United States or Myanmar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"No, 'tis but the prologue," corrected Mr. Morris, "and the play itself is like enough to be a tragedy, I think," he added, in a low voice, to Calvert. "And here are the King and Queen at last," cried Madame de St. André, as a great cheering went up.
The prologue, then, points to sorrow and trouble, rightly accepted, as one chief means by which we acquire heavenly Wisdom. Griefs and pains are not tokens of anger, nor punishments of sin, but love-gifts meant to help to the acquisition of wisdom. They do not come because the sufferers are wicked, but in order to make them good or better. Tempests are meant to blow us into port.
Again, it is virtually certain that the poem of the "Canterbury Tales" was left in an unfinished and partially unconnected condition, and it is altogether uncertain whether Chaucer had finally determined upon maintaining or modifying the scheme originally indicated by him in the "Prologue."
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 connection there was between: "These dim blown birds beneath an alien sky." He mooned along in this fashion, a fashion in which his bushmen friends would not have known him, until his host entered.
In Brand, for example, through the stage directions and the utterance of the persons, we are indirectly made aware of the control exerted by the physical background of the action; in the Greek drama we learn this from the Chorus and the Prologue. There is an almost universal feeling, expressed in many common phrases, that prose literature is not one of the fine arts.
Here a grand ovation was given to General Washington, "Eugenie," a play of Beaumarchais, being acted, with a fine patriotic prologue. The young women were furbishing up their neglected French, or studying it anew, and the French minister was paid all the honors of the town. The affection and gratitude shown the French allies were one of the features of the winter.
For you are my aunt whatever you may say," was Ida May's prologue. "And you are my uncle," she added, her greenish-brown eyes flashing a glance at the grimly observant captain. "I must say it's pretty shabby treatment I've got from you so far. But I don't blame you not at all. I blame that girl and Tunis Latham."
Some have detected it in the prologue, others in the opening lines of the first Satire, others, relying on a story that Cornutus made him alter the line "Auriculas asini Mida rex habet," to quis non habet? have supposed that the satire lies there. But satire so veiled is worthless.
When the exercise of the faculties is limited to considerations associated with the rare occurrence of a wedding or a death, intellectual activity is not great. Abstract reasoning is unknown; but a new objective fact connected with the environment is seized upon with great avidity. That shot was felt to be ominous. Was it the prologue to the tragedy? There was to be something more than that shot.
Apart from evidence to the contrary, there must be a presumption against the introduction of a new work which becomes at once a frequently quoted authority midway in the history of a school. But to keep to facts apart from presumptions. Irenaeus represents Ptolemaeus as quoting largely from the Prologue to the Gospel.
Word Of The Day