afterpiece

plural afterpieces

1. historicalAn additional work following the main work; especially, a minor entertainment performed after a play.First known use 17th c.

   There was a silly after-piece called Carnarvon Castle, or, The Birth of the Prince of Wales.

   1793, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 225

   4 more examples

   To preface much concerning these little after-pieces of Poetry, I hold needlesse, having spoke my mind so fully before.

   1642, Henry More, Psychodia Platonica, Cambridge: Roger Daniel, Preface

   The idea of farces, or after-pieces, tho’ an inferior branch of the Drama, is, in fact, among the refinements of an improved age.

   1787, George Colman, “Notes on the Epistle to the Pisos”, in Prose on Several Occasions, volume 3, London: T. Cadel, page 96

   […] let us have a play entire from beginning to end; so as it be a German play, no matter what, with a good tricking, shifting after-piece, and a figure-dance, and a horn-pipe, and a song between the acts.

   1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter XIII, in Mansfield Park: […], volume I, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, pages 257-258

   The policeman, perceiving that the interest of the entire group of spectators was centred upon himself and Lorison […] was fain to prolong the situation—which reflected his own importance—by a little afterpiece of philosophical comment.

   1910, O. Henry, “Blind Man’s Holiday”, in Whirligigs, New York: Doubleday, Page, page 273

2. nauticalThe heel of a rudder.First known use 18th c.