Letter last
Friday, in relation to the new Epilogue, he cannot take it amiss, if I
now publish another, which I have just received from a Gentleman who
does not agree with him in his Sentiments upon that Matter.

SIR,

I am amazed to find an Epilogue attacked in your last Fridays Paper,
which has been so generally applauded by the Town, and receiv'd such
Honours as were never before given to any in an English Theatre.

The Audience would not permit Mrs. Oldfield to go off the Stage the
first Night, till she had repeated it twice; the second Night the
Noise of Ancoras was as loud as before, and she was again obliged to
speak it twice: the third Night it was still called for a second time;
and, in short, contrary to all other Epilogues, which are dropt after
the third Representation of the Play, this has already been repeated
nine times.

I must own I am the more surprized to find this Censure in Opposition
to the whole Town, in a Paper which has hitherto been famous for the
Candour of its Criticisms.

I can by no means allow your melancholy Correspondent, that the new
Epilogue is unnatural because it is gay. If I had a mind to be
learned, I could tell him that the Prologue and Epilogue were real
Parts of the ancient Tragedy; but every one knows that on the British
Stage they are distinct Performances by themselves, Pieces entirely
detached from the Play, and no way essential to it.

The moment the Play ends, Mrs. Oldfield is no more Andromache, but
Mrs. Oldfield; and tho the Poet had left Andromache stone-dead upon
the Stage, as your ingenious Correspondent phrases it, Mrs. Oldfield
might still have spoke a merry Epilogue. We have an Instance of this
in a Tragedy [2] where there is not only a Death but a Martyrdom. St.
Catherine was there personated by Nell Gwin; she lies stone dead upon
the Stage, but upon those Gentlemen's offering to remove her Body,
whose Business it is to carry off the Slain in our English Tragedies,
she breaks out into that abrupt Beginning of what was a very
ludicrous, but at the same time thought a very good Epilogue.

Hold, are you mad? you damn'd confounded Dog,
I am to rise and speak the Epilogue.

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
Epilo