"Prologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 and the universality of his ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... a Panegyric on his excellency general Monk 1659, in one sheet quarto. Though Denham's name is not to it, it is generally ascribed to him. A Prologue to his majesty, at the first play represented at the Cock-pit in White-hall, being part of that noble entertainment, which their majesties received, November 19, 1660, from his grace the duke of Albemarle. A new Version of the Psalms of David. The True Presbyterian, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... prologue briefly explaining its purpose, the mystery begins, like the old liturgical plays, with the witness of the prophets; then follows a scene in Limbo where Adam is shown lamenting his fate, and another in Heaven ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... written for orchestra, chorus, and solo voices, and is in six scenes or parts, the first of which is described as being "in the nature of a prologue, wherein a dream of Columbus is pictured. Evil spirits and sirens hover about the sleeping mariner threatening and taunting him. The Spirit of Light appears, the tormentors vanish, and a chorus of angels join the Spirit of Light in a song of 'Hope ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... contests 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, and of which I have found some sketches [Footnote: ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... which I have had to pay him ten or twelve thousand pounds within these few years. She was not pretty, and I suspect that the indefatigable Mr. A—— was (like all her people) more attracted by her title than her charms. I regret very much that I was present at the prologue to the happy state of horse-whipping and black jobs, &c. &c.; but I could not foresee that a man was to turn out mad, who had gone about the world for fifty years, as competent to vote, and walk at large; nor ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... 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 Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... history. Men die, man is immortal, practically, even on this earth. We are so impatient, —and we are always watching for the last scene of the tragedy. Now I humbly opine that the drop is only about falling on the first act, or perhaps only the prologue. This act or prologue will be called, in after days, War for the status quo. Such enthusiasm, heroism, and manslaughter as status quo could inspire, has, I trust, been not entirely in vain, but it has ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... is, in a way, the introduction to this story. It is to the drama that follows that the premise is to a syllogism, what the prologue ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Grenadiers and Belshazzar, are relatively feeble attempts at the objectivation of personal suffering; and thence to Sonnets, direct communications to particular persons. Thereupon follow the Lyrical Intermezzo and the Return Home, each with a prologue and an epilogue, and with several series of pieces which, like the Songs above mentioned, are printed without titles and are successive sentences or paragraphs in the poet's own love story. This he tells over and over again, without monotony, because ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I have written the prologue, and meant to have prayed For a spice of your wit in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... in Lillo: the desire to lower the social level of the characters in order to make the tragedy more moving; and the desire to defend the stage by demonstrating its religious and moral utility. In his prologue to The Fair Penitent (l703), Rowe gave expression to the first: the "fate of kings and empires", he argues, is too remote to engage our feelings, for "we ne'er can pity that we ne'er can share"; therefore he offers ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... 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.
... to the plot is given in the Prologue in Heaven. The devil, in the character of Mephistopheles, asks permission to tempt Faust; he boasts his ability to get entire possession of his soul and drag him down to hell. The Lord grants the permission, and prophesies the failure ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Prologue On Some Books And Their Associations An Epistle To An Editor Bramston's "Man Of Taste" The Passionate Printer To His Love M. Rouquet On The Arts The Friend Of Humanity And The Rhymer The Parent's Assistant A Pleasant Invective Against Printing Two Modern Book Illustrators—I. Kate Greenaway ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... of the frequent accusation of coarseness brought against Fielding, we may quote a few lines of the prologue with which he made his literary entry into the world. Here his audience ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... from which the name comes. The whites, led by the king of Spain, conquer in the combat, and the "bula" is taken and freed amid general rejoicing. At the beginning and end, the Christians declaim a kind of prologue or introduction in accordance with the object of the festa, and a salutation and thanks to those assisting at the end. The costumes are rich, each dancer carries sword and dagger, and the performances (which are enthusiastically received) take place in the open air upon a raised platform. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Knights of the Southern Cross. Hats and 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 ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... out of England so that ignoramuses may prosper and hypocrites wax fat—do you think it is not the talk of the Ghetto? What! Shall it be the talk of Berlin, of Constantinople, of Mogadore, of Jerusalem, of Paris, and here it shall not be known? Besides, the leading actress will speak a prologue. Ah! she is beautiful, beautiful as Lilith, as the Queen of Sheba, as Cleopatra! And how she acts! She and Rachel—both Jewesses! Think of it! Ah, we are a great people. If I could tell you the secrets of her ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... affection, and good sense could dictate were wanting on the part of Mr. Brunton. Of the short time he had for instructing her, no part was lost. The appearance of Mr. Brunton's daughter in Euphrasia, with a prologue written for the occasion, was announced, and notwithstanding there were not wanting wretches mean and miserable enough to trumpet abroad her youth and smallness of stature, as insurmountable obstacles to her personating the Grecian daughter, more just ideas of her, or perhaps curiosity brought ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... him: Then enters 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 not be afeard to ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... but one care, the children. We talk of Love as the Lord of Life: it is but the Minister. Our novels end where Nature's tale begins. The drama that our curtain falls upon, is but the prologue to her play. How the ancient Dame must laugh as she listens to the prattle of her children. "Is Marriage a Failure?" "Is Life worth Living?" "The New Woman versus the Old." So, perhaps, the waves of the Atlantic discuss vehemently whether they ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... uncertainty of Ibsen's position in Christiania made him glad to fill a post which the violinist, Ole Bull, offered him during autumn. The newly constituted National Theatre in Bergen (opened Jan. 2, 1850) had accepted a prologue written for an occasion by the young poet, and on November 6, 1851, Ibsen entered into a contract by which he bound himself go to Bergen "to assist the theatre as dramatic author." The salary was less than L70 a year, but it was eked out by travelling grants, and little as it might be, it was substantially ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... 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, ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... 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 ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... "Le Juif" has five acts; but I have not yet committed myself to the assertion that he was in seven tableaux, and possessed a prologue. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... and kind friend, I have found the line without any other person's aid or suggestion. Last night it occurred to me that it was in some prologue or epilogue, and my little book-room being very rich in the drama, I have looked through many hundreds of those bits of rhyme, and at last made a discovery which, if it have no other good effect, will at least have "emptied my head of Corsica," as Johnson said to Boswell; for never was ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... in good earnest to picturesqueness, let us mention a poet in sober truth worth five hundred of Homer, and that is Chaucer. Show us a piece of Homer's handywork that comes within a hundred leagues of that divine prologue to the Canterbury Tales, or of 'The Knight's Tale,' of the 'Man of Law's Tale,' or of the 'Tale of the Patient Griseldis,' or, for intense life of narration and festive wit, to the 'Wife of Bath's Tale.' Or, passing out of the Canterbury Tales for ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the simple and to misguide the unwary. It is Father W. Faber who remarks that, "there is not a new philosophy nor a freshly named science but what deems, in the ignorance of its raw beginnings, that it will either explode the Church as false or set her aside as doting" (Bl. Sac. Prologue). Indeed the world is always striving to withdraw men and women from their allegiance to the Church, through appeals to its superior judgment and more enlightened experience; and philosophy and history and even theology are all pressed into the service, and falsified and misrepresented in ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... consists of four plays, intended to be performed on four successive evenings, entitled The Rhine Gold (a prologue to the other three), The Valkyries, Siegfried, and Night Falls On The Gods; or, in the original German, Das Rheingold, Die ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... ruination." On one occasion a mighty package came by post from the United States, for which Scott had to pay five pounds sterling. It contained a MS. play called The Cherokee Lovers, by a young lady of New York, who begged Scott to read and correct it, write a prologue and epilogue, get it put on the stage at Drury Lane, and negotiate with Constable or Murray for the copyright. In about a fortnight another packet not less formidable arrived, charged with a similar postage, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... me warmly, 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 things I had ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... of such a succession will be more and more confirmed as geology advances. But as to the time, the duration, of this successive evolution, it is the idlest of notions that the Scriptures either have, or could have, condescended to human curiosity upon so awful a prologue to the drama of this world. Genesis would no more have indulged so mean a passion with respect to the mysterious inauguration of the world, than the Apocalypse with respect to its mysterious close. 'Yet ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the strange mingling in his nature of brutality and sensitiveness, of animal and spiritual, and knowing something of the unstable character of Althea Fenimore, may more justly, I think, than he, sketch out the miserable prologue of the drama. That she was madly, recklessly in love with him there can be no doubt. Nor can there be doubt that unconsciously she fired the passion in him. The deliberate, cold-blooded seducer of his friend's daughter, such as Boyce, in his confession, made himself out to ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... 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 ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... appeared on the scene in this prologue to the drama of the University's history. Less than six years after the arrival of the first settlers, the first number of the Western Emigrant appeared on October 18, 1829. Like all country journals of that period it ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... 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 man, neither ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... of the crowd, unrelieved by any lightness, and culminating in the evil expression of Antichrist himself. The peace of the gold-flecked landscape only accentuates the horror of the scene of the downfall in the background. The picture is a fit prologue to ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... 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 really carried ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... in contradiction to the feudal superior. James V. seems first to have introduced, in addition to the militia furnished from these sources, the service of a small number of mercenaries, who formed a body-guard, called the Foot-Band. The satirical poet, Sir David Lindsay (or the person who wrote the prologue to his play of the Three Estaites), has introduced Finlay of the Foot-Band, who after much swaggering upon the stage is at length put to flight by the Fool, who terrifies him by means of a sheep's skull upon a pole. I have ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 into the newer language." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... repeatedly told the story with great eloquence and effect. He has dilated on the sufferings, on the abject poverty, of this ill-fated woman, the last of an illustrious race. He tells us that, in the extremity of her distress, Garrick gave her a benefit, that Johnson wrote a prologue, and that the public contributed some hundreds of pounds. Was it fit, he asks, that she should receive, in this eleemosynary form, a small portion of what was in truth a debt? Why, he asks, instead of obtaining a pittance from charity, did she ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... abbot's 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 ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... itself? We chose to exercise that right. Was it worth the while to refuse it? Exhausted, drained, dispeopled, they may chain a vassal province to their throne; but, woe be to them, upon that conquering day, their glory has departed from them! The first Revolution was but the prologue to this: that was sealed in blood; in this might have been demonstrated the progress made under eighty years of freedom, by a peaceful separation. It is the Flight of the Tartar Tribe anew, and the whole barbarous Northern nation pours its hordes after, hangs on the flank, harasses, impedes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... natural to apply to him, as an author of established reputation. He therefore sent this Tragedy to him, with a few verses, in which he desired his correction. Mr. Hill who was a man of unbounded humanity, and most accomplished politeness, readily complied with his request; and wrote the prologue and epilogue, in which he touches the circumstances [Transcriber's note: 'cirumstances' in original] of the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... PROLOGUE. Now, for as much as in these latter days, Throughout the whole world in every land, Vice doth increase, and virtue decays, Iniquity having the upper hand; We therefore intend, good gentle audience, ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... comedy is new, And what it is, I've shown: who wrote it too, And whose in Greek it is, were I not sure Most of you knew already, would I tell. But, wherefore I have ta'en this part upon me, In brief I will deliver: for the Bard Has sent me here as pleader, not as Prologue; You he declares his judges, me his counsel: And yet as counsel nothing can I speak More than the Author teaches me to say, Who wrote th' oration which I now recite. As to reports, which envious men ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... Constantinople in 397. The fifteen (or, if with some editors we include the prologue, sixteen) homilies On the Epistle to the Philippians, (t. 11, p. 189,) were preached in that capital of the empire. The moral instructions turn mostly on alms and riches. The order which prudence prescribes in the distribution of alms, he explains, (Hom. 1, t. 11, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... process of happening, which revolutionised all her outlook. For that the unseen presence, consciousness of which had come to be so constant a quantity in her action and her thought, should thus declare itself in visible form, be materialised, become concrete, and that instantly, without prologue or preparation, projecting itself wholesale—so to speak—into the comfortable commonplaces of a Sunday luncheon—after her slightly uproarious race home with a perfectly normal schoolboy, from morning church too—affected her ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... has ratified his opinion: John Dennis, Sir Richard Blackmore, and Luke Milbourne. When, not long afterwards, Dennis attacked with his criticism Addison's Cato, to which Pope had contributed the Prologue, Pope made this the occasion of a bitter satire on Dennis, called The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris (a well-known quack who professed the cure of lunatics) upon the Frenzy J. D. Addison then, through Steele, wrote to Popes publisher of this manner of treating Mr. Dennis, that he could not ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... hard; for either the versifier is hugely the superior of the rival, or, if he be not, and still persist in his more delicate enterprise, he falls to be as widely his inferior. But let us select them from the pages of the same writer, one who was ambidexter; let us take, for instance, Rumour's Prologue to the Second Part of Henry IV., a fine flourish of eloquence in Shakespeare's second manner, and set it side by side with Falstaff's praise of sherris, act iv., scene 1; or let us compare the beautiful prose spoken throughout ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of blood Disasters in the sunne; and the moist starre, Vpon whose influence Neptunes Empier stands Was sicke almost to doomesday with eclipse. And euen the like precurse of feare euents As harbindgers preceading still the fates And prologue to the Omen comming on Haue heauen and earth together demonstrated ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... think of those vain reasoners who, instead of regarding the present scene of things as the sole object of their contemplation, so far reverse the whole course of nature, as to render this life merely a passage to something further; a porch, which leads to a greater and vastly different building; a prologue which serves only to introduce the piece, and give it more grace and propriety? Whence, do you think, can such philosophers derive their idea of the gods? From their own conceit and imagination surely. For if they derive it from ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... 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
... evolution of this harping shepherd-boy into the illuminated prophet of Christ was the splendid achievement of the later years.[33] And to all this more acutely Christian work the Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850) served as a significant prologue. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... his words, candid as mirrors, gave the perfect image of his thought. He was never afraid to ask—never too dignified to admit that he did not know. No man had keener wit or kinder humor. He was not solemn. Solemnity is a mask worn by ignorance and hypocrisy—it is the preface, prologue, and index to the cunning or the stupid. He was natural in his life and thought—master of the story-teller's art, in illustration apt, in application perfect, liberal in speech, shocking Pharisees and prudes, using any word that ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... and Ruth brings the completion after 300 B.C., as already stated. There are no definite allusions to it till the second century B.C. Daniel speaks of a passage in Jeremiah being in "the books" or "writings;"(44) and the prologue of Jesus Sirach presupposes its formation. Such was the second canon, which had been made ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... took away from it; he gave it a child's face, preserving the one striking expression; he made it that of a woman—of an elderly, grave woman. Why, what was this? Barbara Golding! He would not spoil the development of the drama, of which he now held the fluttering prologue, by any blunt treatment; he would touch this and that nerve gently to see what past ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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
... Our prologue outstays its time. Already the captain of our pirates puts on his hook. The evil Duke limps for practice on his wooden leg. Presently our curtain will rise. We shall see the pirates' cabin, with the ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... The prologue to this somewhat dramatic history was of the simplest. The affair came to a climax, if one may speak metaphorically, in fire and sword and high passion, but it began like the month of March. Mr Bostock (a younger brother of the senior partner in the famous firm of Bostocks, drapers, ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... Genest; examine the mass of commendatory verses in the twenty-one-volume editions of Shakspere; examine also the commendatory verses in the nine-volume edition of Ben. Jonson. Here is the result: Langbaine calls attention to the prologue in question as an excellent prologue, and Genest repeats what had been said one hundred and forty years before by Langbaine. There is not the slightest hint on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... In his prologue "excusynge the rudenes of his translacion," he professes to have purposely used the ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... compartment, like the bees in their cells, employed in producing the honey 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 ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... play 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 word with ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... in the fullness of time there appeared in the Roll of Honour the name of Lieut. John Brinton, of the Royal Loamshires, under the laconic heading of Missing, believed Prisoner of War, which is the prologue of this tale of the ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... 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
... cried Lupin, turning to the Englishman, "that you would not give up your seat for all the gold in the Transvaal! You are in the first row of the stalls! But, first and before all, the prologue ... after which we will skip straight to the fifth act, the capture or the escape of Arsene Lupin. Therefore, my dear maitre, I have one request to make of you and I beg you to answer yes or no, to save all ambiguity. Cease interesting ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... Coquettes, or the Gallant in the Closet, by Lady Houston, but it was ruined on the third 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 after ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... tirade on the religious aspects of the times. The stage directions are significant: for example:—Act I., Scene 1. Enter severally, in order of the game, the White and Black houses. Act II., Scene 1. Enter severally White Queen's Pawnes and Black Queen's Pawnes. The Prologue is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... traditional octave stanza, but we find passages of terza rima. There are also choral passages which suggest the existence of the frottola, the carnival song and the ballata. The play is introduced by Mercury acting as prologue. This was in accordance with time honored custom which called for an "announcer of the festival." The first scene is between Mopsus, an old shepherd, and Aristaeus, a young one. Aristaeus, after the manner of shepherds, has seen a nymph, and has become desperately enamored. Mopsus shakes ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... 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 a view ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... difficult to please than the public," returned M. Lecoq. "I must have veritable comedies, or real dramas. My theatre is —society. My actors laugh honestly, or weep with genuine tears. A crime is committed—that is the prologue; I reach the scene, the first act begins. I seize at a glance the minutest shades of the scenery. Then I try to penetrate the motives, I group the characters, I link the episodes to the central fact, I bind in a bundle all the circumstances. The action soon reaches the crisis, the ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... 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 credence, and were ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... your 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
... Perrysburg, Ohio, and made available through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library <http://www.ccel.org>. I have eliminated unnecessary formatting in the text, corrected some errors in transcription, and added the dedication, tables of contents, Prologue, and the numbers of the questions and articles, as they appeared in the printed translation published by Benziger Brothers. Each article is now designated by part, question number, and article number in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... miscellaneous work, mostly of the compilation order, the play of the Good-natured Man began to assume concrete form; insomuch that Johnson, always the friend of this erratic Irishman, had promised to write a Prologue for it. It is with regard to this Prologue that Boswell tells a foolish and untrustworthy story about Goldsmith. Dr. Johnson had recently been honoured by an interview with his Sovereign; and the members of the Club were in the habit of flattering him by ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... we arrived on the 22nd of the month. Here began the ceaseless preparation for the part the regiment was to play in the grand drama of war that was to follow, all this camp life and concentration being but the prologue. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... 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 ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... hard. And the superfluous man not only is impotent, but he knows his impotence, so that he is dead in soul as well as in body. This brief sketch of a living corpse, written as early as 1850, forms thus the prologue, as it were, to all his future tragedies. From this depth of nothingness Turgenef, however, soon rises to at least the semblance of strength; and while Rudin is at bottom as impotent as Tchulkaturin, he at least pretends ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... not exactly plunge into the middle of things; but he spends comparatively little time on the preliminaries of the ironical Prologue to the "very illustrious drinkers," on the traditionally necessary but equally ironical genealogy of the hero, on the elaborate verse amphigouri of the Fanfreluches Antidotees, and on the mock scientific discussion of extraordinarily prolonged periods of pregnancy. Without these, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... seem to have been the Royal Birthday Odes of Michael Robinson, which were printed as broadsides from 1810 to 1821. Their publication in book form was announced in 'The Hobart Town Gazette' of 23rd March, 1822, but no copy of such a volume is at present known to exist. The famous "Prologue", said to have been recited at the first dramatic performance in Australia, on January 16th, 1796 (when Dr. Young's tragedy "The Revenge" and "The Hotel" were played in a temporary theatre at Sydney), was for a long time attributed to the notorious George Barrington, and ranked as the first ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... prologue by Master William Canning, informs us that this tragedy of Godwin was designed to vindicate the Kentish earl's memory from prejudices raised against him by monkish writers, who had mistaken his character, and accused him of ungodliness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... burlesque in her unexpected appearance as a monk. To weave that old and famous story of love into the terribly complex political intrigue was a task almost too great. The character of Eleanor is perhaps more successfully drawn in the Prologue than in the scene where she offers the choice of the dagger or the bowl, and is interrupted, in a startlingly unexpected manner, by the Archbishop himself. The opportunities for scenic effects are magnificent throughout, and must have contributed greatly to the success on the stage. ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... is entirety Grecian)—This means that the scene is in Greece, and that it is of the kind called "palliata," as representing the manners of the Greeks, who wore the "pallium," or outer cloak; whereas the Romans wore the "toga." In the Prologue, Terence states that he borrowed it from the Greek ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... oultraige et violence, contraignent les compaignons trinquer voyre carous et alluz[119] qui pis est." (Pantagruel, iii., Prologue.) ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Colombina. Belviso would have sustained it had he been present. Adone, his understudy, took his place. My own share in the mummery was humble and confusing. In toga and cothurnus I had to read a pompous prologue, and did it amid shouts of "Basta! basta!" from the audience. I don't believe that I was more thankful than they were when I had done. The less I say about the rest of the evening and night the better. The people of Certaldo more than maintain the popular reputation ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... perhaps, hesitate to say that it 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 no, we distinctly fail to apprehend who ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... sayings of St. Therese contained in that book are in this electronic edition, including the autobiography as well as "Counsels and Reminiscences," letters, and selected poems. Also included are the preface by Cardinal Bourne, the prologue relating Therese's parentage and birth, and the epilogue describing her final illness, her death, and related events. Not included are the illustrations, the list of illustrations, accounts of favors attributed to the intercession of St. Therese, ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... 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, and then my chamber till my eyes were sore at writing and making ready my letter ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 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 switching of ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Clarence, you'll really delight us, If you'll do your endeavor to bring From the Club a young person to write us Our prologue, and that sort of thing; Poor Crotchet, who did them supremely, Is gone, for a Judge, to Bengal; I fear we shall miss him extremely, This season, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the babel gave place to a confusion of shrieks, howls, yells, laughs, barking of dogs, beating of tins, blowing of horns, explosions of crackers, and a din that represents all that is wild and untamable in three nations. It is a weird, almost appalling prologue. Those laughs!—they are a study—they fairly chill the blood—they would make the fortune of a comic actor—so intense, thrilling, surprising, and seemingly filled with a ghoulish glee. Over and over they would break out clear and distinct above the tintamarre. I have never been able to find out ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... combs, while his valet, who stands behind him, adjusts the curls after the comb has passed through them." Allusions to this practice may be found in the plays from the reign of Charles II. down to the days of Queen Anne. We read in Dryden's prologue ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... Prologue affirming of reason, That artificers having exercise, May chaunge & turne by good discretion Shapes & formes, & newly them devise: As Potters whiche to that craft entende Breake & renue ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... potentates avid of world control—a family tragedy of the related rulers of France, Germany, Burgundy and Savoy. By his delegated rule of the latter country, Francois de Gruyere, although playing his part only in the prologue, took his place beside the great figures of the Emperor Ferdinand of Germany, Louis XI of France, the Duchess Yolande and their magnificent cousin Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Sent by his father, Charles VII of France, at the head of the redoubtable Armagnacs, to help ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... 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
... the mud walls of a convict-hut, failed not to diffuse general complacency on the countenances of sixty persons, of various descriptions, who were assembled to applaud the representation. Some of the actors acquitted themselves with great spirit, and received the praises of the audience: a prologue and an epilogue, written by one of the performers, were also spoken on the occasion; which, although not worth inserting here, contained some tolerable allusions to the situation of the parties, and the novelty of a stage-representation in ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... flourished about 1825. It is one of the main services of the romantic school to have thoroughly disembarrassed art from this." Gautier describes also a manuscript piece of Nerval, for which he furnished a prologue, and which was an imitation of one of the Diableries, or popular farces of the Middle Ages, in which the devil was introduced. It contained a piece within the piece, in the fashion of an old mystery play, with ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... from you to Willoughby, Clara? You decree me to the part of ball between two bats. The Play being assured, the prologue is a bladder of wind. I seem to be instructed in one of the mysteries of erotic esotery, yet on my word I am no wiser. If Willoughby is to hear anything from you, he will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... quoting from the prologue to "Le Puits de Sainte Claire," a certain passage which seems to me peculiarly adapted to the illustration of what I have just said. The writer is, or imagines himself to be, in ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... seldom performed. It was 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 ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... with the white of one clown. Then mix with a prologue and roll very thin. Fill with a circus just coming to town. One leer, one scowl and one tragical grin. Bake in a sob of Carusian size. Result: the most ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... vain attempts to derive it from a thought of Petrarch, and still more vainly attempts to amend it; Wakefield expends an octavo page to paraphrase this single verse. From the following lines of Chaucer, one would imagine Gray caught the recollected idea. The old Reve, in his prologue, says of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... abomination this way, Rogers. Gentlemen," said Grim, with intense scorn, "those unspeakable Corker asses started off with a prologue." ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... 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 course ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... performances, usually in honor of the birthday of his father or his mother. There was one instance especially that I may recall, which took place some years ago. This particular performance began in the afternoon at three, with a prologue spoken by Prince August William, in which he mentioned the different items of the programme. Then each of the royal lads led his pony in front of the box in which the imperial couple sat with their guests, and the crown prince put his ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... 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 even say down to the age of Byron, to whose epoch one ...
— English Satires • Various
... was yet but the prologue of the storm to which he was listening; and he was still able to maintain his seat upon the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... of a man of genius. Cicero tells his friend Atticus, that he had a volume of prefaces or introductions always ready by him to be used as circumstances required. These must have been like our periodical essays. A good preface is as essential to put the reader into good humour, as a good prologue is to a play, or a fine symphony to an opera, containing something analogous to the work itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified. The Italians call the preface La ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... chapters, in order to render the mythology more conformable to the erroneous notions he appears to have entertained respecting its signification. Be this as it may, the Prose Edda, in its present form, dates from the thirteenth century, and consists of—1. Formali (Fore discourse); or the prologue. 2. Gylfa-ginning (The deluding of Gylfi). 3. Braga-roedur (Conversations of Bragi). 4. Eptirmali (After discourse); or Epilogue. The Prologue and Epilogue were probably written by Snorre himself, and are nothing more than an absurd syncretism of Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... the influence of such a tale, when believed to be true, upon a mind inclined to embrace the doctrines of asceticism. Its power at that time is not to be measured by its reliability now. Jerome himself declares in the prologue that many incredible things were related of Paul which he will not repeat. After reading the following story, the reader may well inquire what more fanciful tale could be produced even by a ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... dozen languages, and the great figures he scrawled across the face of the Renaissance have survived the movement that gave them being, and are ranked with the monuments of literature. Himself has given us the reasons in the prologue to the first book, where he tells of the likeness between Socrates and the boxes called Sileni, and discourses of the manifest resemblance of his own work with Socrates. 'Opening this box,' which is ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... of which now avows himself. It is only possible to excuse the milk-and-watery treatment of the subject through the general mental cowardice and ignorance in intellectual matters which is so predominant in this country. I find a comfort in the hope that this article is the prologue to able exegetical works, combined with a concrete statement of the absurdity, the untruth, and untenableness of the present English conception of inspiration. Do not call me to account too sharply for this hope, or it is likely to evaporate simply in pious wishes. Moral ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... a country estate, although a slave, ought, according to the precept of the Carthaginian agronome Mago (ap. Varro, R. R. i. 17), to be able to read, and ought to possess some culture. In the prologue of the "Poenulus" of Plautus, it is said of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 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 ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Prologue] For als moche as the Lond bezonde the See, that is to seye, the Holy Lond, that men callen the Lond of Promyssioun, or of Beheste, passynge alle othere Londes, is the most worthi Lond, most excellent, and Lady and Sovereyn of alle othere Londes, and is blessed ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... Arithmetic, which he dedicated to his friend Prior Gaddi; but this work was not published till 1539. In 1536 he first heard a report of a fresh and important discovery in algebra, made by one Scipio Ferreo of Bologna; the prologue to one of the most dramatic incidents in his career, an incident which it will be necessary to treat at some length ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... it 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
... is the day of my marriage to the only woman I ever have thought of wedding, and to me it is joy unspeakable. With other men such a day ends differently from the close of this with me. Because I have done and will continue to do the level best I know for you, this oration is the prologue to asking you for one gift to me from you, a wedding gift. I don't want it unless you can bestow it ungrudgingly, and truly want me to have it. If you can, I will have all from this day I hope for at the hands of fate. May I have the gift I ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... prologue. He is on a journey through the world to found a new religion; and the first motive of this new religion is the vindication of the memory of his mother. In explaining this design, Euripides, who seeks always for pathetic effect, tells in few words, touching because simple, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... that's just the prologue. That's just what you're supposed to know before the Curtain goes up. Now, am I going on to the drama or are we going to bed.... The drama? Right. You're a lewd fellow of the baser sort, but you occasionally have wise ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to blame. She put the comether on him, sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who bends over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... history resolves itself into the drama: Science contra Fate. Quite a change from the vaudeville show of the restless personal ambitions of vindictive fools and greedy scoundrels, the mischief and adventures of half-witted geniuses and licensed rogues that have been figures of the prologue. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... implement, and whisky-bottles were decapitated against the tent poles. I remember vaguely the crowning episode of the evening when the little major was dancing the Irish jig with a kitchen chair; when Falstaff was singing the Prologue of Pagliacci to the stupefied colonel; when the boy, once of Barts', was roaring like a lion under the mess table, and when the tall, melancholy surgeon was at the top of the tent pole, scratching himself like a gorilla in his native haunts... Outside, the field hospital was ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... some omnipotent frank like the First Lord of the Admiralty's, when, lo and behold, the contents proved to be a MS. play, by a young lady of New York, who kindly requested me to read and correct it, equip it with prologue and epilogue, procure for it a favorable reception from the manager of Drury Lane, and make Murray or Constable bleed handsomely for the copyright; and on inspecting the cover, I found that I had been charged ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... 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 ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... church; and unless every one had had a shield in his hand to receive the fiery darts, and unless the foundation stone had been too strong for any thing to make an impression upon it, you would have seen the whole in conflagration. But alas! this was but the prologue, or a foretaste of what was to follow; for the darkness speedily became seven times blacker, and Belial himself appeared upon the densest cloud, and around him were his choicest warriors, both terrestrial and infernal, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... 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, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... information respecting the youthful habits and already vast intellectual pre-eminence of this memorable statesman:—'It gives me great pain to hear that Charles begins to be unreasonably impatient at losing. I fear it is the prologue to much fretfulness of temper, for disappointment in raising money, and any serious reflections upon his situation, will (in spite of his affected spirits and dissipation) occasion him many disagreeable moments.' ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... colonel 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 ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler |
