A Warning for Fair Women by Ann C. Christensen

Author:Ann C. Christensen [Christensen, Ann C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT004120 Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, LIT013000 Literary Criticism / Drama
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Epilogue

Tragedy closes the play in an epilogue, a device that Shakespeare uses, for example, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when Puck begs for applause. Her speech returns us to the opening fight among the three dramatic genres. Her claim that the play is a “true and home-borne Tragedy, / Yielding so slender argument and scope” is in part a rhetorical device like a poet’s envoy or dedication—a pose of humility. At the same time, the line locates the plot at “home” in London and asserts its relatively small (“slender”) scope as a new and legitimate tragic genre. Recall Tragedy’s opening lament that the story was “too well known.”

Tragedy enters to conclude.

Tragedy Here are the lances that have sluiced forth sin,553

[She points to the tableau behind her on the scaffold, or perhaps to the black curtains that signify tragedy.]

And ripped the venomed ulcer of foul lust,

Which, being by due vengeance qualified,

Here, Tragedy of force must needs conclude.

Perhaps it may seem strange unto you all,

That one hath not revenged another’s death554

After the observation of such course.

The reason is, that now of truth I sing,

And should I add, or else diminish aught,

Many of these spectators then could say,

I have committed error in my play.

Bear with this true and home-borne Tragedy,

Yielding so slender argument and scope,555

To build a matter of importance on,

And in such form556 as haply557 you expected.

What now hath failed, tomorrow you shall see,

Performed by History or Comedy. Exit

F I N I S

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