spero delivers the epilogue to "The Tempest;" and the concluding
lines of "The Midsummer Night's Dream," and of "All's Well that Ends
Well"--which are not described as epilogues, and should, perhaps,
rather be viewed as "tags"--are spoken by Puck and the King. The
epilogues to "King Henry V." and "Pericles" are of course spoken by
the Chorus and Gower, respectively, who, throughout those plays, have
favoured the spectators with much discourse and explanation. "Twelfth
Night" terminates with the clown's nonsense song, which may be an
addition due less to the dramatist than to the comic actor who first
played the part.

The epilogues of the Elizabethan stage, so far as they have come down
to us, are, as a rule, brief and discreet enough; but, after the
Restoration, epilogues acquired greater length and much more
impudence, to say the least of it, while they clearly had gained
importance in the consideration of the audience. And now it became the
custom to follow up a harrowing tragedy with a most broadly comic
epilogue. The heroine of the night--for the delivering of epilogues
now devolved frequently upon the actresses--who, but a few moments
before, had fallen a most miserable victim to the dagger or the bowl,
as the case might be, suddenly reappeared upon the stage, laughing,
alive, and, it may be said, kicking, and favoured the audience with an
address designed expressly, it would seem, so to make their cheeks
burn with blushes that their recent tears might the sooner be dried
up. It is difficult to conceive now that certain of the prologues and
epilogues of Dryden and his contemporaries could ever have been
delivered, at any time, upon any stage. Yet they were assuredly
spoken, and often by women, apparently to the complete satisfaction of
the playgoers of the time. But, concerning the scandalous condition of
the stage of the Restoration, there is no need to say anything
further. The ludicrous epilogue, which has been described as the
unnatural tacking of a comic tale to a tragical head, was certainly
popular, however, and long continued so. It was urged, "that the minds
of the audience must be refreshed, and gentlemen and ladies not sent
away to their own homes with too dismal and melancholy thoughts about
them." Certain numbers of "The Spectator" were expressly devoted to
the discussion of this subject, in the interest, it is now apparent,
of Ambrose Philips, who had brought upon the stage an adaptation of
Racine's