NOTE BY THE EDITOR.-In the discussion which followed the reading of Mr. Fleay's paper on Pericles before the New Shakspere Society, May 8, 1874, Mr. Furnivall remarked (see Trans. of N. S. Soc. for 1874, p. 252): "I hope the fact I am going to mention will render all further discussion as to the Shakspere part of the Pericles unnecessary. When I first saw Mr. Tennyson last winter-after many years' occasional correspondence he asked me, during our talk, whether I had ever examined Pericles with any care. I had to confess that I'd never read it, as some friends whom I considered good judges had told me it was very doubtful whether Shakspere wrote any of it. Mr. Tennyson answered, 'Oh, that won't do. He wrote all the part relating to the birth and recovery of Marina, and the recovery of Thais. I settled that long ago. Come upstairs, and I'll read it to you.' Up-stairs to the smoking-room in Seamore Place we went, and there I had the rare treat of hearing the poet read in his deep voice-with an occasional triumphant 'Is n't that Shakspere? what do you think of that?' and a few comments-the genuine part of Pericles. I need not tell you how I enjoyed the reading, or how quick and sincere my conviction of the genuineness of the part read was.” The parts read by Tennyson were almost exactly the same that Mr. Fleay had marked as Shakespeare's; and, as Mr. Furnivall adds, "the independent confirmation of the poet-critic's result by the metrical-testworker's process is most satisfactory and interesting." [From Dowden's "Shakspere Primer."*] It en The drama as a whole is singularly undramatic. tirely lacks unity of action, and the prominent figures of the opening scenes quickly drop out of the play. A main part of the story is briefly told in rhymed verse by the presenter, Gower, or is set forth in dumb show. But Shakspere's part is one and indivisible. It opens on shipboard with a tempest, and in Shakspere's later play of storm and wreck he has not attempted to rival the earlier treatment of the subject. "No poetry of shipwreck and the sea," a living poet writes, "has ever equalled the great scene of Pericles; no such note of music was ever struck out of the clash and contention of tempestuous elements." Milton, when writing *Literature Primers: Shakspere, by Edward Dowden, LL.D. (London, 1878), p. 145 fol. Lycidas, the elegy upon his drowned friend, remembered this scene, and one line in particular: "When humming water shall o'erwhelm thy corpse." To this rage of storm succeeds the hush of Cerimon's studious chamber, in which the wife of Pericles, tossed ashore by the waves, wakens wonderingly from her trance to the sound of melancholy music. Cerimon, who is master of the secrets of nature, who is liberal in his "learned charity," who held it ever "Virtue and cunning were endowments greater Than nobleness and riches," is like a first study for Prospero. In the fifth act, Marina, so named from her birth at sea, has grown to the age of fourteen years, and is, as it were, a sister of Miranda and Perdita (note in each case the significant name). She, like Perdita, is a child lost by her parents, and, like Perdita, we see her flower-like with her flowers-only these flowers of Marina are not for a merrymaking, but a grave. The melancholy of Pericles is a clear-obscure of sadness, not a gloom of cloudy remorse like that of Leontes. His meeting with his lost Marina is like an anticipation of the scene in which Cymbeline recovers his sons and daughter; but the scene in Pericles is filled with a rarer, keener passion of joy. And again, the marvellous meeting between Leontes and Hermione is anticipated by the union of Pericles and his Thaisa. Thus Pericles, containing the motives of much that was worked out more fully in later dramas, may be said to bear to the Romances* somewhat of the same relation which The Two Gentlemen of Verona bears to the comedies of love which succeeded it in Shakspere's second dramatic period. *Under this head Dowden groups Pericles, Cymbeline, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale. He says: "There is a romantic element about these plays. In all there is the same romantic incident of lost children recovered by those to whom they are dear. . . . In all there is a beautiful romantic background of sea or mountain. The dramas have a grave beauty, a sweet serenity, which seem to render the name 'comedies' inappropriate." Before the Palace of Antioch. To sing a song that old was sung, From ashes ancient Gower is come, Assuming man's infirmities, To glad your ear and please your eyes. It hath been sung at festivals, On ember-eves and holy-ales; And lords and ladies in their lives Have read it for restoratives: The purchase is to make men glorious; If you, born in these latter times, When wit's more ripe, accept my rhymes, IC |