ide," which Taglioni made so famous.

It is odd to hear of an actor anxious for "goose," and disappointed at
not obtaining it. Yet something like this happened once during the
O.P. riots. Making sure that there would be a disturbance in the
theatre, Mr. Murray, one of John Kemble's company, thought it needless
to commit his part to memory; he was so certain that he should not be
listened to. But the uproar suddenly ceased; there was a lull in the
storm. The actor bowed, stammered, stared, and was what is called in
the language of the theatre "dead stuck." However, his mind was soon
at ease; to do him justice the audience soon hissed him to his heart's
content, and perhaps even in excess of that measure. Subsequently he
resolved, riot or no riot, to learn something of his part.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

EPILOGUES.

Epilogues went out of fashion with pigtails, the public having at last
decided that neither of these appendages was really necessary or
particularly ornamental; but a considerable time elapsed before this
opinion was definitively arrived at. The old English moralities or
moral plays usually concluded, as Mr. Payne Collier notes, with an
epilogue in which prayers were offered up by the actors for the king,
queen, clergy, and sometimes for the commons; the latest instance of
this practice being the epilogue to a play of 1619, "Two Wise Men and
All the Rest Fools." "It resteth now," says the "epiloguiser," "that
we render you very humble and hearty thanks, and that all our hearts
pray for the king and his family's enduring happiness, and our
country's perpetual welfare. _Si placet, plaudite._" So also the
dancer entrusted with the delivery of the epilogue to Shakespeare's
"Second Part of King Henry IV." may be understood as referring to this
matter, in the concluding words of his address: "My tongue is weary;
when my legs are too, I will bid you good-night: and so kneel down
before you--but, indeed, to pray for the queen." And to this old
custom of loyal prayer for the reigning sovereign has been traced the
addition of the words, "Vivat rex," or "Vivat regina," which were wont
to appear in the playbills, until quite recent times, when our
programmes became the advertising _media_ of the perfumers.

The main object of the epilogue, however, was as Massinger has
expressed it in the concluding address of his comedy, "Believe as you
List"--

The end of epilogues is to inquire
The censure of the play, o