mentators, and the wording of the prologue corroborates it, that the mounting of this piece, both in scenery and machinery, was very costly and elaborate. It opens, like Shakspeare's 'Tempest,' with a storm—or rather on the morning after.[1] The sea forms the background; on one side is the city of Cyrene in the distance, on the other, a temple of Venus, with a cottage near. This cottage is the residence of Dæmones, once a citizen of Athens, but who, having lost his property and met with other troubles, has left his native country and settled down here in retirement. He and his slaves are come out to look to the repairs of their cottage, which has suffered by the storm. A boat appears struggling through the waves in the distance, which, as it gets nearer, is seen to contain two girls, who after great danger (described by one of the slaves, who is watching, in a passage which a good actor would no doubt make sufficiently effective) make good their landing among the rocks, and meet at last upon the stage, each having thought the other lost. One of them is Palæstra: a free-born girl of Athens, but stolen and sold, as she tells us, in her infancy. Pleusidippus, a young Athenian, had seen her at Cyrene, fallen violently in love with her, and made proposals to the slave-merchant for her ransom. But that worthy individual, thinking that he could make a better bargain for such wares in Sicily, had just set sail for that island, carry ing Palæstra and her fellow-captives with him, when the whole party are wrecked here on the coast, just going out of harbour.
- ↑ Possibly the storm was represented on the stage during the delivery of the prologue, before the action of the piece began.
