"'Hold: are you mad? you damn'd confounded dog! I am to rise and speak the epilogue.'
[Footnote A: "Tyrannic Love; or, the Royal Martyr." By Dryden.]
"This diverting manner was always practised by Mr. Dryden, who, if he was not the best writer of tragedies in his time, was allowed by every one to have the happiest turn for a prologue or an epilogue. The epilogues to 'Cleomenes,' 'Don Sebastian,' the 'Duke of Guise,' 'Aurengezebe,' and 'Love Triumphant,' are all precedents of this nature.
"I might further justify this practice by that excellent epilogue which was spoken, a few years since, after the tragedy of 'Phaedra and Hippolitus;'[A] with a great many others, in which the authors have endeavoured to make the audience merry. If they have not all succeeded so well as the writer of this, they have however shown that it was not for want of good will.
"I must further observe, that the gaiety of it may be still the more proper, as it is at the end of a French play; since every one knows that nation, who are generally esteemed to have as polite a taste as any in Europe, always close their tragic entertainments with what they call a _petite pièce_, which is purposely designed to raise mirth, and send away the audience well pleased. The same person who has supported the chief character in the tragedy, very often plays the principal part in the _petite pièce_; so that I have myself seen, at Paris, Orestes and Lubin acted the same night by the same man.
"Tragi-comedy, indeed, you have yourself, in a former speculation, found fault with very justly, because it breaks the tide of the passions, while they are yet flowing; but this is nothing at all to the present case, where they have already had their full course.
"As the new epilogue is written conformably to the practice of our best poets, so it is not such an one, which, as the Duke of Buckingham says in his 'Rehearsal,' might serve for any other play; but wholly rises out of the occurrences of the piece it was composed for.
"The only reason your mournful correspondent gives against this facetious epilogue, as he calls it, is, that he has a mind to go home melancholy. I wish the gentleman may not be more grave than wise. For my own part, I must confess, I think it very sufficient to have the anguish of a fictitious piece remain upon me while it is representing; but I love to be sent home to bed in a good humour. If Physibulus is however resolved to be inconsolable, and not to have his tears dried up, he need only continue his old custom, and when he has had his half-crown's worth of sorrow, slink out before the epilogue begins.