"Prologue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... begin with a stirring drama in a prologue and three acts, entitled 'Flor de un Dia.' The tone of this very favourite piece would, without doubt, be questioned by a Lord Chamberlain, but as it contains no political offence, it meets with the unqualified approval of his Excellency ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... same, it 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
... banquet. That Thriftiness with Jocoseness, Chearfulness without Obscenity, and learned Stories, ought to season their Feasts. Iambics are bloody. Poets are Men of no great Judgment. The three chief Properties of a good Maid Servant. Fidelity, Deformity, and a high Spirit. A Place out of the Prologue of Terence's Eunuchus is illustrated. Also Horace's Epode to Canidia. A Place out of Seneca. Aliud agere, nihil agere, male agere. A Place out of the Elenchi of Aristotle is explain'd. A Theme poetically varied, and in a different Metre. Sentences are ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... Dennis, the son of a saddler in London, born 1657, was a mediocre writer, and rather better critic of the time, with whom Pope came a good deal into collision. Addison's tragedy of Cato, for which Pope had written a prologue, had been attacked by Dennis. Pope, to defend Addison, wrote an imaginary report, pretending to be written by a notorious quack mad-doctor of the day, entitled The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Frenz of F. D. Dennis replied ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... and friend, David Garrick, having become joint patentee and manager of Drury-lane theatre, Johnson honoured his opening of it with a Prologue[525],[*] which for just and manly dramatick criticism, on the whole range of the English stage, as well as for poetical excellence[526], is unrivalled. Like the celebrated Epilogue to the Distressed Mother,[527] it was, during the season, often called for by the audience. The most striking ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the judge judges but as the sun failing round helpless thing, As he sees the farthest he has the most faith, His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things, In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent, He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement, He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... progress." But nobody thanked, or even though of Burton. On the occasion of his departure Burton received shoals of letters from prominent men of "every creed, race and tongue," manifesting sorrow and wishing him God-speed. Delightful, indeed, was the prologue of that from Abd El Kadir: "Allah," it ran, "favour the days of your far-famed learning, and prosper the excellence of your writing. O wader of the seas of knowledge, O cistern of learning of our globe, exalted ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and on the stage. No young women were allowed to be present at the commedia del arte in the first times of the principate at Florence. Masi[2129] says that this was true in general of all Italy. Later they were addressed in the prologue, which became customary, and so they must have been present. Popular opinion still held that they ought to stay at home, as of old. They were never on the stage. De Julleville says[2130] that women in France in the Middle Ages were present at the freest farces. In the middle ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the Gift of God to Men, as well as to Angels, and a Representation and Admonition of the sweet consent and Harmony which his Wisdom hath made in the Creation and Administration of the World. But not to Prologue on what everywhere so much commends it self, I shall Sum up what in that Nature is expedient in a few Verses, and so proceed to the Subject ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... Sandra K. Perry, Perrysburg, Ohio, and made available through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library <http://www.ccel.org>. I have eliminated unnecessary formatting in the text, corrected some errors in transcription, and added the dedication, tables of contents, Prologue, and the numbers of the questions and articles, as they appeared in the printed translation published by Benziger Brothers. Each article is now designated by part, question number, and article number in brackets, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... might be termed the prologue to the grand tragedy which was about to be performed in an amphitheatre of many square miles, and to the catastrophe of which we looked forward with an anxiety that had risen to so high a pitch, because, in case of the longer continuance of ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... the killing part.' Pyramus sets aside this cowardly proposition. He has named the obstacles to be encountered only for the sake of magnifying the fertility of his invention in overcoming them. He has a device to make all even. 'Write me a prologue,' he says, 'and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords; and for the more assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom, the Weaver; that will put them out of fear.' And as to the lion, there must ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... being filled by 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 always beginning with the homage ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... took That morn when first they parted: by the tree Of knowledge he must pass; there he her met, Scarce from the tree returning; in her hand A bough of fairest fruit, that downy smiled, New gathered, and ambrosial smell diffused. To him she hasted; in her face excuse Came prologue, and apology too prompt; Which, with bland words at will, she thus addressed. Hast thou not wondered, Adam, at my stay? Thee I have missed, and thought it long, deprived Thy presence; agony of love till now Not felt, nor shall ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... 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 Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... amused at the prologue, and waited on the tale. It soon came. Oliphant, it appeared, was the purse-bearer of the household, and woeful straits that poor purse-bearer must have been often put to. I questioned him as to ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... little trail of light, like laughter. Hedger and his dog were delighted when a star did this. They were quite lost in watching the glittering game, when they were suddenly diverted by a sound,—not from the stars, though it was music. It was not the Prologue to Pagliacci, which rose ever and anon on hot evenings from an Italian tenement on Thompson Street, with the gasps of the corpulent baritone who got behind it; nor was it the hurdy-gurdy man, who often played at the corner in the balmy twilight. No, this was a woman's voice, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... jealous, he never would permit her to see or be seen by any man: and if she took the air in her coach, or went to church, he obliged her to wear a veil. Having learned thus much of the boy, I dismissed him with a present; for he had already inspired me with curiosity, that prologue to love, and I knew not of what use he might be hereafter; a curiosity that I was resolved to satisfy, though I broke all the laws of hospitality, and even that first night I felt an impatience that gave me some wonder. In fine, three days I ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... the anointed of God. The Fourth Gospel goes much further still. His heavenly origin, His priority to the world, His co-operation in the work of creation and salvation, are ideas which are foreign to the other Gospels, but which the author of the Fourth Gospel has set forth in his prologue, and, in part, put into the mouth of John the Baptist.[59] The difference between the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels and the Christ of John may be summed up by saying that 'the Christ of the Synoptics is historical, but is not God; the Johannine Christ ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... de Quinola, a comedy in a prologue and five acts, was presented at the Theatre de l'Odeon, Paris, March 19, 1842. Souverain published it in an octavo volume. Balzac was disposed to complain bitterly of the treatment this play received (note his preface), but of it may be said, as in the case of its predecessor, that it makes better ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... short satire on the Dutch, written to animate the people of England against them, appeared in 1662.[46] It is somewhat in the hard style of invective, which Cleveland applied to the Scottish nation; yet Dryden thought it worth while to weave the same verses into the prologue and epilogue of the tragedy of "Amboyna," a piece written in 1673, with the same ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... by the universal cry of the town, nemine contradicente but the conceited poet. He says in his prologue that 'this is the last the town must expect from him;' he had done himself a kindness had he taken his leave before." He then describes the success of Southerne's Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery, and concludes, "This kind usage will encourage desponding minor poets, and vex huffing ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... great 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 ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... to vociferate "Prologue! prologue! prologue!" when Wignell, finding them resolute, without betraying any emotion, pause, or change in his voice and manner, proceeded as if it were part ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... who had learned the art of silence as well as of speech, was sent abroad on a series of diplomatic missions. In Italy he probably met the poet Petrarch (as we infer from the Prologue to the Clerk's Tale) and became familiar with the works of Dante and Boccaccio. His subsequent poetry shows a decided advance in range and originality, partly because of his own growth, no doubt, and partly because of his better models. This second period, of about fifteen years, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... his "Cato" was acted with immense success, and in circumstances so well known that they need not be detailed at length. Pope wrote the prologue; Booth enacted the hero; Steele packed the house; peers, both Tory and Whig, crowded the boxes; claps of applause were echoed back from High Churchmen to the members of the "Kit-Cat Club;" Bolingbroke sent fifty guineas, during the ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... of the Prologue telleth us how the lad should be taught, and how attention should be paid to the tendency of his temperament. It falleth into ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... things by their right names. Men, he tells us over and over again, are wretched, and there is no use in denying it. This doctrine appears in his familiar talk, and even in the papers which he meant to be light reading. He begins the prologue to a ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Knowledge he must pass, there he her met, Scarse from the Tree returning; in her hand 850 A bough of fairest fruit that downie smil'd, New gatherd, and ambrosial smell diffus'd. To him she hasted, in her face excuse Came Prologue, and Apologie to prompt, Which with bland words at will she thus addrest. Hast thou not wonderd, Adam, at my stay? Thee I have misst, and thought it long, depriv'd Thy presence, agonie of love till now Not felt, nor shall be ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... get through sensitive finger-tips. Two new characters had come into my play, and I knew them both for principals. That opening act without Brenda, Arthur Banks, or his sister was nothing more than a prologue. The whole affair had begun again to fascinate my interest. Moreover, I was becoming aware of a stern, half-tragic background that had not yet come into ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... passage Tyrwhit makes the following judicious comment: The school of Oxford seems to have been in much the same estimation for its dancing as that of Stratford for its French—alluding of course to what is, said in the Prologue of the French spoken by ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... and Coverdale borrowed largely from the German interpreters, as was acknowledged on the title-page and in the prologue to the Bible of 1535. Thus Tyndale copied not only most of the marginal notes of Luther's Bible, but also such Teutonisms as, "this is once bone of my bone," "they offered unto field-devils" (Luther, "Felt-teuffem"), ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... should read in an old diary of his grandmother's that she had just heard of the fight at Gettysburg, he would feel certain that the words were written a few days after that great battle, even if there were no date anywhere in the manuscript. In the same way, when the Prologue of Shakespeare's Henry V alludes to the fact that Elizabeth's general (the Earl of Essex) is in Ireland quelling a rebellion, we know that this was written between April and September of 1599, the period during which Essex actually was in Ireland. Similarly, certain details ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... exile,—probably in the latter part of the fourth century B.C.,—it incorporates various older poems, for the theme is thought to antedate the Exodus. In the prologue we have a description of Job, a model sheik of the land of Uz, whose righteousness wins such complete approval from God that the Almighty proudly quotes his servant before his assembled council as a perfect man. "The Adversary," Satan, now ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... coming: this was but the prologue to a whole tragedy of the oracular. It was clear enough that I was not wanted, and as I did not feel called upon to pose as the sole champion of the cause of Truth among so many, I took my leave ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... this interjectional formula opening a poem, cf. Andreas, Daniel, Juliana, Exodus, Fata Apost., Dream of the Rood, and the "Listenith lordinges!" of mediaeval lays.—E. Cf. Chaucer, Prologue, ed. Morris, ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... behaved admirably. If other women were wise enough to draw back at the last moment there would be fewer unhappy marriages. But Lady Mabel's elopement is only the prologue to my story." ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... the other poems in The Earthly Paradise. It would be possible to prove that Morris was at his best when he worked with Old Norse material, but that task shall not detain us now. It is enough to note that the "Prologue" to The Earthly Paradise, called "The Wanderers," makes the leader of these wanderers, who turn story-tellers when they reach the city by "the borders of the Grecian sea," a Norseman. Born in Byzantium of a Greek mother, he claimed Norway as his home, and on his father's ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... is published with a prologue and an epilogue, like a drama, which indeed it is, with all the ingredients of melodrama—a villain, a mysterious woman, a Grand Duke, a conspiracy to destroy the world, and a saint—Nilus, who convicts himself in his own writings ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... lovely prologue is the production of a dramatic poet, not of a poet writing a drama. On the other hand, I cannot agree with what I read somewhere recently—that Sebald's song, at the opening of the most superb dramatic writing in the whole range of Victorian literature, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Irving, Sir T. Lawrence, and Vesey Fitzgerald; very agreeable. No news but the failure of the Spanish expedition against Mexico, which capitulated, and the soldiers promised never to bear arms against Mexico again. On Friday went to see Lord Glengall's comedy, with a prologue by F. Mills and an epilogue by Alvanley.[15] It succeeded, though the first two acts went off heavily; not much novelty in it, but the characters well drawn and some of the situations very good: it amused ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... know that, and I am glad of it sometimes, and I hate it sometimes. I don't know yet whether I am going to be glad of it or to hate it now. Go on, Mr. Ericson, please, and tell me what is to follow this prologue about my disputed charms and virtues—for I assure you there are many people, some women among the rest, who think me neither good-looking nor even good—and my undisputed riches.' She was plucking up a spirit now, and was much more like her usual self. She felt herself ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Fred 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
... is not to be put on and laid aside at will, like a garment. Granted that these same doctrines of Zoroaster are faint adumbrations of the Hebrew creed, the Gordian knot is by no means loosed. That prologue in 'Faust' horrified you yesterday; yet, upon my word, I don't see why; for very evidently it is taken from Job, and Faust is but an ideal Job, tempted in more subtle manner than by the loss of flocks, houses, and children. You believe that ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... day at Garrick's 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, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... such lavish lines for the prices charged that I found myself looking hungrily for its address. I wish the author had not referred to her hero as having "mobile digits" and burdened her ingenuous story with anything so important as a prologue. By making the villain's deserted offspring not one baby girl only, or even twins, but triplets, Miss EVERETT GREEN provides waitresses all of one family for the "Silver Tea-shop," and that, though a happy arrangement, is a little too uncommon to add to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... mending, Le Gardeur de Repentigny! You are worthy to belong to the Grand Company! But you shall have my toast. We have drank it twenty times already, but it will stand drinking twenty times more. It is the best prologue to wine ever devised by wit of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... these persons, and make them talk as they did talk, his delineations are of inestimable value historically. He has been faithfully true. Like all great masters of the epic art, he doubtless drew them from the life; each, given in the outlines of the prologue, is a speaking portrait: even the horses they ride are as true to nature as those in the pictures of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... 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 earnestness is ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... these characteristics of the actual epoch; and I point them out to legitimatize this prologue I have written, which, for what I know, may after all give more clearness, or may give more obscurity to my book.... ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... Fernando Blumentritt. Paris, Libreria de Garnier Hermanos, 1890." Shortly before Rizal began work on his edition, a Spanish scholar, Justo Zaragoza, began the publication of a new edition of Morga. The book was reprinted, but the notes, prologue, and life of Morga which Zargoza had intended to insert, were never completed because of that editor's death. Only two copies of this edition, so far as known, were ever bound, one of which belongs to the Ayer collection in Chicago, and the other by the ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... a cherished cause," dealing with agnosticism and the demonological and miraculous element in Christianity. That they were controversial in tone no one lamented more than himself; and as in the letter to M. de Varigny, of November 25, 1891, so here in the prologue ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... childhood she knew the narrowness and darkness of poverty. Made her first appearance as an actress at the opening performance of Ole Bull's theater in Bergen, January 2, 1850, when she also recited the Prologue. An attractive personality, a voice clear and flexible both in speech and song, and unusual mentality made her the most talented actress of her time in Norway. Her power was comprehensive; she began with romantic parts and always liked these best, though later she was distinguished in ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... thenceforward. Godwin did, however, write another play, "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote the prologue. It ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the mystery to be set forth, the story of the redemption of the world. The purpose is, as far as may be, to share the sorrows of the Saviour and to follow him step by step on the way of his sufferings to the cross and sepulcher. Then comes the prologue, solemnly intoned, of which the most striking ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... 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 ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... Rostoff (1651-1709), six in all, including "The Birth of Christ," "The Penitent Sinner," "Esther and Ahashuerus," and so forth. They stand half-way between mysteries and religio-allegorical pieces, and begin with a prologue, in which one of the actors sketches the general outline of the piece, and explains its connection with contemporary affairs; and end with an epilogue, recited by another actor, which is a reinforcement and inculcation of the moral set forth in the play. St. Dmitry's plays were first ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... The prologue by which the Comas agent had been removed as tempter and tale-bearer had not been staged by Felix for calculated effect; he had thought only of getting Kyle out of the way. But never was an audience in more keenly receptive mood for a sequel than were those men who crowded closely in the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... nobody; for as I would not make a " watery discourse," so I would not put too much vinegar into it; nor would I raise the reputation of my own art, by the diminution or ruin of another's. And so much for the prologue to what ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... was a young man of twenty-three, who had lately returned from the exiled court in France, where he had distinguished himself by his agreeable manners, and who had just made a name for himself by poems addressed to Dryden and by a prologue to Congreve's Old Batchelor. He was afterwards to become famous for a little while as a political historian. Catharine Trotter's verses are bad, but she addresses Higgons as "lovely youth," and claims ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... 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 yourself in this business. There is yet time and I am still ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... as a credible narrative. Imagine 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 ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... that opinion may perhaps prevail) To censure me, enough will surely try, For criticks are severe, and these will cry, Your lady like a simpleton escaped; Her character you better might have shaped; Which makes us doubt the truth of what is told: Naught in your prologue like it ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... book serves the double purpose of prologue and epilogue. It affords the author an opportunity of explaining the object of the work, or of vindicating himself and replying to his critics. As a rule, however, the reader is concerned neither with the moral purpose of the book nor with the attacks of the Reviewers, and so the preface remains ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... I have maundered so slowly through the prologue. I have it! it was simply to say to you, in the form of introduction rife through the Middle West: "Shake hands ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... was disregarded as a useless implement, and whisky-bottles were decapitated against the tent poles. I remember vaguely the crowning episode of the evening when the little major was dancing the Irish jig with a kitchen chair; when Falstaff was singing the Prologue of Pagliacci to the stupefied colonel; when the boy, once of Barts', was roaring like a lion under the mess table, and when the tall, melancholy surgeon was at the top of the tent pole, scratching himself like a gorilla in his native haunts... Outside, the field hospital was quiet, under a fleecy ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Goldsmith wrote, under the title of "The Mystery Revealed," a long pamphlet which was intended both to explain away the disturbances and to defend the luckless Knight. The actor Garrick dragged into a prologue a riming and sneering reference to the mystery; the artist Hogarth invoked his genius to deride it. Yet there were believers in plenty, and there even seem to have been some who thought of preying on the credulous by opening up a business ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... After they have partaken of the inevitable betel-nut quid, and have offered a drink of sugarcane brew or other beverage to the household, and have discussed a few topics of daily life—it may be about the last wild boar killed, or the capture of a polecat in the snares[1]—the prologue begins. This lasts from one to two days, including often the better part of the nights. Each of the visitors comes in his turn and rattles off, with many a significant haw and cough, in good Manbo style a series of periphrastic platitudes and examples that apparently give ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Fatigue in the Part of Lady Townly," and she assisted the author with her corrections and advice—perhaps with her influence as an actress. Fielding's distinguished kinswoman Lady Mary Wortley Montagu also read the MS. Looking to certain scenes in it, the protestation in the Prologue— ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... fearless as a lion, and says there is no one like him in the world; in the next stage, he is like an ape, and dances, jests, and talks nonsense, knowing not what he is doing and saying; when thoroughly drunken, he wallows in the mire like a sow.[63] To this legend Chaucer evidently alludes in the Prologue to the Maniciple's Tale: ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... that his youthful enthusiasm which had carried him on bravely in many an attempt to instruct and benefit his fellows at length forsook him and left him a prey to that weakness of body, and that hopelessness of spirit to which he so pathetically alludes in the Prologue to the Mirror of good Manners. All his best work, all the work which has survived to our day, was executed before this date. But the pen was too familiar to his hand to be allowed to drop. His biographers tell us "that when years came on he spent his time mostly in pious matters, ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... is that he stops in the ante-chamber of poetry. He is content if he has brought us to the hypnotic point. His prologue and overture are excellent, but where is the argument? Where is the substantial artistic content that shall ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... old boy, your son, ply his old task, Turn the stale prologue to some painted mask; His absence in my ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... not occur in any of the discourses. The identification of Christ with the "Word" or "Reason" of the philosophers is St. John's own. But the statements in the prologue are all confirmed by our Lord's own words as reported by the evangelist. These fall under two heads, those which deal with the relation of Christ to the Father, and those which deal with His relation to the world. The ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... relating to the Devil, and with superstitious beliefs of the Middle Age. It is not always easy to determine when the poet is serious in his statement of religious belief, occasionally he appears to be so, and then a line or so shows us that he has a legend in mind. In the prologue of the poem ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... Chaucer, who is supposed to have been a student of the Middle Temple, and who is said to have once beaten an insolent Franciscan friar in Fleet Street, gives a eulogistic sketch of a Temple manciple, or purveyor of provisions, in the prologue to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Regnault, First performances, As oratorio and opera in 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," ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... nothing, but can do nothing, struggle he never so hard. And the superfluous man not only is impotent, but he knows his impotence, so that he is dead in soul as well as in body. This brief sketch of a living corpse, written as early as 1850, forms thus the prologue, as it were, to all his future tragedies. From this depth of nothingness Turgenef, however, soon rises to at least the semblance of strength; and while Rudin is at bottom as impotent as Tchulkaturin, he at least pretends to strength. Rudin, then, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... formed the rapt ring around Lincoln in his own chair in the snug corner of the congressional chat-room. Here he perceived that his rusticity and shallow skimmings placed him under the trained politicians. It was here, too, that his stereotyped prologue to his digressions—"That reminds me"—became popular, and even reached England, where a publisher so entitled a joke-book. Lincoln displaced "Sam Slick," and opened the way to Artemus Ward and Mark Twain. The longing for elevation was fanned by the association with the notables—Buchanan, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... great, oblong, wooden structure, with its piercing steeple. The chapel windows blazed with light. People were flocking in. As they entered, a young lady began to play on an out-of-tune piano, which Judge Josiah Saunders had presented to the church. She played a Moody-and-Sankey hymn as a sort of prologue, although nobody sang it. It was a curious custom which prevailed in the Amity church. A Moody-and-Sankey hymn was always played in evening meetings instead of the morning ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the events which led up to this scene,—the prologue to the drama about to be played. The year 1805 was one of threatening peril to England. Napoleon was then in the ambitious youth of his power, full of dreams of universal empire, his mind set on an invasion of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... years, are nothing in history. Men die, man is immortal, practically, even on this earth. We are so impatient, —and we are always watching for the last scene of the tragedy. Now I humbly opine that the drop is only about falling on the first act, or perhaps only the prologue. This act or prologue will be called, in after days, War for the status quo. Such enthusiasm, heroism, and manslaughter as status quo could inspire, has, I trust, been not entirely in vain, but ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... prologue. And be pleased to take notice, as to the days of the month, I have taken such care, that all are according to the Julian or old account, used by us here in England. (See Partridge's almanack, preface to the reader) Pope Gregory XIII. ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... 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, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... (imperfect), Proverbs—Ecclus. Then the prologue to Wisdom and a small piece of the text of Wisdom repeated. Matthew, 1 leaf of Mark. Philippians, Col. 1, 2 Thess. Laodiceans (apocryphal) 1, 2 ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... opera, one night this winter, the Abbe Servien, not liking certain praises of the King contained in a Prologue, let slip a bitter joke in ridicule of them. The pit took it up, repeated it, and applauded it. Two days afterwards, the Abbe Servien was arrested and taken to Vincennes, forbidden to speak to anybody and allowed ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... 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 ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Webster's knowledge of the written English language been as great as it undoubtedly was of its linguistic relations, he would have seen that the spelling followed the accent. The third verse of the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales" would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of Melos to take up arms against her, and after a long siege had conquered the quiet and immemorially ancient town, massacred the men and sold the women and children into slavery. Melos fell in the autumn of 416 B.C. The Troaedes was produced in the following spring. And while the gods of the prologue were prophesying destruction at sea for the sackers of Troy, the fleet of the sackers of Melos, flushed with conquest and marked by a slight but unforgettable taint of sacrilege, was actually preparing to set sail for its ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... In the Prologue, a wonderful piece of music, Tonio the Fool announces to the public the deep tragic sense which often is hidden behind a farce, and prepares them for the sad end of the lovers in ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... be an epitome, because that "we know of no instances of such abridgment in any Christian writer." To commence with the West,—is not Mr. Cureton acquainted with the manner in which Rufinus dealt with the History of Eusebius? Have we here no specimens of abbreviation; no allusion in the prologue to "omissis quae videbantur superflua?" Has Mr. C. never looked into that memorable combination of the independent works of three contemporaries, entitled Historia Tripartita? and, not to wander from the strictest bounds ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... of Adoptionist. It did not think of Jesus as a man who had become divine, but as a God who had become human. Moreover, an identification of this pre-existent being with the Logos of the philosopher was gradually approached in the later Epistles, and finally made in the Prologue to the ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... Phaedra and to Lucius he is very happily facetious; but in the prologue before the queen the pedant has found his way ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... I 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was addressed, never doubting that it had travelled under 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 five pounds odd for the postage. This was bad ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... 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
... Contention," Suffolk is the same man, Margaret the same woman. In both plays, Gloster and Beaufort speak the same scorn and defiance in the same tongue. The garden scene, with its red and white roses, is the prologue to the "Contention" and indissolubly links together the three parts of "Henry VI." as one drama by the ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... like "set their caps;" as in the description of the Manciple in the Prologue, who "set their aller cap". "Hove" or "houfe," means "hood;" and the phrase signifies to be even ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of theology, and descend to the confines of casuistry in ethics.(270) In the discussion of them Abelard collects passages from the scriptures and from the fathers in favour of two distinctly opposite solutions. He has however prefixed a prologue to the work, which ought to be taken as the explanation of his object.(271) He insists in it on the difficulty of rightly understanding the scriptures or the fathers, and refers it to eight different causes;(272) advising that when these considerations fail to explain the apparent ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... act is exceedingly beautiful. No painter could reproduce on canvas the sublime scenery sketched in its prologue; more gloomy than the pictures of Ruysdael, more sombre than those of Salvator Rosa. Before describing the inundation of the masses, our author naturally recalls the traditions of the Flood. The nobles, the representatives of the Past, with their few surviving adherents, have taken refuge ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... So the "special desire" must apply to La Luce solely and only. If so, then from this wording we gather that the general and uncontrollable desire to hear the Second and Third Acts of DE LA-RA-Boom's Opera did not extend to its Prologue, First Act, Fourth Act (if any), and Epilogue. But is it complimentary to a Composer to express a general wish to hear only certain portions of his work, implying thereby that the generally un-expressed desire is rather against ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... there is to this chapter. It isn't much of a chapter, hey? But it's big enough for Brewster's Centre. It's a kind of a prologue chapter. It's like Brewster's Centre, because nothing happens in it. The only thing that ever happened up there was the fire, and that happened three or four years ago. You can't even smell the smoke in this chapter. But just you ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... vancourier^, avant-coureur [Fr.], pioneer, prodrome^, prodromos^, prodromus^, outrider; leader, bellwether; herald, harbinger; foreboding; dawn; avant-courier, avant-garde, bellmare^, forelooper^, foreloper^, stalking-horse, voorlooper [Afrik.], voortrekker [Afrik.]. prelude, preamble, preface, prologue, foreword, avant-propos [Fr.], protasis^, proemium^, prolusion^, proem, prolepsis [Gramm.], prolegomena, prefix, introduction; heading, frontispiece, groundwork; preparation &c 673; overture, exordium [Lat.], symphony; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... without cease, and a heavy rain of hot iron was pouring down upon his soldiers. Three infantry attacks had already been reported as repulsed, and now the artillery was hammering with frenzied fury, a prologue to fresh conflicts ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... distinction from animals, live in a world of ideas as well as in a realm of immediate reality. This world of ideas is something more than the mirror that sense-perception offers us; something less than that ultimate reality to which it seems to be a prologue and invitation. Man, in his ambition to be master of himself and of nature, looks behind the mirror, to analyze phenomena and seek causes, in order to gain control. Science, natural science, is a research for causes, that is to say, for mechanisms, which in turn ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... unconstitutional; it was made when the State sovereignty theory had gained possession of the Government, and was annexed as a State instead of being admitted as a State formed from territory belonging to the United States, for the very purpose of committing the nation to that theory. Its annexation was the prologue, as the Mexican war was the first act in the secession drama, and as the epilogue is the suppression of the rebellion on Texan soil. Texas is an exceptional case, and forms no precedent, and cannot be adduced ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... land. And there 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 a view of examining ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... could be directed merely to arrange their own groups, choose the scenes they want to offer, and to prepare as they decide. In such a voluntary association some members of the class might be uninvited to speak with any group. These then might find their material in prologue, epilogue, chorus, soliloquy, or inserted songs. Nearly every play contains long passages requiring for their effect no second speaker. Shakespeare's plays contain much such material. All the songs from a play would constitute a delightful offering. Nothing in all the acted portion of Henry ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... the Epilogue of the Tragedy of Errors appear. The despatches, with the memorandum "not necessarily for publication," were published in full, as well as the "Secret Orders" given to Warren at Springfield, which were its Prologue. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... 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
... 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 "corner-stone of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... book by an author who must call herself a veteran should be taken up by readers of a younger generation, they are begged to consider the first few chapters as a sort of prologue, introduced for the sake of those of elder years, who were kind enough to be interested in the domestic politics of the Mohuns ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... journal of August 8, 1859: "We passed my old acquaintance, Dumbarton castle, I remembered my first visit to Dumbarton, and the old minister, who insisted on our eating a bit of cake with him, and said a grace over it which might have been prologue to a dinner of the Fishmongers' Company, or the Grocers' Company."] I think, with all the love and reverence with which your uncle regarded his father's memory, there mingled a shade of bitterness that he had not met quite ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Sir Humphry Davy was the creator of electro-chemistry—that he was the inventer of the safety-lamp; but few are aware that he was also a poet, and that the chemist wrote the prologue to the Honey Moon. We knew that he was skilful in angling, for he was the author of Salmonia; but we did not know that he was the original Green Man, and went a-fishing in a green dress, with a broad-brimmed green hat stuck with artificial flies, and being, in short, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... minutest detail. Unhampered by historical tradition, the author here expatiates with absolute freedom in his proper element. All that has hitherto been said about the king on the basis of the older source is by means of additions and omissions fashioned into what shall serve as a mere prologue to the proper work of his life, which is now described thoroughly con amore. He himself unfortunately has not been allowed to build the house, having shed much blood and carried on great wars (xxii. 8, xxviii. 3), but he yet in the last year of ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... all my heart. Come, come, where's the gentleman who speaks the prologue? This prologue, Mr Fustian, was given me by a friend, who does not care to own it till he tries whether it ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... 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
... twenty years Threlfall Tower became the scene of another drama, whereof what has been told so far is but the prologue. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Wine requires no Bush, they say, And I, No Prologue such a Play: The Makers therefore did forbeare To have that Grace prefixed here. But cease here (Censure) least the Buyer Hold thee in this a vaine Supplyer. My office is to set it forth When Fame applauds ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... In the latter case, the cry of persecution that was instantly raised had much to do with Mr. Polk's almost immediate election to the Governorship of his State, and his subsequent elevation to the Presidency. The parallel incident in Mr. Reed's career, however, failed to prove "the prologue ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... scenery is good, it is difficult, perhaps to single out one set for especial praise; but my advice is, on no account miss the Second Scene of the Prologue, "on the Battlements of a Castle in Normandy," painted by W. TELBIN. "Rosamond's Bower," by HAWES CRAVEN, is equally perfect in another and of course totally distinct line. To pronounce upon Professor STANFORD'S music when "the play's the thing" is impossible. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... the period in which he lived. All of these romances possess their peculiar merit, and will doubtless always be considered valuable, and be read as faithful pictures of scenes and habits which now no longer exist. In the prologue, the author states that his principal motive for publishing a work written in so strange a language was his observing the damage which resulted from an ignorance of the Germania, especially to the judges and ministers of justice, whose charge ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... which was rechristened Remorse, and accepted at last, upon Byron's recommendation, by the committee of Drury Lane Theatre, the playhouse at whose doors it had knocked vainly fifteen years before it was performed there for the first time on the 23d of January 1813. The prologue and epilogue, without which in those times no gentleman's drama was accounted complete, was written, the former by Charles Lamb, the latter by the author himself. It obtained a brilliant success on its first representation, and was honoured with what was in those days regarded ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Sheridan reproduced Cato, Wignell, who acted "Porcius," omitted the prologue, and began at once with the lines, "The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers...." "The prologue! the prologue!" shouted the audience; and Wignell went on in the same tone, as if continuing ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 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 Sage, ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... who wanted it for a heigh tener; but their maxim was, that it was an impertinent mixture, and dashed the cup so as to spoil the sincere draught of pleasure; they considered it accordingly as their mortal enemy, and gave it no quarter wherever they met with it. This was a prologue not unworthy ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Judith. Thy specious prologue means no good, I trow. Thou wert to tell me wherefore for five days We may pretend to be God's people still; Why thou didst not make us over to death Soon as the folk ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... July 2 Production of Frank von der Stucken's symphonic festival prologue, "Pax, Triumphans," at a Saengerfest ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... Mrs. Bracegirdle and their following to Lincoln's Inn Fields, chose the tragedy to reopen Drury Lane. The Moor was played by George Powell, a vigorous and passionate actor, who also spoke a new prologue written for the nonce by Cibber, then a mere struggler in the ranks. Colley's verses were accepted at the eleventh hour in default of better, and he tells us how chagrined he was not to be allowed to deliver them in person. The house was very full the first day, but on the morrow ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn |
