A Prologue and an Epilogue for Nicholas Rowe's Tamerlane by Richard Steele

Among the P. A. Taylor papers in the British Museum, there is a small manuscript verse-book which contains poems written or collected by William Taylor “of South Weald.” In this book are a prologue and an epilogue for Tamerlane, ascribed to Sir Richard Steele. No comment is made in the manuscript as to the circumstances under which they were written; but it is clear that they were meant for a performance of Rowe's play by schoolboys. These poems are not to be found in the printed works of Steele. There is no allusion to them in his letters, and they are not mentioned in the Steele tradition as recorded by John Nichols, his eighteenth-century editor, or by G. A. Aitken, his biographer. But even in the absence of any direct evidence of their authenticity, we can be reasonably sure not only that they are from Steele's pen but that they were written, probably in the early 1720's, for use at Dr. Newcome's School in Clapton, Hackney. Circumstantial evidence leading to this conclusion is to be found in the contents of the verse-book and of other manuscripts among the Taylor papers; in the somewhat scanty information we have of William Taylor's interests and friends; and also, of course, in Steele's pursuits.