r to desire
Pardon for what's amiss;

and as Theseus states the matter in "The Midsummer Night's Dream:" "No
epilogue, I pray you, for your play needs no excuse." Sometimes a sort
of bluntness of speech was affected, as in the epilogue to one of
Beaumont and Fletcher's comedies:

Why there should be an epilogue to a play
I know no cause. The old and usual way
For which they were made was to entreat the grace
Of such as were spectators. In this place
And time, 'tis to no purpose; for I know,
What you resolve already to bestow
Will not be altered, whatsoe'er I say
In the behalf of us, and of the play;
Only to quit our doubts, if you think fit,
You may or cry it up or silence it.

It was in order, no doubt, the more to conciliate the audience that
epilogues assumed, oftentimes, a playfulness of tone that would
scarcely have been tolerated in the case of prologues. The delivery of
an epilogue by a woman (i.e. by a boy playing the part of a woman) was
clearly unusual at the time of the first performance of "As You Like
It." "It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue," says
Rosalind; "but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the
prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a
good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes;
and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues." There
can be little doubt that all Shakespeare's plays were originally
followed by epilogues, although but very few of these have been
preserved. The only one that seems deficient in dignity, and therefore
appropriateness, is that above quoted, spoken by the dancer, at the
conclusion of "The Second Part of King Henry IV." In no case is direct
appeal made, on the author's behalf, to the tender mercies of the
audience, although the epilogue to "King Henry VIII." seems to
entertain misgivings as to the fate of the play:

'Tis ten to one this play can never please
All that are here. Some come to take their ease,
An act or two; but those we fear,
We have frighted with our trumpets; so, 'tis clear
They'll say, 'tis naught: others to hear the city
Abused extremely and to cry--_that's witty!_
Which we have not done neither; that, I fear,
All the expected good we're like to hear
For this play at this time is only in
The merciful construction of good women:
For such a one we showed them.

Pro