greatly superior to my expectations. During the performance, the Emperor gave audience in his box to many of his subjects, the interview always ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... of the prologue; the curtain trembled on the rise; the story of Fate was beginning. But they had no eyes except for each other, paid no heed save to ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... of several theological books, and he also wrote the prologue to the second edition of the 'Great Bible,' printed in 1540. His works were collected and arranged by H. Jenkyns, and published in four volumes at Oxford in 1833. There is a portrait of the Archbishop, at the age of fifty-seven, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... Five-line initial of prologue and fourteen-line initial I of Esther i. 1 supplied in colors. Heading of leaf in alternate red and blue capitals. Initial-strokes in red on text capitals. Measurement ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous

... its artful preparation for and relation to what it precedes. It shows the forethought and skill of its author in the construction or opening out of his play, both in respect to the story and the feeling; yet even here, in this half-declamatory prologue, the poet's dramatic art is also evident. His poet and painter are living men, and not mere utterers of so many words. Was this from intuition?—or because he found it easy to make them what he conceived them, and felt that it would add to the life of his introduction, though he should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... 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 ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... 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

... acted in London in 1856. In February 1878 Mr. Phelps gave it extremely well in the Annexe Theatre at the Westminster Aquarium. Lastly, William Farren, as Archer, revived it at the Imperial Theatre, on Monday, 22nd September 1879, with great success, a new Prologue (spoken by Mrs. Stirling) being written for the occasion. There were several matinees given in succession. The cast included Mr. Kyrle Bellew as Gibbet; Mr. Lionel Brough as Scrub; Miss Marie Litton as Mrs. Sullen; Mrs. Stirling—one of her last appearances—as Lady Bountiful; ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar

... 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. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... injury done to this new country by the foundation of penal settlements, through which Botany Bay lost its natural connotation as a habitat for wonderful flora, and became known only as a place where convicts were sent for three-quarters of a century. Barrington's couplet, written as a prologue at the opening of the Playhouse, Sydney, in 1796, to a play ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... 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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... 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 ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... chance opinion takes its rise, And into reputation multiplies. This prologue finds pat applications In men of all this world's vocations; For fashion, prejudice, and party strife, Conspire to crowd poor justice out of life. What can you do to counteract This reckless, rushing cataract? ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... orchestra, chorus, and solo voices, and is in six scenes or parts, the first of which is described as being "in the nature of a prologue, wherein a dream of Columbus is pictured. Evil spirits and sirens hover about the sleeping mariner threatening and taunting him. The Spirit of Light appears, the tormentors vanish, and a chorus of angels join the Spirit of Light in a song ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... they may be counterfeited, and Christ Jesus knows who doth so too; but that will not hinder, or make weak or invalid what hath already been spoken about it. But to forbear to make a further prologue, and to come to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... observed such a nice Impartiality to our two Ladies, that it is 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 ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay

... 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 ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... was right," said Happy Tom, "and this must have been a sort of prologue. But if the prologue was so hot what's the play going ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... 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 ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... New York, An inquiry into the story of Samson, Samson and Herakles, The Hebrew hero in legend, A true type for tragedy, Mythological interpretations, Saint-Saens's opera described, et seq.—A choral prologue, Local color, The character of Dalila, et seq.—Milton on her wifehood and patriotism, "Printemps qui commence," "Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix," Oriental ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... 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 ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... 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. Wright's Percy ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various

... playing of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Philip Sousa. Andy had an important part on the program. He was to speak a poem to introduce the play about Goldilocks. Miss Prouty, his teacher, called it the prologue. Andy ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson

... "Ta-tee! Ta-td!"—the extras are out with another Russian army smashed and two more ships sunk in the Channel. The old newspaper woman at the Friedrichsstrasse corner is chanting it hoarsely, "Zwei englische Dampfer gesunken!"—and they read that "the sands have run, the prologue is spoken, the curtain risen on the tragedy of ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... Outwardly, the most loyal to the newly crowned king, secretly he 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 ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... perhaps the reflection of an entire life, generally that of one isolated, or bereft by death or exile of protectors and friends." (Ten Brink, Early Eng. Lit.,I.) Iadopt Brooke's threefold division (Early Eng. Lit., p.356): "It opens with a Christian prologue, and closes with a Christian epilogue, but the whole body of the poem was written, it seems to me, by a person who thought more of the goddess Wyrd than of God, whose life and way of thinking were uninfluenced by any distinctive ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... 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 ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... 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

... Luci- anus with poyson in a Viall, and powres it in his eares, and goes away: Then the Queene commmeth and findes him dead: and goes away with the other. Ofel. What meanes this my Lord? Enter the Prologue. Ham. This is myching Mallico, that meanes my chiefe. Ofel. What doth this meane my lord? Ham. You shall heare anone, this fellow will tell you all. Ofel. Will he tell vs what this shew meanes? Ham. I, or any shew you'le shew him, Be not afeard to shew, hee'le ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare

... choose 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 English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... good, it is difficult, perhaps to single out one set for especial praise; but my advice is, on no account miss the Second Scene of the Prologue, "on the Battlements of a Castle in Normandy," painted by W. TELBIN. "Rosamond's Bower," by HAWES CRAVEN, is equally perfect in another and of course totally distinct line. To pronounce upon Professor STANFORD'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various

... which we seem to see the Hand of the Dramaturgist? Surely, the end of a Fifth Act should be obvious, satisfying to one's sense of the complete: but History, so far, long as it has been, resembles rather a Prologue than a Fifth Act. Can it be that the Manager, utterly dissatisfied, would sweep all off, and 'hang up' the piece for ever? Certainly, the sins of mankind have been as scarlet: and if the fair earth which he has turned into Hell, send forth now upon him the smoke of Hell, little the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... he delivered a series of lectures preparatory to the publication of "Cosmos;" for in substance, even in form and arrangement, these lectures, of which the papers of the day gave short accounts, are a sort of prologue to the "Cosmos," and a preparation for its publication. In 1829, when he was sixty years of age, he undertakes another great journey. He accepts the invitation of the Emperor Nicholas to visit the Ural Mountains, with ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... in the romance-poets, of all intelligent command of it. Chaucer has not their helplessness; he has gained the power to survey the world from a central, a truly human point of view. We have only to call to mind the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. The right comment upon it is Dryden's: 'It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty.' And again: 'He is a perpetual fountain of good sense.' It is by a large, free, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... 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 ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps

... period, 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 nothing ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... night, and found to be merely a translation of one of the feeblest plays of Thomas Corneille. This play was long believed to be by Boswell, but his part was merely the providing the translator with a prologue, nor was the fact revealed till long ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... 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 balmy twilight. No, this was a woman's voice, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... good-humour of his visage was fully equalled by the protuberance of his stomach; and if the "totus in se teres atque rotundus" of Horace, is the poet's definition of a good man, the actor rose to the summit of human virtue. The best prologue, since the days of Garrick, ushered in this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... with me such foot-notes as may be made on the pages of my life during this summer's wanderings, I should not be quite silent as to this magnificent prologue to the, as yet, unknown drama. Yet I, like others, have little to say where the spectacle is, for once, great enough to fill the whole life, and supersede thought, giving us only its own presence. "It is good to be here," is ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... Redeemed, the first poem in this book, was originally conceived as a drama. Here is a scene from it, the first after the Prologue, which would have been spoken by Odysseus. The action of the play would have begun with the entry ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... encountered the Indian girl, and in which we were still lingering. Her father was not aware of these interviews. There had been some coolness between him and the young hunter; and the lovers were apprehensive that he might not approve of their conduct. This was the prologue of the hunter's story. The epilogue I give in his own words: "'Twar a mornin'—jest five months ago—she had promised to meet me here—an' I war seated on yonder log waitin' for her. Jest then some Injuns war comin' through the gleed. That girl ye saw war one o' 'em. She had a nice bullet-pouch ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... any where yet, because Harman is not come home. Dined, and by one o'clock to the King's house: a new play, "The Duke of Lerma," of Sir Robert Howard's: where the King and Court was; and Knipp and Nell spoke the prologue most excellently, especially Knipp, who spoke beyond any creature I ever heard. The play designed to reproach our King with his mistresses, that I was troubled for it, and expected it should be interrupted; but it ended ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... 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

... 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 left wing, numbering 65,000, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... 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 quiet, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... 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 to the Maniciple's Tale: ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... first part was a great success, the promised sequel never appeared. It must be admitted that such a story, though it never convinced a single person of the illegitimacy of Louis XIV, was an excellent prologue to the tale of the unfortunate lot of the Man in the Iron Mask, and increased the interest and curiosity with which that singular historical mystery was regarded. But the views of the Dutch scholars thus set forth met with little ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... things 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 account ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... is a moral and religious one. The narrator is trying to show that sympathy and mercy are better than selfish ambition, and that war is not only immoral but irrational. The conversation between God, the angels, and the Devil is a mere prologue, intended to bring Napoleon and Ivan-angel on the stage and lay the foundation of the plot. The story-teller's keen sense of fun and humor is shown in many little touches, but he never means to be irreverent. The whole legend is set forth in the ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof

... with perjury. And, as the night's inferior to the day, So be all earthly regions to your sway! Be as the sun to day, the day to night, For from your beams Europe shall borrow light. Mirth drown your bosom, fair delight your mind, And may our pastime your contentment find. [Exit Prologue. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... 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) wanted to interfere, and, very naturally, the young lady was too sharp for him. The play of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... at the curb, managed to avoid the worst of the melee; and presently, when their coats were checked and out of the way, they reached their seats just as Christopher Sly began his opening speech. The prologue soon played itself through, and the house, now completely filled, burst audibly into speech, as though a long departed sense had been suddenly and miraculously restored. From all sides the swelling tide surged forth, and Helen listened for a ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... a mystery. I would fain, were it possible, have my tale run through from its little prologue to the customary marriage in its last chapter, with all the smoothness incidental to ordinary life. I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various

... branch which grows up from the root of Reason is Discretion. For as St. Thomas says thereupon in the prologue to the book of Ethics, to know the order of one thing to another is the proper act of Reason; and this is Discretion. One of the most beautiful and sweetest fruits of this branch is the reverence which the lesser owes to the greater. Wherefore ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... Still Pursued Her" is an excellent illustration of this point. When this very funny travesty was first produced, it did not have a prologue. It began almost precisely as the full-stage scene begins now, and the audience did not know whether to take it seriously or not. The instant he watched the audience at the first performance, the author sensed the problem he had to face. He knew, then, that he would have to tell the next audience ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... Author's Note Prologue Chapter One: By the Waters of Death Creek Chapter Two: Sir Andrew D'Arcy Chapter Three: The Knighting of the Brethren Chapter Four: The Letter of Saladin Chapter Five: The Wine Merchant Chapter Six: The Christmas Feast at Steeple Chapter Seven: ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... Brook; but the peaking cornuto her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual 'larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of our encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither provoked and instigated by his distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... Starratt in bed for two weeks, and one morning when the sun was flooding through the skylight with soul-warming radiance they brought him his clothes and he knew that the prologue to the drama of his humiliation was over. He crawled to his feet and looked down upon his body wasted by days of enforced idleness and fasting. He dropped back upon the bed, exhausted. The sun, striking him squarely, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... a prologue on the nature of man and of woman, and an explanation of how the author, taking pity on the sufferings of women, came to devote herself to the study of their diseases. There are many interesting details in the book, all the more interesting because in many ways they anticipate modern solutions ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... of the March theme in the main key on the pizzicato double basses).[238] Berlioz's most pretentious orchestral composition is that called in the full title "Romeo and Juliet, dramatic symphony, with choruses, vocal solos, and a prologue in choral recitative, composed after Shakespeare's tragedy." Notwithstanding many touches of genius, it is a very uneven work and is too much a conglomerate of styles—narrative, lyrical, dramatic, theatric and symphonic—for the constructive ability of the author to ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... on the scene in this prologue to the drama of the University's history. Less than six years after the arrival of the first settlers, the first number of the Western Emigrant appeared on October 18, 1829. Like all country journals of that period it was far more interested in national ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... its present status, this colossal enterprise at Edison may well be likened to the prologue of a play that is to be subsequently enacted for the benefit of future generations, but before ringing down the curtain it is desirable to preserve the unities by quoting the words of one of the principal actors, Mr. Mallory, who says: "The Concentrating ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... wine needs no bush and a good play needs no epilogue," then a good book needs no prologue. Therefore I shall not refer to the simplicity and charm, with which M. Lauzanne has told the story with which this book deals. The reader will judge that for himself; and unless the writer of this foreword is much mistaken, that judgment will ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne

... malediction fell, it was reserved for the dark destinies shadowed forth in the dread anathema he had uttered: to the development of which the tragic drama about to follow is devoted, and to which the fate of Abbot Paslew forms a necessary and fitting prologue. Thus far the veil of the Future may be drawn aside. That infant and her progeny became the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... likewise the poets Henryson, Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, and Sir 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 popular songs have ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... relates 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 ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... to scene in Venice. Whether because of the success of "Eastward Hoe" or for other reasons, the other three comedies declare in the words of the prologue to "The Alchemist": ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... on the recto; on the reverse of the same leaf is an account of Inventors of arts: no mention is made of that of printing. Then the prologue to the Chronicle, below which is the device of Gotz;[220] having his name subjoined. The text of the Chronicle concludes at page CCLXXX—printed numerals—with an account of an event which took place in the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... that from Naples Can have no note, unless the sun were post— The Man i' th' Moon's too slow—till newborn chins Be rough and razorable: she that from whom We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again, And by that destiny, to perform an act Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come In yours and ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... 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 ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer

... came first as an advance-guard of the great Teuton invasion. It was but the prologue to the play when Hengist and Horsa, in 449 A.D., occupied what is now Kent, in the Southeast extremity of England. It was only when Cerdic and his Saxons placed foot on British soil(495 A.D.) that the real drama began. And when the Angles shortly afterward ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... audiences have been accustomed to murder, racks, and poison, in every tragedy; but it affected the heart so much, that it triumphed over habit and prejudice. All the women cried, and all the men were moved. The prologue, which is a very good one, was made entirely by Garrick. The epilogue is old Cibber's; but corrected, though not enough, by Francis. He will get a great deal of, money by it; and, consequently, be better able to lend ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... history of his own miracles and life. It may be that he so overworked his brain that he believed that he was visited by St. Peter, and taught a hymn by the blessed Virgin Mary, and that he had taken part in a hundred other prodigies; but the Prologue to the Harleian manuscript (which the learned Editor, Mr. Stevenson, believes to be an early edition of Reginald's own composition) confesses that Reginald, compelled by Ailred of Rievaux, tried in vain for a long while to get the hermit's story ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... 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 ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... with Mr. Langton, he was questioned if he was not somewhat of a heretick as to Shakspeare; said Garrick, "I doubt he is a little of an infidel[82]."—"Sir, (said Johnson) I will stand by the lines I have written on Shakspeare in my Prologue at the opening of your Theatre[83]." Mr. Langton suggested, that in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... and the rest of the characters found able representatives. Every half-holiday was devoted to rehearsals, and nothing could exceed the amusement and thorough fun which all the preparations elicited. All went well; Vivian wrote a pathetic prologue and a witty epilogue. Etherege got on capitally in the mask scene, and Poynings was quite perfect in Jack Maggot. There was, of course, some difficulty in keeping all things in order, but then Vivian Grey was such ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... is a novel which has been sensationally successful in England. It is a war story and I will give you some of the opening paragraphs of the "Prologue by ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... given also the tragedy of Matilda.[45] It was the day of prologues and epilogues, and the young actors were careful to omit nothing that would make the performance complete. James, the eldest son, brought into play his skill in verse-making; and we read of Henry Austen speaking a prologue (from his brother's pen) to The Rivals, while the prologue to Matilda was given by Edward Austen, and ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... a canopied rock, was heard a rich, powerful voice speaking to the American people of the changes and vicissitudes that the rock has witnessed since "far primordial ages." Fit prologue it was from the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... Bible, after a brief prologue, the curtain rises, and we, as spectators, look in upon a process of interlocution. The scene is the green, sunny garden of Eden, that to which the memory of humanity reverts as to its dim golden age, and which ever expresses the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... 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 ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... has now no chance of marrying her until his title has been secured by your—removal. Do not deceive yourself. High interests are involved. You are the grain of sand between big wheels. I iterate that the footpad who attacked you last night was merely a prologue. I happen to know your cousin has entrusted the affair to Heinrich Obendorf, his foster-brother, who, as you will remember, is ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... against his knowledge of himself. They insist on his hypocrisy, he on his righteousness. Nor may we forget that herein lies not any overweening on the part of Job, for the poem prepares us for the right understanding of the man by telling us in the prologue, that God said thus to the accuser of men: 'Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?' God gives Job into Satan's hand with confidence in the result; and at the end ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... Mr. Churchill had got together a dossier dealing with his share in the affair, which was sent to me to consider, together with all the telegrams, and so forth, that bore on the operations and their prologue. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... some sort, founded upon interest, for they hold, as I am informed, some priviledge by dancing about the fire in the middle of their Hall, and singing the song of Round About our Coal Fire." In the prologue to the same book ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... 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 ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... in any other piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry we feel near the medival drama. Almost every canto is like a scene; and little adaptation would be required to put it upon the stage. The narrative at the beginning is like a prologue, and then after the close of the piece we have an epilogue, in which the author speaks about himself, and weaves his name with Runes into the verses in the manner ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... * It is for you to send news, and not to receive it, for nothing is interesting just now but what relates to Ireland and the Union. Twelve days bring us to the prologue, to this swelling scene, as Shakspeare calls it. How long it will be before the denouement, and what that denouement will be, and what ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... custom; we protest against it. But, pray remember, I accuse nobody; for as I would not make a " watery discourse," so I would not put too much vinegar into it; nor would I raise the reputation of my own art, by the diminution or ruin of another's. And so much for the prologue to what I mean ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... productions, albeit countenanced by the 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 ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... * * * 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 ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... The prologue to the 1897 volume contained his platform, which, so far as I know, he has never seen cause to change. Despite the title, he is not an infant crying in the night; he is a full-grown man, whose voice of resonant hope and faith ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... is strange," the husband said suddenly, "that the glorious prologue is missing in this arrangement. I remember distinctly that there was a prologue with an accompaniment of harps and a chorus ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... it is by no means absurd to suppose that most of the ancients were distinguished by brighter faculties, seeing that in the labours they accomplished of both kinds they are inimitable by posterity. And so Phocas writes in the prologue to ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury

... raptures, and closing on the half-pathetic cadence of that well-known Chorus, "The world's great age begins anew." Of dramatic interest it has but little; nor is the play, as finished, equal to the promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-called Prologue. (Forman, 4 page 95.) This truly magnificent torso must, I think, have been the commencement of the drama as conceived upon a different and more colossal plan, which Shelley rejected for some unknown reason. It shows the influence not only of the Book of Job, but also of the Prologue ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... Mr. Francis, having gone through your prologue of excuses, with the same bad grace with which all prologues are delivered, please to draw the curtain, and show me that which I desire to see. In a word, let me know what Rashleigh says of me; for he is the grand engineer and first mover of all ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott



Words linked to "Prologue" :   prologize, introduction, dramatic composition, dramatic work



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