ABSTRACT
Spoken in July 1680 at the visit of the King's Company to the annual Act in Oxford. The play was Settle's The Female Prelate, which had been given its London premiere on 31 May 1680. The Prologue was printed in MP; a variant version of it had previously been printed in the second edition of Lee's Sophonisba: or, Hannibal's Overthrow, A Tragedy, published by Bentley and Magnes in 1681, reprinted 1685, 1691, 1693, 1697. It had not appeared in the first edition, 1676. The origin of the 1681 version is unknown. The Prologue which was originally written for The Female Prelate at Oxford in July 1680 could have been adapted for a performance of Sophonisba at Oxford in March 1681 during the exceptional visit of the King's Company there for the Oxford Parliament.
