Since ’tis become the title of our play,
    A woman once in a Coronation may
    With pardon speak the prologue, give as free
    A welcome to the theatre, as he
    That with a little beard, a long black cloak,
    With a starched face and supple leg hath spoke
    Before the plays this twelvemonth.  Let me then
    Present a welcome to these gentlemen. 
    If you be kind and noble you will not
    Think the worse of me for my petticoat.

It would seem that impatience was sometimes expressed at the poetic prologues and lengthy Inductions of the dramatists.  The prologue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Woman Hater,” 1607, begins:  “Gentlemen, Inductions are out of date, and a prologue in verse is as stale as a black velvet cloak and a bay garland; therefore you have it in plain prose, thus——.”  But the alteration did not please, apparently; at any rate, upon a subsequent production of the play, the authors furnished it with a prologue in verse of the old-established pattern.

The Elizabethan dramatists often took occasion in their prologues to lecture the audience upon their conduct in the theatre, exhorting them to more seemly manners, and especially informing them that nothing of an indecorous nature would be presented upon the scene.  The prologue to “The Woman Hater,” above mentioned, pronounces “to the utter discomfort of all twopenny gallery men,” that there is no impropriety contained in the play, and bids them depart, if they have been looking for anything of the kind.  “Or if there be any lurking amongst you in corners,” it proceeds, “with table books who have some hope to find fit matter to feed his malice on, let them clasp them up and slink away, or stay and be converted.”  Of the play, it states:  “Some things in it you may meet with which are out of the common road:  a duke there is, and the scene lies in Italy, as those two things lightly we never miss.”  The audience, however, are warned not to expect claptraps, or personal satire.  “You shall not find in it the ordinary and overworn way of jesting at lords and courtiers and citizens, without taxation of any particular or new vice by them found out, but at the persons of them; such, he that made this, thinks vile, and for his own part vows that he never did think but that a lord, lord-born, might be a wise man, and a courtier an honest man.”  In the same way Shakespeare’s prologue to “Henry VIII.” welcomes those “that can pity,” and “such as give their money out of hope, they may believe.”  But they are plainly told they will be deceived who have come to hear a merry graceless play—­

    A noise of targets, or to see a fellow
    In a long motley coat guarded with yellow.

The prologue to Ben Jonson’s “Staple of News” entreats the audience to abstain from idle conversation, and to attend to his play, so that they may hear as well as see it.

                He’d have you wise,

Much rather by your ears than by your eyes;
And prays you’ll not prejudge his play for ill,
Because you mark it not and sit not still,
But have a longing to salute or talk.