and because he was unwilling to add another leaf.  In addition to those mentioned above, the prologues to “King Henry VIII.,” “Troilus and Cressida,” and “Romeo and Juliet” are extant, and have the peculiarity of informing the audience, after the old classical fashion, something as to the nature of the entertainment to be set before them.  To the tragedy of “The Murder of Gonzago,” contained in “Hamlet,” Shakespeare, no doubt, recognising established usage, provided the prologue: 

    For us and for our tragedy
    Here stooping to your clemency,
    We beg your hearing patiently.

Steele, writing in The Guardian, in 1713, expresses much concern for the death of Mr. Peer, of the Theatre Royal, “who was an actor at the Restoration, and took his theatrical degree with Betterton, Kynaston, and Harris.”  Mr. Peer, it seems, especially distinguished himself in two characters, “which no man ever could touch but himself.”  One of these was the Apothecary in “Caius Marius,” Otway’s wretched adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet;” the other was the speaker of the prologue to the play in “Hamlet.”  It is plain that Mr. Peer’s professional rank was not high; for these characters are not usually undertaken by performers of note.  Steele admits that Peer’s eminence lay in a narrow compass, and to that attributes “the enlargement of his sphere of action” by his employment as property-man in addition to his histrionic duties.  Peer, however, is described as delivering the three lines of prologue “better than any man else in the world,” and with “universal applause.”  He spoke “with such an air as represented that he was an actor and with such an inferior manner as only acting an actor, as made the others on the stage appear real great persons and not representatives.  This was a nicety in acting that none but the most subtle player could so much as conceive.”  It is conceivable, however, that some of this subtlety existed rather in the fancy of the critic than in the method of the player.  This story of Mr. Peer is hardly to be equalled; yet Davies relates of Boheme, the actor, that when, upon his first appearance upon the stage, he played with some “itinerants” at Stratford-le-Bow, his feeling but simple manner of delivering Francisco’s short speech in “Hamlet”—­

    For this relief much thanks:  ’tis bitter cold,
    And I am sick at heart—­

at once roused the audience to a sense of his merits.  “His salary was immediately increased by the manager; and he proved afterwards a great ornament of the stage.”

The delivery of a prologue by an actress—­that is to say, of course, by a boy in female dress, personating the character of a woman—­appears to have been an unusual proceeding upon the Elizabethan stage.  Mr. Collier has noted instances, however.  In the case of the prologue to “Every Woman in her Humour,” 1609, spoken by the heroine Flavia, “Enter Flavia as a Prologue,” runs the stage direction; and she begins—­“Gentles of both sexes and of all sorts, I am sent to bid ye welcome.  I am but instead of a prologue, for a she prologue is as rare as a usurer’s alms.”  And the prologue to Shirley’s “Coronation,” 1640, was also delivered by one of the representatives of female character.  A passage is worth quoting, for its description of ordinary prologue-speaking at this time: