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The prologue tells how the experiment was expected to strike the public of that day: The Tragic Muse sublime delights to show Princes distrest and scenes of royal woe; In awful pomp majestic to relate The fall of nations or some hero's fate; That scepter'd chiefs may by example know The strange vicissitudes of things below.... Upon our stage indeed, with wished success, You've sometimes seen her in a humbler dress, Great only in distress.
Marie Antoinette's high mien in adversity, and the contrast between the dazzling splendour of her first years and the scenes of outrage and bloody death that made the climax of her fate, could not but strike the imaginations of men. Such contrasts are the very stuff of which Tragedy, the gorgeous muse with scepter'd pall, loves to weave her most imposing raiment.
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