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PROLOGUE.

Written by GEORGE COLMAN.

Spoken by Mr. PALMER.

Happy the soaring bard who boldly wooes,
And wins the favour of, the tragic muse!
He from the grave may call the mighty dead,
In buskins and blank verse the stage to tread;
On Pompeys and old Cæsars rise to fame,
And join the poet's to th' historian's name.
The comick wit, alas! whose eagle eyes
Pierce Nature thro', and mock the time's disguise,
Whose pencil living follies brings to view,
Survives those follies, and his portraits too;
Like star-gazers, deplores his luckless fate,
For last year's Almanacks are out of date.

'The Fox, the Alchemist, the Silent Woman,
Done by Ben Jonson, are out-done by no man.'

Thus sung in rough, but panegyrick, rhimes,
The wits and criticks of our author's times.

But now we bring him forth with dread and doubt,
And fear his learned socks are quite worn out,
The subtle Alchemist grows obsolete,
And Drugger's humour scarcely keeps him sweet.
Tonight, if you would feast your eyes and ears,
Go back in fancy near two hundred years;
A play of Ruffs and Farthingales review,
Old English fashions, such as then were new!
Drive not Tom Otter's Bulls and Bears away;
Worse Bulls and Bears disgrace the present day.
On fair Collegiates let no critick frown!

A Ladies' Club still holds its rank in town.
If modern Cooks, who nightly treat the pit,
Do not quite cloy and surfeit you with wit,
From the old kitchen please to pick a bit!
If once, with hearty stomachs to regale
On old Ben Jonson's fare, tho' somewhat stale,
A meal on Bobadil you deign'd to make,
Take Epicane for his and Kitely's sake!

Within the play Colman made many changes. Act 5. 2, in which Dauphine is interviewed by the collegiates, is cut out; the last scenes of this act are much abbreviated; and the tone of the dénouement is altered by mollifying Dauphine's last speech to his uncle, and cutting down

True-wit's final remarks. Single speeches are omitted: e. g. 3. 5. 40 ff. for their coarseness; 2. 3 because their interest is obsolete. Most of the oaths are omitted, while those remaining are altered to modern by-words or interjections. Archaic words and Jonsonian coinings lose their place: e. g. Stoicitie, 1. 1. 66; a decameron of sport, 1. 3 14; wind-sucker, 1. 4. 77, becomes bellows-blower. Local allusions are modernized: for him o' the sadlers horse, 4. 1. 25, Colman substitutes St. George o' horseback at the door of an alehouse. In short, Colman rehashed what was for the most part acceptable meat, and served a warmed-over meal. The Jacobean flavor is gone.

In the adaptation of the play made by Mrs. Richardson, and presented at Harvard in 1895, a different method is used for the most part. To be sure, cuts in Act 5 occur at almost the same points as in Colman's arrangement: the confession drawn from La-Foole and Daw is omitted, Dauphine's dialogue with the collegiates shortened, and the discussion concerning divorce in the third scene carried only as far as the impediment publice honestas, 5. 3. 158. Act 2. 6 is omitted. But as for archaisms, allusions, and colloquialisms, they are left as Jonson used them. While Colman makes every effort to give the play the contemporary tone and color of 'the town', here the audience is asked to make the concession, to change its usual point of view, and to enjoy the whole historically.

There can be no doubt as to the superiority of the latter method and its result. It rightly yields to the requirements of increased refinement in manners, while it preserves the integrity of the play.

3. Translations 1.

The earliest reference to a translation of Epicone is by Richard Twiss in Travels through Portugal and Spain (London, 1775), Appendix, p. 457: 'In 1769, a Portuguese

1 Cf. Gifford's note, Jonson's Works 3. 327.

translation, in three acts, in prose, was published, of Ben Johnson's Epicane: it was acted at Lisbon, though miserably disfigured.' This I have not seen.

In 1800 Ludwig Tieck printed at Jena his Epicone, oder das stumme Mädchen in his Poetisches Journal, Erster Jahrgang, zweites Stück, pp. 249-458. Tieck altered this version somewhat, and included it in his Schriften (Berlin, 1829) 12. 155-354 under the title Epicone, oder Das Stille Frauenzimmer, Ein Lustspiel in fünf Akten von Ben Jonson. Uebersetzt 1800. The alterations in the reprint are of minor importance: the name of the comedy is slightly changed; True-wit is called in the Journal, Treuwitz, and in the Schriften, Gutwitz; some speeches translated in the first are omitted in the second, and some omitted in the first are left in the second. The Schriften reprint is freer and more felicitous in the rendering of English idioms than the first, but even then at times the exact meaning evades the translator, or the point of a jest is blunted. Compare 1. 1. 128: 'Well said, my Truewit,' 'Gut gesagt, mein Treuwitz,' 'Brav, Gutwitz'; 1.1. 134: ‘O Prodigie!' 'O verflucht!' 'O abscheulich!' 1. 1. 184: 'A good wag,' 'Ein herrlicher Narr,' 'Brav, Kind.' Tieck used Whalley's reading, 'When the rest were quiet' for quit, 1. 1. 161, and translates' alle Übrigen feierten'. He translates 'ridiculous acts and moniments', 1. 2. 9, 'lächerlichen Dinge und Begebenheiten '.

Two volumes of plays were translated from Gifford's edition into French: Ben Jonson, traduit par Ernest Lafond: précédée d'une notice sur la vie et les œuvres de Ben Jonson. Paris, 1863. Épicène ou La Femme Silencieuse, T. 2. 183-370, is a faithful and spirited translation, in which but few examples of inadequate rendering may be found. Commentaire is a questionable translation of comment 5. 4. 55, and race maudite inexact for mankind generation, 5. 4. 22.

B. DATE AND STAGE-HISTORY.

The title-page of the Folio of 1616 informs the reader that Epicone was 'Acted in the yeere 1609 by the Children of her Maiesties Revells.' However, since the folio dates are all reckoned old style, and since there is other testimony as to the season of the year in which the play appeared, we must list Epicone as a production of 1610. From the reference in PROL. 24, we know that the comedy appeared at the Whitefriars Theatre; from the statement of the title-page, and the appended list of actors, we know that the company was the Queen's Revel boys. Now, it was on January 4, 160, that Whitefriars Theatre was leased by Philip Rossiter and several other men; very soon after, the boys' company was permanently established there. So Epicone must have been presented some time subsequent to the leasing of the theatre, Jan. 4, and previous to the opening of the new year on March 25. There is no internal evidence pointing to January, February, or March as the month of its appearance. The various references to the recent plague are accounted for by the revival of 'the sickness' in September, 1609.

Epicone, then, was written during the latter part of 1609, was presented at Whitefriars by the Children of her Majesty's Revels before March 25, 1610, and was entered for publication in the Stationers' Registers, Sept. 10, 1610, at least half a year after its first appearance on the stage.

The success of the play was early assured, the lightness of the comedy effecting an instant and enduring popularity. Beaumont has left a commendatory stanza1. Some anonymous individual early formed the jingling rhyme which makes Epicane one of the trio of Jonson's master

1 Cf. note, p. 129.

pieces, and which Swinburne designates as a 'foolish and famous couplet':

The Fox, the Alchemist, and Silent Woman,

Done by Ben Jonson, and outdone by no man.

Jonson told Drummond1 a joke at the expense of his comedy, which Gifford with strange lack of humor refuses to credit: 'When his play of a Silent Woman was first acted, ther was found verses after on the stage against him, concluding that that play was well named the Silent Woman, ther never was one man to say Plaudite to it.'

When the theatres reopened after the Restoration Epicone came back at once to the stage, and was immensely popular. It exactly suited an unpoetic generation, to whom a clever plot and busy wit appealed more than romantic story or character deeply conceived; a superficial generation, whose demand for external perfection was met by admirable technique, and whose taste for the classics was amply gratified in abundant quotation and reference; a generation whose ideal drama must possess

The unities of Action, Place, and Time,

The scene unbroken, and a mingled chime
Of Jonson's humour and Corneille's rhyme 2.

The actors interpreted it, doubtless, with all the gaiety that characterizes the reactionary period, and Jonson's fun fell upon listeners who laughed at the broadest jests, shrank from none of the coarseness, and felt no satiric sting in character-drawing or dialogue. Fortunately for those interested in the minutiae of its history, Pepys cared enough for Epicane to go often to see it, and to record his impressions and those of others. He even makes a memorandum concerning the Dukes of York and Gloucester, June 6, 1660: 'The two Dukes do haunt the Park much, and they were at a play, Madame Epicene, the other day.' Jan. 7, 1661, Pepys saw Kinaston Conv., vol. 9. 417 ff. Prologue to The Maiden Queen.

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