Danger."

_From the Painting by_ J. GRISONI, _the property of the Garrick Club_]

The King is dead! Long live the Queen! The prologue was written in
honour of his most Catholic Majesty James II. and his consort, Marie
Beatrice of Modena, but the opening lines are admirably adapted to
flatter Anne, and so they are retained, even though what follows
happens to be new.[A]

[Footnote A: The remainder of the original prologue, had it been
recited, would have raised a storm.]

But what care we for the prologue when the first scene is on and
Violante and Leonora are confessing their respective love affairs, as
women always do--on the stage. Leonora has a dragon of a brother who
would compel her to marry that pink of empty propriety, Sir Courtly,
but she rebels against the admirer selected for her, as all well-bred
young women should in plays, and sets her heart upon another. In
consequence there is trouble of the dear old romantic kind.

"I never stir out, but as they say the Devil does, with chains and
torments," Leonora tells Violante. "She that is my Hell at home is so
abroad."

"Vio. A New Woman?

"LEO. No, an old Woman, or rather an old Devil; nay, worse than an old
Devil, an old Maid.