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peal to Lucina, not to descend personally, not to lend her aid merely, but to send down her divinity upon them, (convey thy deity,')-(he says,) are all characteristic of our greatest of poets, and worthy of him. The scene proceeds, and we hear Pericles mourning over his lost wife, Thaisa, in terms at once homely and beautiful:"

A terrible childbirth, etc., etc.

"Quiet and gentle thy CONDITIONS!" "Condition," in old English, was applied to temper. Thus, in HENRY V.:-"Our tongue is rough, etc.; my condition is not smooth." 64 The late Earl of Essex told Queen Elizabeth (says Sir Walter Raleigh) that her conditions were as crooked as her carcase-but it cost him his head."

"That e'er was prince's child"-The novel founded upon the play of PERICLES here employs an expression which (says Collier) is evidently Shakespearian. It gives this part of the speech of Pericles as follows:"Poor inch of nature! (quoth he,) thou art as rudely welcome to the world, as ever princess' babe was, and hast as chiding a nativity, as fire, air, earth and water can afford thee." This quotation shows that Malone (who is followed in nearly all editions) was wrong in altering "welcome" to welcom'd: the novel proves that "welcome" was the Poet's word.

"Thy loss is more than can thy PORTAGE quit," etc.

That is, Thou hast already lost more (by the death of thy mother) than thy safe arrival at the port of life can counterbalance, with all to boot that we can give thee. "Portage" is here used for conveyance into life.

This is the common interpretation of this obscure phrase. I observe that, in Warner's "Albion," "portage" seems used, as its analogous word bearing, often for behaviour:

The Muses barely begge or bribbe,
Or both, and must, for why?
They find as bad bestow as is
Their portage beggarly.

As Pericles has just referred to the hoped-for future gentle bearing of the child, the Poet may have meant that he should add, that the babe's loss was greater than can be compensated by its future conduct, with all else that it can find here on earth.

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"we are strong in CUSTOM"-The old copies have strong in easterne," which (Malone says) means that there is a strong easterly wind. Knight would read, strong astern"-i. e. we are driving strongly astern. Neither of these ideas could well be in the author's thoughts. This edition prefers Boswell's ingenious and most probable supposition, that easterne was a misprint for "custom," as meaning, they say they have always observed it at sea, and that they are strong in their adherence to old usages. He refers to the experience of his own correction of the press, that this is a natural mistake.

"Bring me the satin COFFIN"-" Coffin" and coffer are words of the same original meaning. Subsequently, Cerimon says to Thaisa

Madam, this letter, and some certain jewels,

Lay with you in your coffer.

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Give this to the 'pothecary"-The precedent words show that the physic cannot be designed for the master of the servants here introduced. Perhaps the circumstance was introduced for no other reason than to mark more strongly the extensive benevolence of Cerimon. It could not be meant for the poor men who have just left the stage, to whom he has ordered kitchen physic.

"The very PRINCIPALS"-i. e. The strongest timbers of a building.

"'Tis not our HUSBANDRY"-" Husbandry" here signifies economical prudence. So in HAMLET, (act i. scene 3:)borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

And in HENRY V.:

For our bad neighbours make us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry.

"Virtue and CUNNING"-"Cunning" here means knowledge, as in the old English versions of the Psalins, and elsewhere.

"Or tie my treasure up in silken bags,

To please the fool and death."

"Death" and the "Fool" were both personages famiacted, and painted, and engraved. Stevens mentions liar to the amusements of the middle ages, and were an old Flemish print, in which Death was exhibited in the act of plundering a miser of his bags, and the Fool (discriminated by his bauble, etc.) was standing behind and grinning at the process. The "Dance of Death" appears to have been anciently a popular exhibition. A venerable and aged clergyman informed Stevens that he had once been a spectator of it. The dance consisted of Death's contrivances to surprise the Merry Andrew, and of the Merry Andrew's efforts to elude the stratagems of Death, by whom at last he was overpowered; his finale being attended with such circumstances as mark the exit of the Dragon of Wantley. It should seem that the general idea of this serio-comic pas-dedeur had been borrowed from the ancient "Dance of Machabre," commonly called the "Dance of Death," which appears to have been anciently acted in churches, like the Moralities. The subject was a frequent ornament of cloisters, both here and abroad. The reader will remember the beautiful series of wood-cuts of the Dance of Death," attributed (though erroneously) to Holbein. Douce describes an exquisite set of initial letters, representing the same subject; in one of which the Fool is engaged in a very stout combat with his adversary, and is actually buffeting him with a bladder filled with peas or pebbles-an instrument used by modern Merry Andrews.

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SCENE III.

"Though I show WILL in't"-i. e. Though I may seem wilful and perverse in so doing. There may be here a misprint for Though I show ill in it," as Pericles (act v. scene iii.) says that his long hair "makes me look dismal."

"the mask'd Neptune"-i. e. The ocean masking its dangers with calm. The epithet is singularly Shakespearian in manner; even the article prefixed, ("the masked Neptune,") is in his peculiar fashion.

SCENE IV.

"— on my EANING time"-This is the folio reading, and that of one quarto. The others have "learning time," which the editors have amended to "yearning time"-the time of that internal uneasiness preceding labour. But "eaning" is a common old English word, for bringing forth young, usually applied to sheep, but not confined to them. Shylock speaks of "the ewes in eaning time;" but there is no reason or evidence that it was not used for the birth of children.

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"RECORDS with moan"-To "record" anciently signified to sing, Thus, in Sir Philip Sydney's "Ourania," (by Nicholas Breton, 1606 :)—

Recording songs unto the Deitie.

The word is still used by bird-fanciers.

"PREST for this blow"-" Prest" is ready-(prét, French.)

SCENE I.

"— for her OLD NURSE's death"-In the old copy— She comes weeping her onely mistresse death. "As Marina (says Percy) had been trained in music, letters, etc., and had gained all the graces of education, Lychorida could not have been her only mistress. 1 would therefore read

Here comes she weeping her old nurse's death."

as a CARPET, hang upon thy grave"-" So the old copies. The modern reading is chaplet. But it is evident that the Poet was thinking of the green mound that marks the last resting-place of the humble, and not of the sculptured tomb to be adorned with wreaths. Upon the grassy grave Marina will hang a carpet of flowers-she will strew flowers, she has before said. The carpet of Shakespeare's time was a piece of tapestry, or embroidery, spread upon tables; and the real flowers with which Marina will cover the grave of her friend might have been, in her imagination, so intertwined as to resemble a carpet, usually bright with the flowers of the needle."-KNIGHT.

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SCENE IV.

"Becoming well thy FACT"-The old editions all have thy face." This, though retained by the latest editors, seems to afford no appropriate meaning, and to be an error of the press. Malone supposed the word intended was feat-i. e. thy exploit. I prefer Dyce's suggestion of "fact," as it requires but the change of a letter, and agrees with Shakespearian usage, in the sense of "your guilty act. Thus in the WINTER'S TALE, (act iii. scene 2,) the king reproaching his wife with her supposed guilt, says, "As you are past all shame, (those of your fact are so,") etc.; for those who are guilty of the same crime with you. We retain this sense only in legal phrase, drawn from the old common law, "taken in the fact"i. e. in the very act of crime.

-DISTAIN my child"-The old reading is disdain, which may be right, but does not agree with the conGower has said of Marina's grace

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"PERSEVER"-The old mode of writing and ac centing the word, as it often occurs in the older dramatists.

"-under the COPE"-i. e. Under the cope, or covering of heaven.

"-door-keeper to every COYSTREL”—“ Coystrel" is said, by Collier and Gifford, to be a corruption of kestrel-a bastard kind of hawk. But it rather seems to mean a low servant, or what Marina calls "the basest groom," as it is so used in Hollingshed and Palsgrave, as quoted by Dyce.

ACT V.

"Her INKLE"—"Inkle” is a kind of tape, but here it means coloured thread, crewel, or worsted, used in the working of fruit and flowers.

SCENE I.

"DEAFEN D parts"-The old copies all read "defended parts." Malone made the alteration, which he explains thus:-"His ears, which are to be assailed by Marina's melodious voice." Stevens would read "deafen'd ports," meaning "the oppilated doors of hearing."

"AFFLICT our province"-The old copies have inflict-a use of the word quite anomalous, and therefore, probably, a misprint for "afflict."

"Enter Lord, MARINA, and a young Lady." "It appears that when PERICLES was originally performed, the theatres were furnished with no such apparatus as, by any stretch of imagination, could be supposed to present either a sea or a ship; and that the audience were contented to behold vessels sailing in and out of port in their mind's eye only. This license being once granted to the poet, the lord, in the instance now before us, walked off the stage, and returned again in a few minutes, leading in Marina without any sensible impropriety; and the present drama exhibited before such indulgent spectators was not more incommodious in the representation than any other would have been."-MALONE.

"AWKWARD casualties"-" Awkward" is here used in its oldest sense, for wrong, adverse. Thus Udal says of the Pharisees, that "they with awkward judgment put goodness in outward things;" and he terms them "blind guides of an awkward religion."

"Like PATIENCE, gazing on kings' graves, and smiling EXTREMITY out of act."

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By her beauty and patient meekness disarming Calamity, and preventing her from using her uplifted

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"-O Helicanus! strike me"-Barry Cornwall remarks, that "there is no one of the dramatic authors of the Elizabethan period whose pen can be so readily traced as Shakespeare's." Of this, PERICLES, with all its original defects, offers repeated examples of lines, phrases, passages, which cannot be ascribed to any other pen. One of these characteristics, which is scarcely discernible in any of his contemporaries, is, (in the words of Barry Cornwall,)" that his speeches, instead of being directed and limited for the time to one subject and person only, radiate, so to speak, or point on all sides; dealing with all persons present, and with all subjects that can be supposed to influence the speaker. Thus, in the speech commencing O Helicanus!' Pericles, in the course of a few lines, addresses himself to Helicanus, to Lysimachus, to Marina, to his own condition, etc. Hence his scenes, instead of being conversations confined for the time to two speakers, are often matters of extensive and complicated interest, in which the sentiments and humours of various persons are interwoven and brought to play upon each other, as in the natural world."-(Life of Ben Jonson.)

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"Were the intrinsic merits of PERICLES yet less than they are, it would be entitled to respect among the curious in dramatic literature. As the engravings of Mark Antonio are valuable not only on account of their beauty, but because they are supposed to have been executed under the eye of Raffaelle, so PERICLES will continue to owe some part of its reputation to the touches it is said to have received from the hand of Shakespeare."-STEVENS.

MR. HALLAM is not much more liberal in his commendations than Stevens:

"PERICLES is generally reckoned to be in part, and only in part, the work of Shakespeare. From the poverty and bad management of the fable, the want of any effective or distinguishable character-for Marina is no more than the common form of female virtue, such as all the dramatists of that age could draw-and a general feebleness of the tragedy as a whole, I should not believe the structure to have been Shakespeare's. But many passages are far more in his manner than in that of any contemporary writer with whom I am acquainted; and the extrinsic testimony, though not conclusive, being of some value, I should not dissent from the judgment of Stevens and Malone, that it was in no inconsiderable degree repaired and improved by his touch. Drake has placed it under the year 1590, as the earliest of Shakespeare's plays; for no better reason, apparently, than that he thought it inferior to all the rest. But, if it were not quite his own, this reason will have some less weight; and the language seems to me rather that of his second or third manner than of his first."-HALLAM, (Literature of Europe.)

HAZLITT notices, that "the grammatical construction, like that of TITUS ANDRONICUS, is constantly false, and mixed up with vulgarisms, which, (says he,) with the halting measure of the verse, are the chief objections to PERICLES OF TYRE, if we except the far-fetched and complicated absurdity of the story. The movement of Shakespeare, and several of the descriptions are either the thoughts and passions has something in it not unlike the original hints of passages which he has engrafted on his other plays, or are imitations of them by some contemporary poet. The most memorable idea in it is in Marina's speech, where she compares the world to ‘a lasting storm, hurrying her from her friends.'"

WILLIAM GIFFORD goes further, and dismisses it summarily, as "the worthless PERICLES." Upon this Barry Cornwall (Life of Jonson, note on Pericles) thus retorts:

"It is certainly not one of Shakespeare's first-class plays. Nor is it to be lauded as a play full of character. But it stands higher, as a composition, than several of Shakespeare's undoubted works, and it comprehends passages finer in style and sentiment than any thing to be found in the serious dramas of Ben Jonson. We cannot but think that the preceding critics (and among the rest Mr. Gifford) must have condemned it unread." He then proceeds to extract and comment upon some passages, in "vindication (to use his words) of this much slandered play."

WILLIAM GODWIN, (Life of Chaucer, chap. xviii..) without expressing equal confidence in Shakespeare's authorship of the play, speaks of the piece itself with warm and unqualified admiration. In his account of old Gower, as the contemporary and fellow-labourer of Chaucer, in forming our language, he says:-" Another circumstance which is worthy to be mentioned, in this slight enumeration of the literary deservings of Gower, is, that what is usually considered as the best of his tales, the tale of Apollynus of Tyre,' is the foundation

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of PERICLES—a play which is commonly printed under the name of Shakespeare, and which, in sweetness of manner, delicacy of sentiment, truth of feeling, and natural ease of manner, would do honour to the greatest author who ever existed."

"This piece was acknowledged by Dryden, but as a youthful work of Shakespeare. It is most undoubtedly his. The supposed imperfections originate in the circumstance, that the dramatist has handled a childish and extravagant romance of the old English poet Gower, and could not or would not drag the subject out of its original sphere. Hence he even introduces Gower himself, and makes him deliver prologues in his own antiquated language and versification. The power of assuming a manner so foreign to his own, is at least no proof of want of ability."-SCHLEGEL.

COLERIDGE, (Literary Remains,) in his first attempt at the classification of the order of Shakespeare's plays, places PERICLES with the old KING JOHN, the three Parts of HENRY VI., the old TAMING OF THE SHREW, etc., and thus characterizes it and them:-" All these are transition works, (Uebergangswerke ;) not his, yet of him." In 1819, he thought PERICLES was produced shortly after Shakespeare's earliest dramatic attempt, LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

MR. COLLIER pronounces, with equal confidence, that PERICLES bears the unquestionable stamp of Shakespeare's genius:—

There is so marked a character about every thing that proceeded from the pen of our great dramatist,his mode of thought, and his style of expression, are so unlike those of any of his contemporaries, that they can never be mistaken. They are clearly visible in all the later portion of the play; and so indisputable does this fact appear to us, that, we confidently assert, however strong may be the external evidence to the same point, the internal evidence is infinitely stronger: to those who have studied his works it will seem incontrovertible."

Several other later critics, as Horn, among the Germans, Knight, and Dr. Drake, (Shakespeare and his Times,) have expressed opinions on the poetic merits of PERICLES, approaching to those of Godwin and Barry Cornwall, and quite at variance with the sweeping censures of Pope and Gifford :

"Let us accept Dryden's opinion that

Shakespeare's own muse his Pericles first bore, with reference to the original structure of the play, and the difficulty vanishes. It was impossible that the character of the early drama should not have been impressed upon Shakespeare's earliest efforts. Sidney has given us a most distinct description of that drama; and we can thus understand how the author of PERICLES improved upon what he found. Do we therefore think that the drama, as it has come down to us, is presented in the form in which it was first written? By no means. We agree with Mr. Hallam, that in parts the language seems rather that of Shakespeare's second or third manner than of his first.' But this belief is not inconsistent with the opinion that the original structure was Shakespeare's. No other poet that existed at the beginning of the seventeenth century-porhaps no poet that came after that period, whether Massinger, or Fletcher, or Webster-could have written the greater part of the fifth act. Coarse as the comic scenes are, there are touches in them unlike any other writer but Shakespeare. Horn, with the eye of a real critic, has pointed out the deep poetical profundity of one apparently slight passage in these unpleasant scenes:

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The blind mole casts

Copp'd hills towards heaven, to tell, the earth is throng'd By man's oppression; and the poor worm doth die for't. "And yet this passage comes naturally enough in a speech of no very high excellence. The purpurei panni must be fitted to a body, as well for use as for adornment. We think that Shakespeare would not have taken the trouble to produce these costly robes for the improvement of an early production of his own, if the taste of his audiences had from time to time demanded its continuance upon the stage. It is for this reason that we think that the Pericles of the beginning of the seven teenth century was the revival of a play written by Shakspeare some twenty years earlier."-KNIGHT.

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"However wild and extravagant the fable of PERICLES may appear, if we consider its numerous choruses, its pageantry, and dumb shows, its continual succession of incidents, and the great length of time which they occupy, yet it is, we may venture to assert, the most spirited and pleasing specimen of the nature and fabric of our earliest romantic drama which we possess. and the most valuable, as it is the only one with which Shakespeare has favoured us. We should, therefore, welcome this play as an admirable example of the neglected favourite of our ancestors, with something of the same feeling that is experienced in the reception of an old and valued friend of our fathers or grandfathers. Nay, we should like it the better for its Gothic appendages of pageants and choruses, to explain the intricacies of the fable; and we can see no objection to the dramatic representation even of a series of ages in a single night, that does not apply to every description of poem, which leads in perusal from the fireside at which we are sitting, to a succession of remote periods and distant countries. In these matters faith is all powerful; and without her influence, the most chastely cold and critically correct of dramas is precisely as unreal as the MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM, or the WINTER'S TALE.'

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A still more powerful attraction in PERICLES is that the interest accumulates as the story proceeds; for, though many of the characters in the earlier part of the drama, such as Antiochus and his daughter, Simonides and Thaisa, Cleon and Dionyza, disappear and drop into oblivion, their places are supplied by more pleasing and efficient agents, who are not less fugacious, but better calculated for theatric effect. The inequalities of this production are, indeed, considerable, and only to be accounted for, with probability, on the supposition that Shakespeare either accepted a coadjutor, or improved on the rough sketch of a previous writer: the former. for many reasons, seems entitled to a preference, and will explain why, in compliment to his dramatic friend. he has suffered a few passages, and one entire scene. of a character totally dissimilar to his own style and mode of composition, to stand uncorrected; for who does not perceive that of the closing scene of the second act not a sentence or a word escaped from the pen of Shakespeare."-DR. DRAKE.

We select, from among other criticisms of the same tendency, that of Charles Armitage Brown, contained in his ingenious essay on "Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems:".

It hath been sung at festivals,
On ember-eves and holy ales,
And lords and ladies of their lives
Have read it for restoratives.-Prologue.

"Transferred from the halls of lords and ladies to the theatre, it was a favourite with the people; but, owing to the improvement of dramatic poetry and art, it at length required higher claims than it possessed to support its popularity. To entirely remodel this wild and strangely improbable romance might have benumbed its attraction; for it is rare to find that the multitude is pleased with direct changes in a traditionary tale. Shakespeare therefore employed himself in restoring the romance to its former importance on the stage, by

numerous retouchings in the dialogue, and by writing whole scenes of great dramatic power.

"Unless we suppose it had been ineffectually retouched previously to his adaptation, we cannot well account for the appearance of three distinct styles: one bald and utterly unpoetical, though bearing an antique air, urging on the commencement with a dogged will; the second only passable, and too frequently throughout the four first acts; and the third, truly worthy of Shakespeare. It may be that the lines which I term only passable had been all partially changed by him. Yet, wanting the effect of his shadow merely passing over them, I must conjecture that some one had been before him in the task, and that he had retained many of the former alterations entire. However that may have been, the question now is as to his unmixed property.

"In the first place, we have to overcome that great drawback, a want of varied colour in the characters, the essential stamp of his genius. Far from having colour, they are unshaded outlines, filled up with black and white, to represent the bad or the good, and thus shoved on and off the stage. Nothing can be discovered of his profound knowledge of human nature, or of his philosophy, nothing beyond the work of a poet and an artist, and they appear but faintly in the two first acts. The language of Pericles himself rises from poverty gradually into strength and dignity, until it attains its utmost height; as if Shakespeare had learned, during his task, to throw more and more aside of the original; to feel, as he proceeded, a high confidence in his own powers; and at last to have discovered there was a soul in the romance, in spite of its deformities, which inspired him to attempt his hitherto untried excellence, to spread his wings, and to set, as it were, an example to himself for the future. "The fishermen in the second act glance at us, in their

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comic dialogue, with the very trick of his eye; but we meet with no scene of his invention, or complete reconstruction, till we enter Cerimon's house at Ephesus in the third act. Every line there is his undoubted property. Trivial as the sketch may be called of this good physician, it is a portrait; we see him, and we know him, though observed only under one phase. Here, in the recovery of the queen from her trance, we have a most natural description of the physician's skill being suddenly called into action, his swift orders mingled with his reasoning on cases, his haste to apply the remedies, the broken sentences, his reproof to a loitering servant, the keeping the gentlemen back to give her air;' the whole, as if by magic, making the reader an absolute spectator of the scene.

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"From the moment Marina appears, Shakespeare himself takes her by the hand, and leads her gently onward; but I cannot perceive he had any connexion with the vile crew who surround her.

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Compared to all that precedes it, or to any thing else, the first scene of the fifth act is wonderfully grand, beautiful, and refined in art. Every one ought to know it; but it is too long for me to quote. The recall from a state of stupefaction caused by grief, and the prolonged yet natural recognition of Marina, interwoven with a thousand delicate hues of poetry, lead us on in admiration till we think nothing can be added to the effect. Still the crown of all is to come, in the poetical conclusion, true to nature while it rests on our imagination. Pericles, instantly after his sudden rush of joy, his overwrought excitement, fancies he listens to the music of the spheres!'-he wonders that others do not hear these 'rarest sounds;'-then he sinks on his couch to rest, and still insisting that there is 'most heavenly music,' falls into a sleep, while Marina, like an angel, watches at his side!"

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