a good play needs no epilogue.  Yet to good wine they do use good bushes; and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues.”  There can be little doubt that all Shakespeare’s plays were originally followed by epilogues, although but very few of these have been preserved.  The only one that seems deficient in dignity, and therefore appropriateness, is that above quoted, spoken by the dancer, at the conclusion of “The Second Part of King Henry IV.”  In no case is direct appeal made, on the author’s behalf, to the tender mercies of the audience, although the epilogue to “King Henry VIII.” seems to entertain misgivings as to the fate of the play: 

    ’Tis ten to one this play can never please
    All that are here.  Some come to take their ease,
    An act or two; but those we fear,
    We have frighted with our trumpets; so, ’tis clear
    They’ll say, ’tis naught:  others to hear the city
    Abused extremely and to cry—­that’s witty!
    Which we have not done neither; that, I fear,
    All the expected good we’re like to hear
    For this play at this time is only in
    The merciful construction of good women: 
    For such a one we showed them.

Prospero delivers the epilogue to “The Tempest;” and the concluding lines of “The Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and of “All’s Well that Ends Well”—­which are not described as epilogues, and should, perhaps, rather be viewed as “tags”—­are spoken by Puck and the King.  The epilogues to “King Henry V.” and “Pericles” are of course spoken by the Chorus and Gower, respectively, who, throughout those plays, have favoured the spectators with much discourse and explanation.  “Twelfth Night” terminates with the clown’s nonsense song, which may be an addition due less to the dramatist than to the comic actor who first played the part.

The epilogues of the Elizabethan stage, so far as they have come down to us, are, as a rule, brief and discreet enough; but, after the Restoration, epilogues acquired greater length and much more impudence, to say the least of it, while they clearly had gained importance in the consideration of the audience.  And now it became the custom to follow up a harrowing tragedy with a most broadly comic epilogue.  The heroine of the night—­for the delivering of epilogues now devolved frequently upon the actresses—­who, but a few moments before, had fallen a most miserable victim to the dagger or the bowl, as the case might be, suddenly reappeared upon the stage, laughing, alive, and, it may be said, kicking, and favoured the audience with an address designed expressly, it would seem, so to make their cheeks burn with blushes that their recent tears might the sooner be dried up.  It is difficult to conceive now that certain of the prologues and epilogues of Dryden and his contemporaries could ever have been delivered, at any time, upon any stage.  Yet they were assuredly spoken, and often by women, apparently to the complete satisfaction