1. The choruses in this play are distinguished from those of Shakespeare by the dumb-shows which accompany them. Another difference is that most of them, as is the case with this prologue, require a scene; whereas Shakespeare's do not. We are to understand that the presenter of the play is a phantom,-the poet Gower's spirit, which has returned to earth from the ashes of the tomb, and is glad for a while to resume a mortal life, provided what follows may bring pleasure. Accordingly, in Gower's last speech before the close of the play (v. 2. 1-4) the hearers are reminded that he will presently be dumb; when he makes a request of them, it is as his last boon before leaving the world. But this idea of a reembodied spirit is not anywhere dwelt on, nor turned to any use in the development of the story. Our Presenter in this play is as much without individuality as his fellows elsewhere, who are either nameless, as the Chorus in Romeo and Juliet or Henry V., or are only abstractions, like Time in the Winter's Tale, and Rumour at the opening of II. Henry IV.

2. Lines 1, 2:

To sing a song that old was SUNG,

From ashes ancient Gower is COME.

The false rhyme in this couplet is remarkable, and seems beyond hope of amendment. Steevens proposed sprung instead of come, but the idea of the phoenix, which this would suggest, is out of place. The author of these choruses of Gower's has in several places treated words ending in m and n as rhyming together; as in home and drone, soon and doom, run and dumb. We may hence conclude that the rhyme of sung with come was satisfactory to the writer. In several places, indeed, he seems to have been satisfied with the mere assonance of vowels, as in labour and father (i. 1. 66, 67). These imperfect rhymes mostly occur in Gower's choruses, and some have thought them to be intentional, and meant, like the archaisms in the same choruses, to give an air of antiquity to the lines.

3. Line 6: On EMBER-EVES and HOLY-ALES-The ember. eves are the eves preceding the ember-days, or days of fasting and humiliation. The Quartos and Folios give