ABSTRACT
Date and publication. Thomas Southerner play was first staged in April 1684 by the King’s Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. D. had contributed the Prologue and Epilogue to Southerne’s first play, The Loyal Brother (q.v.) in 1682. The present Prologue and Epilogue were published by E. Lucy in a folio half-sheet headed Prologue To a New Play, C a ll’d, The Disappointment: O r, The Mother in Fashion (1684; MS date 5 April on Luttrelľs copy (Noyes)). The Prologue is anonymous, the Epilogue ‘By Another Hand’. They were reprinted in Southerne’s The Disappointment, or The Mother in Fashion, published by Hindmarsh in 1684 (ΓCJune). The Prologue is attributed there to D., and the Epilogue to John Stafford. In M P (1702) the Epilogue is attributed to D., but almost certainly in error. The present text is from 1684 folio.
