OF THE PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM SHAKESPEARE TO DRYDEN BY G. S. B[ower] LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1884 PREFACE. THIS little volume contains the substance (considerably enlarged and carefully revised) of five articles contributed to a monthly periodical. Though the outcome of vacation moments, it will, I hope, be found to represent a thorough investigation of the subject, so far as it extends. I shall be well pleased, if the facts collected and opinions arrived at during my excursion through a not uninteresting by-way of literature should hereafter prove useful to writers undertaking more ambitious researches into the wider domains of dramatic or social history, and still more if they should succeed in affording occasional entertainment to the general reader. G. S. B. |