PROLOGUE.

In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece

The princes orgulous,' their high blood chaf'd,

1 I cannot regard this Prologue (which indeed is wanting in the quarto editions) as the work of Shakspeare; and perhaps the drama before us was not entirely of his construction. It appears to have been unknown to his associates, Hemings and Condell, till after the first folio was almost printed off. On this subject, indeed, (as I learn from Mr. Malone's Emendations and Additions, &c. see Vol. III.) there seems to have been a play anterior to the present one:

"Aprel 7, 1599. Lent unto Thomas Downton to lende unto Mr. Deckers, & harey cheattel, in earnest of ther boocke called Troyeles and Creassedaye, the some of iii lb."

"Lent unto harey cheattell, & Mr. Dickers, [Henry Chettle and master Deckar] in pte of payment of their booke called Troyelles & Cresseda, the 16 of Aprell, 1599, xxs."

"Lent unto Mr. Deckers and Mr. Chettel the 26 of maye, 1599, in earnest of a booke called Troylles and Creseda, the some of xxs." STEEVENS.

I conceive this Prologue to have been written, and the dialogue, in more than one place, interpolated by some Kyd or Marlowe of the time; who may have been paid for altering and amending one of Shakspeare's plays: a very extraordinary instance of our author's negligence, and the managers' taste!

RITSON.

The princes orgulous,] Orgulous, i. e. proud, disdainful. Orgueilleux, Fr. This word is used in the ancient romance of Richard Cueur de Lyon :

"His atyre was orgulous."

Again, in Froissart's Chronicle, Vol. II. p. 115, b: "--but they wyst nat how to passe ye ryver of Derne whiche was fell and orgulous at certayne tymes," &c. STEEVENS.

Have to the port of Athens sent their ships,
Fraught with the ministers and instruments
Of cruel war: Sixty and nine, that wore
Their crownets regal, from the Athenian bay
Put forth toward Phrygia: and their vow is made,
To ransack Troy; within whose strong immures
The ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen,

With wanton Paris sleeps; And that's the quarrel.
To Tenedos they come;

And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge
Their warlike fraughtage: Now on Dardan plains
The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch
Their brave pavilions: Priam's six-gated city,3
Dardan, and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Trojan,
And Antenorides, with massy staples,
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,*
Sperr up the sons of Troy.5

3

Priam's six-gated city, &c.] The names of the gates are here exhibited as in the old copy, for the reason assigned by Dr. Farmer; except in the instance of Antenorides, instead of which the old copy has Antenonydus. The quotation from Lydgate shows that was an error of the printer. MALOne.

✦ --fulfilling bolts,] To fulfill, in this place, means to fill till there be no room for more. In this sense it is now obsolete. So, in Gower, De Confessione Amantis, Lib. V. fol. 114: "A lustie maide, a sobre, a meke,

Again :

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Fulfilled of all curtosie."

"Fulfilled of all unkindship." STEEvens.

To be "fulfilled with grace and benediction" is still the language of our liturgy. BLACKSTone.

Sperr up the sons of Troy.] [Old copy-Stirre.] This has been a most miserably mangled passage throughout all the editions; corrupted at once into false concord and false reasoning. Priam's six-gated city stirre up the sons of Troy? Here's a verb plural governed of a nominative singular. But that is easily remedied. The next question to be asked is, In what

Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits,
On one and other side, Trojan and Greek,

sense a city, having six strong gates, and those well barred and bolted, can be said to stir up its inhabitants? unless they may be supposed to derive some spirit from the strength of their fortifications. But this could not be the poet's thought. He must mean, I take it, that the Greeks had pitched their tents upon the plains before Troy; and that the Trojans were securely barricaded within the walls and gates of their city. This sense my correction restores. To sperre, or spar, from the old Teutonick word Speren, signifies to shut up, defend by bars, &c.

So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, Book V. c. 10:

"The other that was entred, labour'd fast

"To sperre the gate" &c.

J

THEOBALD.

Again, in the romance of The Squhr of Low Degre: i it "Sperde with manie a dyvers pynne."

And in The Vision of P. Plowman, it is said that a blind man "unsparryd his eine."

Again, in Warner's Albion's England, 1602, Book II. ch. 12: "When chased home into his holdes, there sparred up

in gates."

Again, in the 2d Part of Bale's Actes of English Votaryes: "The dore thereof oft tymes opened and speared agayne." STEEVENS.

Mr. Theobald informs us that the very names of the gates of Troy have been barbarously demolished by the editors; and a deal of learned dust he makes in setting them right again; much however to Mr. Heath's satisfaction. Indeed the learning is modestly withdrawn from the later editions, and we are quietly instructed to read

"Dardan, and Thymbria, Ilia, Scæa, Trojan,

"And Antenorides."

But had he looked into the Troy Boke of Lydgate, instead of puzzling himself with Dares Phrygius, he would have found the horrid demolition to have been neither the work of Shakspeare, nor his editors:

"Therto his cyte | compassed enuyrowne

"Had gates VI to entre into the towne:
"The firste of all and strengest eke with all,
"Largest also and moste princypall,
"Of myghty byldyng | alone pereless,
"Was by the kinge called | Dardanydes ;

Sets all on hazard :-And hither am I come
A prologue arm'd, but not in confidence
Of author's pen, or actor's voice; but suited
In like conditions as our argument,-

To tell you, fair beholders, that our play
Leaps o'er the vaunt' and firstlings of those broils,

"And in storye | lyke as it is founde,

Tymbria was named the seconde;
"And the thyrde | called Helyas,

"The fourthe gate | hyghte also Cetheas;
"The fyfthe Trojana, the syxth Anthonydes,
"Stronge and mighty | both in werre and pes."

Lond. Empr. by R. Pynson, 1513, fol. B. II. ch. 11. The Troye Boke was somewhat modernized, and reduced into regular stanzas, about the beginning of the last century, under the name of, The Life and Death of Hector-who fought a Hundred mayne Battailes in open Field against the Grecians; wherein there were slaine on both Sides Fourteene Hundred and Sixe Thousand, Fourscore and Sixe Men. Fol. no date. This work Dr. Fuller, and several other criticks, have erroneously quoted as the original; and observe, in consequence, that "if Chaucer's coin were of greater weight for deeper learning, Lydgate's were of a more refined standard for purer language: so that one might mistake him for a modern writer."

FARMER.

On other occasions, in the course of this play, I shall generally insert quotations from the Troye Booke modernized, as being the most intelligible of the two. STEEVENS.

• A prologue arm'd,] I come here to speak the prologue, and come in armour; not defying the audience, in confidence of either the author's or actor's abilities, but merely in a character suited to the subject, in a dress of war, before a warlike play.

JOHNSON, Motteux seems to have borrowed this idea in his Prologue to Farquhar's Twin Rivals:

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"With drums and trumpets in this warring age,
"A martial prologue should alarm the stage.'

STEEVENS.

the vaunt-] i. e. the avant, what went before. So, in King Lear:

"Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts."

STEEVENS,

'Ginning in the middle; starting thence away
To what may be digested in a play.

Like, or find fault; do as your pleasures are;
Now good, or bad, 'tis but the chance of war.

The vaunt is the vanguard, called, in our author's time, the vaunt-guard. PERCY.

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-firstlings-] A scriptural phrase, signifying the first produce or offspring. So, in Genesis, iv. 4: "And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock." STEEvens. STEEVENS.