PROLOGUE.'

In Troy, there lies the fcene. From ifles 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 conftruction. It appears to have been unknown to his affociates, Hemings and Condell, till after the first folio was almost printed off. On this fubject, indeed, (as I learn from Mr. Malone's Emendations and Additions, &c. fee Vol. III.) there feems 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 Creaffedaye, the fome of iii lb."

Lent unto harey cheattell, & Mr. Dickers, [Henry Chettle and mafter Deckar] in pte of payment of their booke called Troyelles&Creffeda, 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 fome of xxs." STEEVENS.

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

RITSON.

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

"His atyre was orgulous."

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

Have to the port of Athens fent their ships,
Fraught with the minifters and inftruments
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 ranfack Troy; within whofe ftrong immures
The ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen,

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

And the deep-drawing barks do there difgorge
Their warlike fraughtage: Now on Dardan plains
The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch
Their brave pavilions: Priam's fix-gated city,3
Dardan, and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Trojan,
And Antenorides, with maffy ftaples,
And correfponfive and fulfilling bolts,4
Sperr up the fons of Troy.5

3 Priam's fix-gated city, &c.] The names of the gates are here exhibited as in the old copy, for the reafon affigned by Dr. Farmer; except in the inftance 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 fenfe it is now obsolete. So, in Gower, De Confeffione Amantis, Lib. V. fol. 114: "A luftie maide, a fobre, a meke,

Again:

"Fulfilled of all curtofie."

r

Fulfilled of all unkindship." STEEVENS.

To be "fulfilled with grace and benediction" is ftill the language of our liturgy. BLACKSTONE.

5 Sperr up the fons of Troy.] [Old copy-Stirre.] This bas been a most miferably mangled paffage throughout all the editions; corrupted at once into falfe concord and false reasoning. Priam's fix-gated city ftirre up the fons of Troy? Here's a verb plural governed of a nominative fingular. But that is eafily remedied. The next queftion to be asked is, In what

Now expectation, tickling fkittish fpirits,
On one and other fide, Trojan and Greek,

fense a city, having fix ftrong gates, and thofe well barred and bolted, can be faid to fir up its inhabitants? unless they may be fuppofed to derive fome fpirit from the ftrength of their fortifications. But this could not be the poet's thought. He muft mean, I take it, that the Greeks had pitched their tents upon the plains before Troy; and that the Trojans were fecurely barricaded within the walls and gates of their city. This fenfe my correction restores. To. Sperre, or Spar, from the old Teutonick word Speren, fignifies to shut up, defend by bars, &c.

So, in Spenfer's Fairy Queen, Book V. c. 10: "The other that was entred, labour'd fast "To Sperre the gate" &c.

THEOBALD.

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

And in The Vifion of P. Plowman, it is said that a bl nd man "unfparryd 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 duft he makes in fetting them right again; much however to Mr. Heath's fatisfaction. Indeed the learning is modeftly withdrawn from the later editions, and we are quietly inftructed to read

"Dardan, and Thymbria, Ilia, Scea, 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 Shakfpeare, nor his editors:

"Therto his cyte | compaffed enuyrowne

"Had gates VI to entre into the towne:
"The firfte of all and ftrengeft eke with all,
"Largeft alfo and mofte 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 fuited
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 ftorye | lyke as it is founde,

Tymbria was named the feconde ;

"And the thyrde | called Helyas,

"The fourthe gate | hyghte alfo Cetheas;
"The fyfthe Trojana, | the fyxth Anthonydes,

66

Stronge and mighty | both in werre and pes."

Lond. Empr. by R. Pynfon, 1513, fol. B. II. ch. 11. The Troye Boke was fomewhat 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 flaine on both Sides Fourteene Hundred and Sixe Thousand, Fourfcore and Sixe Men. Fol. no date. This work Dr. Fuller, and feveral other criticks, have erroneously quoted as the original; and obferve, in confequence, that "if Chaucer's coin were of greater weight for deeper learning, Lydgate's were of a more refined standard for purer language: fo that one might mistake him for a modern writer."

FARMER.

On other occafions, in the course of this play, I fhall generally infert quotations from the Troye Booke modernized, as being the most intelligible of the two. STEEVENS.

6A prologue arm'd,] I come here to fpeak 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 fuited to the fubject, in a drefs of war, before a warlike play.

JOHNSON.

Motteux feems 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 fhould alarm the ftage."

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; ftarting thence away
To what may be digefted 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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-firftlings-] A fcriptural phrase, fignifying the first produce or offspring. So, in Genefis, iv. 4: " And Abel, he alfo brought of the firftlings of his flock." STEEVENS.