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EPILOGUE

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Originally appearing in Volume V09, Page 694 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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EPILOGUE . The appendix or supplement to a See also:

literary See also:work, and in particular to a See also:drama in See also:verse, is called an epilogue, from kLXoyos, the name given by the Greeks to the peroration of a speech. As we read in See also:Shakespeare's Midsummer See also:Night's See also:Dream, the epilogue was generally treated as the See also:apology for a See also:play; it was a final See also:appeal made to encourage the See also:good-nature of the audiences, and to deprecate attack. The epilogue should See also:form no See also:part of the work to which it is attached, but should be See also:independent of it; it should be treated as a sort of commentary. Sometimes it adds further See also:information with regard to what has been See also:left imperfectly concluded in the work itself. For instance, in the See also:case of a play, the epilogue will occasionally tell us what became of the characters after the See also:action closed; but this is irregular and unusual, and the epilogue is usually no more than a graceful way of dismissing the See also:audience. Among the ancients the form was not cultivated, further than that the See also:leader of the See also:chorus or the last See also:speaker advanced and. said Vos valete, et plaudite, cives "—" Good-bye, citizens, and we See also:hope you are pleased." Sometimes this See also:formula was reduced to the one word, " Plaudite ! " The epilogue as a literary See also:species is almost entirely confined to See also:England, and it does not occur in the earliest See also:English plays. It is rare in Shakespeare, but See also:Ben See also:Jonson made it a particular feature of his drama, and may almost be said to have invented the tradition of its See also:regular use. He employed the epilogue for two purposes, either to assert the merit of the play or to deprecate censure of its defects. In the former case, as in Cynthia's See also:Revels (i600), the actor went off, and immediately carne on again saying: " Gentles, be't known to you, since I went in I am turned rhymer, and do thus begin:—The author (jealous how your sense See also:cloth take His travails) hath enjoined me to make Some See also:short and ceremonious epilogue," and then explained to the audience what an exremely interesting play it had been. In the second case, when the author was less confident, his epilogue took a humbler form, as in the See also:comedy of Volpone (16os), where the actor said: " The seasoning of a play is the See also:applause.

Now, as the See also:

Fox be punished by the See also:laws, He yet doth hope, there is no suffering due For any fact which he hath done 'gainst you. If there be, censure him; here he doubtful stands: If not, fare jovially and clap your hands." See also:Beaumont and See also:Fletcher used the epilogue sparingly, but after their See also:day it came more and more into See also:vogue, and the form was almost invariably that which Ben Jonson had brought into See also:fashion, namely, the short See also:complete piece in heroic couplets. The hey-day of the epilogue, however, was the Restoration, and from 166o to the decline of the drama in the reign of See also:Queen See also:Anne scarcely a play, serious or comic, was produced on the See also:London See also:stage without a See also:prologue and an epilogue. These were almost always in verse, even if the play itself was in the roughest See also:prose, and they were intended to impart a certain literary finish to the piece. These Restoration epilogues were often very elaborate essays or satires, and were by no means confined to the subject of the preceding play. They dealt with fashions, or politics, or See also:criticism. The prologues and epilogues of See also:Dryden are often brilliantly finished exercises in literary polemic. It became the See also:custom for playwrights to ask their See also:friends to write these poems for them, and the publishers would even come to a prominent poet and ask him to See also:supply one for a See also:fee. It gives us an See also:idea of the seriousness with which the epilogue was treated that Dryden originally published his valuable " See also:Defence of the Epilogue; or An See also:Essay on the Dramatic See also:Poetry of the Last See also:Age " (1672) as a defence of the epilogue which he had written for The See also:Conquest of See also:Granada. In See also:France the custom of reciting dramatic epilogues has never prevailed. See also:French criticism gives the name to such adieux to the public, at the See also:close of a non-dramatic work, as are reserved by La See also:Fontaine for certain See also:critical points in the "Fables." (E.

End of Article: EPILOGUE

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