1. Howard, Robert, The Great Favourite; or, The Duke of Lerma (In the Savoy [London]: H. Herringman, 1668)Google Scholar, n.p.

2. Eleanor [Nell] Gwyn (1651?–87) was a leading actress with the King's Company. She made her debut in the 1663–4 season and quickly rose to prominence for her ability to play witty heroines in comedy. She and Charles Hart, the leading man of the King's Company, were regularly cast as a romantic double act. She is most remembered today as Charles II's mistress, by whom she had two sons. She left the stage in 1671 but remained an important figure at court until her death in 1687.

3. Elizabeth Knipp (d. ca. 1682), an actress and singer with the King's Company from 1664, usually performed supporting roles as a confidante to the leading character in tragedy or as a flirt in comedy. Much of the information we have about her comes from Pepys's diary. She was probably the partner of comic actor Joseph Haines. Nothing more is heard of her after 1682.

4. Van Lennep, William, ed., The London Stage, vol. 1, 1660–1700 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960)Google Scholar, cxxxv.

5. When Charles II became king in 1660, he granted patents for two theatre companies: Thomas Killigrew held the patent for the King's Company and William Davenant the one for the Duke's Company. These were the only legitimate theatre companies in London; they were permitted to employ actors under whatever terms they desired and to build new theatres. Lively competition between the companies for audiences and repertoire ensued. However, by 1682, stymied by management mistakes and the loss of their theatre in a fire, the King's Company was barely viable, and the Duke's Company effectively took them over to form the United Company. The entrepreneur Christopher Rich bought a controlling share in the United Company, seeing the moneymaking opportunity in the combined patents. In 1695, faced with intermittent pay and poor working practices under Rich, the leading performers, headed by Thomas Betterton, Anne Bracegirdle, and Elizabeth Barry, left to set up a separate company, under a license from the Lord Chamberlain, that is usually called the Actor's Company. Those performers who chose to stay with Christopher Rich were known as the Patent Company.

6. Loewenstein, Joseph, “The Script in the Marketplace,” Representations 12 (1985): 101–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 102.

7. Bruster, Douglas and Weimann, Robert, Prologues to Shakespeare's Theatre: Performance and Liminality in Early Modern Drama (Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Stern, Tiffany, “‘A Small-Beer Health to His Second Day’: Playwrights, Prologues, and First Performances in the Early Modern Theater,” Studies in Philology 101.2 (2004): 172–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 199.

9. Bruster and Weimann, Prologues, 20. Prologue and epilogue speakers are identified in amateur author John Clavell's The Soddered Citizen (1638), although, as Bentley notes, this was quite rare. See Bentley, G. E., The Profession of the Player in Shakespeare's Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 262Google Scholar.

10. Bruster and Weimann, Prologues, 20.

11. As texts, the prologues and epilogues allowed writers to reflect on topical and political issues or comment on theatrical or generic concerns, often as a counterpoint to the mainpiece. They authorized the creative labor of the playwright, offering a playful emollient to the commercial imperative of the stage—the earning power of the play's third-night benefit for the playwright. See Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., “Playwrights' Remuneration in Eighteenth-Century London,” Harvard Library Bulletin n.s. 10.2–3 (1999): 3–90Google Scholar.

12. Danchin, Pierre, Prologues and Epilogues of the Restoration, 1660–1700: A Complete Edition, 7 vols. (Nancy: Publications de l'Université de Nancy II, 1981–8)Google Scholar, 1:xxxvii.

13. Of course, pre-Restoration theatre had had its celebrated performers, but the prologue, epilogue, and induction spaces were not where these performers made their mark, with the exception of the comedians. Alexandra Halasz makes the case for the clown Richard Tarlton's celebrity in “‘So beloved that men use his picture for their signs': Richard Tarlton and the Uses of Sixteenth Century Celebrity,’” in Shakespeare Studies 23 (1995): 19–38. One of the possible exceptions was Stephen Hammerton, who had made the transition from boy player of female roles to young romantic lead. His performance was discussed in several epilogues (in Shirley's The Doubtful Heir, Suckling's The Goblins, and Killigrew's The Parson's Wedding), although he did not deliver them. See Bentley, 225–7.

14. Actor and theatre company manager Thomas Betterton (1635–1710) is first noted acting with John Rhodes troupe in 1659 at the Cockpit theatre in Drury Lane. After the Restoration, he settled with Davenant's Duke's Company and quickly rose to prominence, playing a wide range of leading roles in tragedy and comedy. Betterton bought shares in the company, and when Davenant died in 1668, he and Henry Harris took over daily management. Betterton negotiated the combining of the theatre companies as the United Company. Infuriated by Christopher Rich's management of the United Company, he and eight fellow actors established the Actor's Company in 1695. After some initial success, this enterprise was not as lucrative as he had hoped, and in 1705 Betterton and the company moved to John Vanbrugh's new Queens' Theatre in the Haymarket. Betterton died in April 1710, a few days after performing for his benefit night. He was hailed as a leading exponent of tragic acting and an innovative manager.

15. Actor and theatre manager William Smith (d. 1695) joined the Duke's Company in 1661. He was a flexible performer, playing major roles as the tarnished hero in tragedy and the romantic hero (or occasionally the rake) in comedy. He was a shareholder in the Duke's Company, but his political sympathies, as a supporter of the deposed Catholic James II, probably occasioned his retirement from the stage temporarily in 1688, when Protestant William III took the throne. He came out of retirement to join the Actors' Company in 1695 but fell ill and died later that year.

16. Charles Hart (1625–83) was an apprentice actor in Charles I's King's Men in 1641. He fought on the Royalist side during the Civil War and became a shareholder in the King's Company. He specialized in romantic comedy as half a romantic double act with Nell Gwyn, and in tragedy he played kingly, dignified roles. When the companies merged in 1682, Hart retired. He died in 1683.

17. James Nokes (ca. 1642–96) began his career with Thomas Betterton at John Rhodes's Cockpit theatre in 1659. He was an original shareholder and comic actor with the Duke's Company. He specialized in playing dullards, fools, and fops, and his name became a byword for folly in contemporary culture. He was regularly cast as part of a comic double act with Anthony Leigh, often cross-dressed.

18. Cave Underhill (1634–1713) was a comic actor who began his career in John Rhodes's company in the Cockpit theatre before becoming shareholder in the Duke's Company in 1660. He tended to play foolish old men, commoners, citizens, drunkards, and cowards. He was a shareholder in the United Company and later the Actors' Company and continued to perform into his seventies.

19. Michael Mohun (ca. 1616–84) was a performer with Queen Henrietta's company and Christopher Beeston's company before the English Civil War, during which he fought for Charles I. In 1660 he became a shareholder in the King's Company. He played a wide range of parts as devious villains and witty heroes. He complained about the loss of his share and his roles when the King's Company merged with the Duke's in 1682 and was reinstated to full company membership of the United Company for the last two years of his life.

20. Actor, writer, dancer, and comic Joseph Haines (d. 1701) first appeared with the King's Company in London in 1668. He traveled abroad several times: in 1670 with the Duke of Buckingham and in 1685 with William Soames on his ambassadorial trip to Constantinople. Haines moved between the King's and Duke's companies and took only occasional roles for the United Company. He was a very popular writer and performer of prologues and epilogues. He supplemented his income by running a booth theatre at Bartholomew Fair, performing cut-down versions of plays, farces, and drolls and offering popular entertainment.

21. Robert Wilks (1665–1732) began his acting career in the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin in 1691. He transferred to the United Company in 1693, then played with the Patent Company. He played comic heroes and lovers and was particularly famed for the rakish role of Sir Harry Wildair in George Farquhar's The Constant Couple (1699).

22. Actor, writer, and theatre manager Colley Cibber (1671–1757) joined the United Company in 1690 and remained with the Patent Company in 1695. He specialized in fops and comic aristocratic roles and wrote a series of plays, including Love's Last Shift (1696) and a version of Richard III (1699). He was a successful theatre manager, and in 1790 he took on daily control of the Patent Company with Robert Wilks.

23. John Mills (d. 1736) was a leading actor who joined the Patent Company in 1695. He played a number of villainous and supporting roles, often paired with Robert Wilks.

24. George Powell (1668–1714), who debuted with the United Company in 1687, took on several of William Mountfort's roles when Mountfort was murdered in 1692. Initially he was a key performer in the Patent Company, playing vacillating heroes and villains in tragedy and rakish figures in comedy. He wrote and introduced several plays to the stage. He had a somewhat checkered later career, proving unreliable and argumentative.

25. Actor and manager Barton Booth (1681–1733) began his career in the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin in 1698. He joined the Actors' Company and was considered a reliable secondary actor in a wide range of plays. He moved into management in the complex years of protounion between the companies after 1705.

26. Thomas Doggett (1670–1721) may have performed in Dublin in his youth, but he made his London debut in 1691 with the United Company. He was a gifted comic, playing a wide range of elderly fools, fops, and citizens and a famed rustic role as Hob in his own The Country Wake (1696). Doggett moved between companies after the split in 1695 and ran his own troupe in Norwich. In 1709, he became part of the actor-management team with Robert Wilks and Colley Cibber at the Haymarket.

27. William Penkethman (ca. 1660–1725) began his acting career with small roles with the United Company. He stayed with the Patent Company in 1695 and was a popular comic who was famed for his prologue delivery, often in strange dress or astride a donkey. He had a successful business in the fairgrounds, not only with droll booths but also importing diverting acts from the Continent, such as French dancing dogs. Penkethman played many citizen parts. He could dance and excelled in physical comedy. In 1718 he started a summer theatre in Richmond.

28. Prologues and epilogues involve individual actors representing emblematic figures. Examples include “Mr. Betterton, Representing the Ghost of Shakespeare” in the prologue to Dryden's Troilus and Cressida (1679) and Mrs. Butler's epilogue in character as La Pupsey with her lapdog in masquerade in Durfey's The Marriage Hater Match'd (1692). From the 1670s there is an increase in prologues and epilogues that have named performers appearing in bad humor to berate the poet or audience: for example, “Mrs. Mary Lee, when she was out of humour” in Otway's The Cheats of Scapin (1677) or “Mr. Bowen coming upon the stage in a great huff” as the prologue to Thomas Dilke's The Pretenders (1698).

29. In 1678, Titus Oates, a disgraced Anglican clergyman, announced that he had uncovered a plot to assassinate Protestant Charles II and put his openly Catholic brother, James, Duke of York, on the throne. This unlikely “Popish plot” initiated an anti-Catholic frenzy across Britain and brought to a head much anxiety about a Catholic and absolutist monarchy, as modeled by Louis XIV in France. In 1679, the Earl of Shaftesbury attempted to have James excluded from the line of succession on the grounds of his Catholicism and introduced an Exclusion Bill to Parliament. A series of parliamentary tussles followed: the bill was introduced three times in parliaments held between 1679 and 1681, and three times Charles II dissolved Parliament before the bill could be voted upon. The Exclusion Crisis contributed to the crystallization of political parties in Britain: the “Tories” were defenders of the monarchy's independence and James's right to succeed, and the “Whigs” strenuously resisted the succession of a Catholic monarch. Political propaganda was printed and widely distributed during the Exclusion Crisis, and the theatre was not immune from the political debate. Several plays and prologues were censored for expressing a political point of view that was too strong. See Owen, Susan J., Restoration Theatre and Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Morton, Richard, “Textual Problems in Restoration Broadsheet Prologues and Epilogues,” The Library s5-12.3 (1957): 197–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wiley, Autrey Nell, Rare Prologues and Epilogues, 1642–1700 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1940)Google Scholar.

31. For a fuller discussion, see Kirby, Michael, A Formalist Theatre (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fuchs, Elinor, The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater After Modernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Graver, David, “The Actor's Bodies,” Text and Performance Quarterly 17.3 (1997): 221–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Performance, 4 vols., ed. Philip Auslander, Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2003), 2: 157–74.

32. Graver, 222 (reprint, 159).

33. For example, in Edward Howard's The Man of Newmarket (1678), although Joseph Haines and Robert Shatterell appear under their own names in the induction, they interrupt the unnamed “Mr. Prologue” in his duties—actually Thomas Clark, who had been in the company since 1673 but was not a regular prologue deliverer. Clark's only known attempt before this point was the prologue to Lee's Rival Queens (1677). Another old form of prologue called for emblematic player figures, as the hapless Richard Flecknoe had hoped to produce in the induction to his Damoiselles à la mode (1667). His Player figures are labeled simply 1 and 2, although he is wily enough to suggest a putative casting for his play that includes John Lacy as Sganarelle.

34. Solomon, Diana, “Anne Bracegirdle's Breaches,” 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 11 (2005): 229–49Google Scholar, at 240.

35. Graver, 226 (reprint, 163).

36. Roach, Joseph, “The Performance,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, ed. Fisk, Deborah Payne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, 19–39, at 20.

37. Alter, Jean, A Sociosemiotic Theory of Theatre (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. Freeman, Lisa A., Character's Theater: Genre and Identity on the Eighteenth-Century English Stage (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 18.

39. 9. Jevan here is Thomas Jevon, see note 46 below. Elizabeth Currer (fl. 1673–1690) was an actress with the Duke's Company, specialising in lively action parts, including Jenny Wheedle in Durfey's Virtuous Wife. She was a popular deliverer of prologues and epilogues; Behn wrote the prologue to The Feign'd Curtizans (1679) for her. She found fewer parts available when the companies united after 1682. We have no record of performances by her after 1690.

40. Anthony Leigh [Tony Lee] (d. 1692) joined the Duke's Company in 1671, playing fops, villains, corrupt priests, and foolish old men. He was a famed speaker of prologues and epilogues and established a successful comic partnership with James Nokes, who often played his cross-dressed wife or love interest.

41. Durfey, Thomas, A Virtuous Wife (In the Savoy [London]: R. Bentley and M. Magnes, 1680)Google Scholar, n.p. Leigh had played Pandarus in Dryden's adaptation of Troilus and Cressida in April 1679; Gripe in Shadwell's The Woman Captain, which had preceded Durfey's play at Dorset Garden in 1679; and Fumble, the fond alderman, in Durfey's A Fond Husband in May 1677. Nokes had just played Swash in Shadwell's The Woman Captain and Toby in Durfey's Madam Fickle, who hides in a barrel in Act V, in 1677. See The Woman Turned Bully, ed. Mora, Maria José et al. (Barcelona: Publicacions i Edicions de la Universität de Barcelona, 2007)Google Scholar, 57 n. 64.

42. In Shadwell's, The Tory Poets (London: R. Johnson, 1682)Google Scholar, Shadwell suggests that Dryden's comedies were successful largely “Thanks to old Nokes that humours it so well” (5). In Jacob Dash[pseud.]'s poem Aesop at Richmond (London: [no publisher], 1698), the author mocks a provincial gathering, particularly an aspirational man of fashion, who is dismissed as a fool, thus as a Nokes: “The famous Noaks, or Tony Lee,/Were ne're so great a nokes as he” (12).

43. Durfey, Thomas, The Marriage Hater Match'd (London: Richard Bentley, 1692)Google Scholar, n.p.

44. Whether or not Mountfort and Bracegirdle were romantically involved is unclear. They were regularly paired as romantic lovers or as husband and wife onstage. The suspicion that Mountfort was Bracegirdle's lover was to have fatal consequences when, in December 1692, just months after this prologue's performance, Mountfort was killed by Captain Hill and Lord Mohun, jealous male followers of Bracegirdle. Milling, J[ane], “Bracegirdle, Anne,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, index no. 101003156.

45. Van Lennep, cii.

46. Dancing master Thomas Jevon (1651–88) joined the Duke's Company in 1673. He specialized in low comedy, particularly singing and dancing roles, and was a popular Harlequin figure in Aphra Behn's Emperor of the Moon (1687) and William Mountfort's Dr Faustus (1688). He had a sideline in fairground booth performance.

47. Playwright, dancer, and actor John Lacy (1615–81) began his performance career in the Cockpit theatre and joined Killigrew's King's Company in 1660 as a shareholder. He was particularly famed for physical comedy and dialect comic roles. He wrote several farcical plays, did satirical impersonations, and was a dancing instructor for the company.

48. Lacy, John, The Dumb Lady; or, The Farrier Made Physician (London: Thomas Dring, 1672)Google Scholar, n.p. In forma pauperis is a Latin legal term meaning “in the manner of a pauper,” thus, to beg or petition.

49. Jevon, Thomas, The Devil of a Wife (London: J. Heptinstall, 1686)Google Scholar, n.p.

50. Quoted in Montague Summers, The Restoration Stage (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), 181Google Scholar.

51. Harris, Joseph, The Mistakes (London: Jo. Hindmarsh, 1690)Google Scholar, n.p.

52. Rosenfeld, Sybil, The Theatre of the London Fairs in the 18th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

53. Behn, Aphra, The Emperor of the Moon (London: Printed by R. Holt for Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders, 1687)Google Scholar, n.p.

54. The advertisement for John Harris's booth included the catchphrase “Mistake not the Booth; you may Know it by the Brazen Speaking Head in the Gallery.” The advertisement is reproduced in H.Highfill, Philip Jr., Burnim, Kalman A., Langhans, Edward A., ed., A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, 16 vols. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973–1993)Google Scholar, 7: 132.. For a discussion see Speaight, George, The History of the Puppet Theatre (London: George B. Harrap & Co., 1955), 152Google Scholar.

55. This is an old Scottish song to be found with music in Durfey's Wit and Mirth; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1707), i. 133. For the lyrics alone, see Farmer, John S., ed., Merry Songs and Ballads: Prior to the Year a.d. 1800, 5 vols. (London: privately printed [Gibbings?], 1897)Google Scholar, 4: 46–7. The song was also sung in Durfey's The Virtuous Wife (1679) where its suggestiveness causes Lady Beardly to overheat.

56. Jevon, The Devil of a Wife, 55. Some version of this play is also recorded as present at Bartholomew Fair in 1699; see Rosenfeld, Theatre of the London Fairs, 11.

57. Horden, Hildebrand, Neglected Virtue (London: Henry Rhodes, Richard Parker, Sam Briscoe, 1696)Google Scholar, n.p. The epilogue was written by Mr. Motteux and spoken by Mr. Haines.

58. For an account of that tradition, see Wiles, David, Shakespeare's Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomson, Peter, “Clowns, Fools and Knaves: Stages in the Evolution of Acting,” in The Cambridge History of British Theatre, vol. 1, Origins to 1660, ed. Milling, Jane and Thomson, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 407–23Google Scholar; and Weimann, Robert and Bruster, Douglas, Shakespeare and the Power of Performance: Stage and Page in the Elizabethan Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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60. See Rosenfeld, Theatre of the London Fairs, 8, 14.

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64. In Buckingham et al.'s The Rehearsal (1672), which is still regularly performed on the late Restoration stage, Dryden had been mocked as Mr. Bayes for writing heroic bombast.

65. Brown, Thomas [Tom], The Reasons of Mr. Joseph Hains the Player's Conversion and Re-Conversion: Being the Third and Last Part of the Dialogue of Mr. Bays (London: Printed for Richard Baldwin, 1690)Google Scholar. Reprinted in A Collection of All the Dialogues Written by Mr. Thomas Brown… (London: John Nutt, 1704), 203–56Google Scholar.

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68. William Congreve, prologue to Powell, George, A Very Good Wife (London: Sam Briscoe, 1693)Google Scholar, n.p.

69. The Life of the Late Famous Comedian, Jo. Hayns (London: J. Nutt, 1701)Google Scholar. The Life is apparently by Tobias Thomas but has been attributed to Thomas [Tom] Brown. See Wanko, Cheryl, Roles of Authority: Thespian Biography and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

70. William Kemp (d. 1610) was the most well-known Elizabethan clown. He originated many of Shakespeare's comic roles and had a successful sideline in jigs and popular entertainment.

71. Robert Armin (1563–1615) took over William Kemp's roles for the Lord Chamberlain's Men when Kemp departed and was famed for his wordplay and mimicry.

72. Richard Tarlton (d. 1588) played the rustic clown with the Queen's Men and was famed for his jigs, postperformance bawdy topical farces with song, dance, and jest.

73. Otway, Thomas, Caius Marius (London: Tho. Flesher, 1680)Google Scholar, n.p.

74. Southerne, Thomas, The Wives Excuse (London: W. Freeman, 1692)Google Scholar, n.p.

75. Wikander, Matthew H., Fangs of Malice: Hypocrisy, Sincerity, & Acting (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

76. For a further discussion of Jeremy Collier and the Society for the Reformation of Manners, see Hume, Robert D., “Jeremy Collier and the Future of the London Theater in 1698,” Studies in Philology 96.4 (1999): 480–511Google Scholar.

77. Farquhar, George, The Works of the Late Ingenius Mr. George Farquhar (London: Bernard Lintott, 1711)Google Scholar, 77.

78. Roach, Joseph, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 74Google Scholar.

79. See Milhous, Judith, Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1695–1708 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

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82. Crowne, John, Caligula (London: J. Orme, 1698)Google Scholar, n.p.

83. Fletcher, John, Philaster; or Love Lies a Bleeding, adapted by Elkanah Settle (London: R. Bentley, 1695)Google Scholar, n.p.

84. George Powell adapted Bonduca from Beaumont and Fletcher, and spoke the prologue. Bonduca; or, The British Heroine (London: Richard Bentley, 1696)Google Scholar, n.p.

85. The difficulties of the advanced years of the players of the Actors' Company are gently reflected on by the company itself in the epilogue John Banks writes for his 1696 Cyrus the Great, with the eponymous role taken by Betterton. The epilogue has a dialogue between a boy and girl:

86. Cibber, Colley, An Apology for the Life of Mr Cibber, ed. Lowe, Robert W., 2 vols. (New York: Athenaeum Press, 1888)Google Scholar, 1: 203–9.

87. “Prologue spoke by Mr Powell in answer to a scurrilous one spoke against him at Betterton's booth in Little Lincolns-Inn-Fields,” in Powell, George, Fatal Discovery (London: J. Orme, 1698)Google Scholar, n.p.

88. W. M., The Female Wits (London: William Turner, 1704)Google Scholar, 32.

89. Ibid., 51.

90. I argue here for an early development of separation of the artistic realm that Pierre Bourdieu outlines in The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans. Emanuel, Susan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

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