PROKUPLIE 



6353 



PROMISSORY NOTE 



Prokuplie. Town of Yugo- 

 slavia, in Serbia. Situated on the 

 Toplitza, a W. tributary of the 

 Morava, it is about 15 m. S.W. of 

 Nish. During the Great Wai: it 

 was taken by the Bulgarians, Nov. 

 16, 1915, and the Serbians recovered 

 it from the Austro-Germans in 

 Oct., 1918. Pop. 5,000. 



Prolapse (Lat. pro, forward ; 

 lapsus, slip). In medicine, the sink- 

 ing down of an organ of the body, 

 as the uterus. 



Prolation. Relation in early 

 mensural music of the semibreve 

 with the minim. A dot in the sig- 

 nature indicated greater prolation, 

 and the semibreve was worth three 

 minims. Without the dot, the 

 prolation was lesser, the semibreve 

 being worth two minims. See 

 Mood ; Signature ; Time. 



Proletariate (Lat. proles, off- 

 spring). Term used by political 

 economists and socialists to signify 

 the poorest and lowest class of a 

 community, and recently extended 

 to include all the wage-earners of a 

 nation. It dates from the time of 

 Servius Tullius, when the Roman 

 state was divided into the classi- 

 fied citizens who had property 

 (locupletes), and the unclassified 

 who had not, but served the 

 state with offspring instead. See 

 Democracy. 



Prologue (Gr. pro, fore ; logos, 

 word). Preface or introduction, 

 more especially one spoken before 

 the commencement of a dramatic 

 performance, either to indicate its 

 nature, or to commend it to the 

 audience. The use of the prologue 

 dates back to the classic drpma- 

 tists, when all that preceded the 

 first choral song was called pro- 

 logos, and though it continued 

 fairly general with new pieces in 

 the English theatre up to the 19th 

 century, it later dropped almost 

 entirely out of use. Shakespeare's 

 use of the prologue varied : that to 

 Richard III gives virtually an ex- 

 position of the situation and char- 

 acter of the play ; that to Romeo 

 and Juliet is a descriptive sonnet ; 

 in that to Henry V the audience is 

 called upon to imagine fit setting 

 for the heroic scenes. Frequently a 

 prologue was written by a friend of 

 the dramatist as a kind of introduc- 

 tion of his work to the public. 

 Dryden wrote, for instance, many 

 prologues to other plays than his 

 own. See Drama. 



Pro me. Dist. and town of 

 Lower Burma, in the Pegu division. 

 The dist. occupies the Irawadi val- 

 ley just above the delta. It con- 

 nects the Central Basin, the ori- 

 ginal home of the Burmese, with 

 the deltaic plains, the ancient 

 kingdom of the Talaings. Rice is 

 almost the only cereal cultivated. 



The town on the left bank of the 

 Irawadi is the terminus of the rly. 

 from Rangoon. It contains a noted 

 pagoda much visited by pilgrims, 

 and has an active trade in silk and 

 cotton goods, lacquer ware, and 

 paper. Area, 2,915 sq. m. Pop., 

 dist', 379,000 ; town, 26,900. 



Promethean Match. Device 

 for obtaining fire quickly. It re- 

 placed the chemical matches which 

 had come into use about 1807, 

 It consisted of a small, tight roll 

 of paper coated with sulphur, and 

 containing at one end a sugar and 

 potassium chlorate mixture, and a 

 thin glass bulb filled with sulphuric 

 acid. To obtain a light the glass 

 was broken by pinching the end of 

 the match, when the mixture fired 

 owing to contact with the acid. 

 See Bickford Igniter ; Match ; 

 Safety Fuse. 



Prometheus. In Greek myth- 

 ology, originally a god of fire, later 

 a Titan. The chief legend about 



Prometheus chained to the Scythian rock, and consoled 

 by ocean nymphs. From the painting by Zuber-Buhler 



Copyright Braun Jb Co. 



him is that he stole fire from 

 heaven for the use of mortals. 

 For this he was chained by Zeus 

 to a rock in Scythia, and every 

 day an eagle consumed his liver, 

 which grew again in the night. 

 Prometheus suffered this torture 

 until he was rescued by Hercules, 

 who killed the eagle and released 

 him from the rock. There are 

 various and somewhat conflicting 

 forms of the legend. See Aeschylus ; 

 Pandora. Pron. Pro-mee-thewss. 

 Prometheus Unbound. Lyrical 



written 1819. Prometheus, the 

 spirit of man, who has made 

 Jupiter powerful and become his 

 captive, revolts and is freed by the 

 mysterious Demogorgon, who de- 

 stroys Jupiter. Prometheus is 

 re-united to his wife Asia, or 

 Nature, and the new age of human 

 freedom and happiness begins. 



Prometheus Vine t us (Prome- 

 theus Bound). Tragedy by 

 Aeschylus, produced about 430 B.C. 

 It was the first, or second piece, of 

 a trilogy, the other two being 

 Prometheus the Fire-Bringer and 

 Prometheus Unbound. For having 

 taught mankind the rudiments of 

 civilization, especially the use of 

 fire, contrary to the will of Zeus, 

 Prometheus was chained to a rock 

 in Scythia, and predicted the de- 

 thronement of Zeus. At the end 

 of the play the rock sinks with him, 

 to the accompaniment of a terrible 

 storm, into Hades, where he suffers 

 further tortures. 



Prominence. 

 In astronomy, the 

 name given to 

 the gaseous struc- 

 tures round the rim 

 of the sun. They 

 are great quiescent 

 or eruptive gas 

 clouds which reach 

 in some cases 

 50,000 m. alt. and 

 consist chiefly of 

 hydrogen and 

 helium. One pro- 

 minence has been 

 recorded as having 

 attained a height 

 of 350,000 m. See 

 Sun. 



Promise of 

 May, THE. Rustic 

 drama in prose 

 by Alfred Tenny- 

 son. It was pro- 

 duced, Nov. 11, 

 1882, at the (old) 

 Globe Theatre, 

 London. The in- 

 troduction on the 

 stage of a typical 

 Freethinker in 

 the person of 

 Edgar, provoked a public protest 

 on the first night from the marquess 

 of Queensberry. Hermann Vezin 

 played Edgar, and Charles Kelly, 

 Miss Ormsby, and Mrs, Bernard 

 Beere were in the cast. 



Promissory Note . "An uncon- 

 ditional promise in writing, made 

 by one person to another, signed by 

 the maker, engaging to pay on 

 demand or at a fixed or determin- 

 able future time, a sum certain in 

 money, to or to the order of a 

 specified person or to bearer." The 



drama by P. B. Shelley, by many person making the promise is the 

 considered his greatest work, maker or drawer. The person to 



F 8 



