Ornatu prologi: Terence's prologues on the stage/on the page

The essay examines the peculiar functions of Terence's prologues, and shows how they were responsible for particular developments in the later traditions of Terence's plays and of Latin drama. In the illustrative traditions, they afected the way in which the figure of the Prologus was depicted, while in later medieval and Renaissance drama, both in its purely literary and performed versions, they were used as models and gave rise to a particular concept of the function of the prologue in drama.