[6] For other instances see _Miles_, 238, 381, 767, 904, 1170; _Pseud._, 725; _Casina_, 683; _Most._, 662; _Menaechmi_, 831; _Trin._, 1137; cf. Legrand, _Daos_, 533 ff. [7] The _Merry Wives of Windsor_, though it contains no prologue, is fully as explicit in the preparation of every incident—even the two basket-scenes—as any play of Plautus. Indeed most of Shakespeare’s plays give more attention to preparation than is customary on the stage today even though his plots were usually familiar ones. The _Romeo and Juliet_ even has a prologue which goes so far as to disclose the outcome. [8] The expository dialogue between the two slaves gives the immediate situation so plainly that a _Heros_ would hardly have been employed for the prologue except to reveal the secret hidden to the characters. [9] In _Class. Phil._ 1916, 125 ff.; 1917, 405 ff.; 1918, 113 ff.; 1919, 108 ff. [10] The _Epidicus_ probably once had a prologue (Wheeler, _Am. Jour. Phil._ 1917, 264). One may suspect that the play in its present form—which requires as patient reading as the _Hecyra_—was due to a post-Terentian revision. The _Mercator_ has a prologue that does not reveal much of the plot but in the second act the outcome is hinted at by way of a dream. The play as we have it is a revision. [11] According to Donatus, Menander’s play also contained the marriage, but without objection on the part of Micio. Since in Terence Micio is represented as resisting, the marriage must have been considered as punishment. [12] The _Hecyra_ according to Donatus was modeled upon a play of Apollodorus, but it is now clear that that play was in turn modeled upon Menander’s _Arbitrants_. That Terence suppressed the prologue of Apollodorus is apparent from the comment of Donatus (who had a copy of the Greek play at hand) on 1.58: _Hoc_ (the use of _protatica prosopa_) _maluit Terentius quam per prologum narraret argumentum aut θεὸν ἀπὸ μηχανῆς induceret loqui_. Since the list of characters and the beginning of Menander’s _Arbitrants_ are lost, there may be some doubt regarding his use of preparation in this play, but since the whole play operates with “dramatic irony” and since Apollodorus had a prologue, it is more than likely that he “prepared” his audience here as elsewhere. At any rate Menander’s audience discover the owner of the finger ring in the second act. [13] I assume that Menander had revealed something about the escapades of Chremes’ own son in the prologue, since Chremes’ pretenses at knowing how to bring up children (152 ff.) were doubtless written in the first place to amuse an audience that foresaw his failure.