ends with Restoration evidence for 'arguments' being "'presents' for the first-performance audience" (74), which she would like to project back onto the pre-Commonwealth stage, and then evidence from a Latin play apparently performed in Germany, the 'argument' for which Stern reads as directing the audience's responses and making up for any lapses by the actors. Finally she uses a masque performed in French for Charles I in 1635: Florimene at Whitehall, for which the 'argument' was published though the masque was not (75-7).

Chapter Four is concerned with "Prologues, Epilogues, Interim Entertainments" (81-119). Stern thinks that the Restoration practice of giving the epilogue and prologue of a play only at the first three performances--up to and including the author's third-day benefit--must have been true of the pre-Commonwealth stage. Fromand Masques" (119-73), begins with the puzzle that many printed plays omit their songs, even where the authors seem to have taken care over the printing and were the songs' writers. This cannot be explained by the composers acquiring ownership of the words they wrote music for, nor by publishers removing the lyrics before printing the plays. The solution is that song lyrics were held on separate pieces of paper from the play's dialogue, allowing them to be sent off to the composer for setting to music while the playbook was put to other uses. Stern makes a strong case for "Take O take those lips away" (from Shakespeare and Middleton's Measure for Measure) having an extra resonance for an audience that recognized it from Fletcher, Jonson, Chapman,