With a starch’d face, and supple leg hath spoke
Before the plays the twelvemonth.
The prologue appears to be a composite figure, partly representing the poet, and deriving also in part from the presenter of dumb-shows, in part from the Chorus of neo-classic tragedy, and in part from the ‘exposytour in doctorys wede’, developed by miracle-plays and moralities out of the Augustine of the Prophetae; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 52, 72, 153, 417, 423, 426, 429, 448; F. A. Foster in E. S. xliv. 13; F. Lüders, Prolog und Epilog bei Shakespeare (Sh.-Jahrbuch, v. 274); Creizenach, 275. The short dramatic inductions, often introducing actors in propria persona, favoured by Jonson, Marston, and others about the beginning of the seventeenth century, attempt to give new life to a waning convention.
[1727] Cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 141, 156. Drums and trumpets were used as advertisements in the city at any rate until 1587 (App. C, Nos. xvii, xxxi, xxxviii), and were traditional in the provinces up to the middle of the eighteenth century (Lawrence, ii. 58). Parolles tells us (All’s Well, IV. iii. 298) that Captain Dumain ‘has led the drum before the English tragedians’. Henslowe (i. 118) bought a drum and two trumpets for the Admiral’s ‘when to go into the contry’ in Feb. 1600. In Histriomastix, ii. 80, ‘One of them steppes on the Crosse, and cryes, A Play’.
[1728] H. Moseley, pref. verses to F1 of Beaumont and Fletcher (1647):
As after th’ Epilogue there comes some one
To tell spectators what shall next be shown;
So here am I.
This is, of course, only Caroline evidence; for the continuance of the practice after the Restoration, cf. Lawrence, ii. 187.
[1729] Grindal to Cecil (1564, App. D, No. xv), ‘these Histriones, common playours who now daylye, butt speciallye on holydayes, sett vp bylles’; Merry Tales, &c. (1567; cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Vennar), ‘billes ... vpon postes about London’; Northbrooke (1577, App. C, No. xvi), ‘they use to set vp their billes vpon postes certain dayes before’; Gosson, S. A. (1579, App. C, No. xxii), 44, ‘If players can ... proclame it in their billes, and make it good in theaters’; Rankins (1587, App. C, No. xxxviii), ‘sticking of their bills in London’; Marston, Scourge of Villainy (Bullen, iii. 302), ‘Go read each post, view what is play’d to-day’; Histriomastix, v. 69, ‘Text-bills must now be turned to iron bills’; Warning for Fair Women, (> 1599):