CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION TO PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE. II. THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT.... " IV. " V... 83 97 I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, was first published in quarto in 1609, with the following title-page (as given in the Cambridge edition): THE LATE, | And much admired Play, | Called | Pericles, Prince of Tyre. | With the true Relation of the whole Historie, | aduentures, and fortunes of the said Prince: | As also, | The no lesse strange, and worthy accidents, | in the Birth and Life, of his Daughter | MARIANA. | As it hath been diuers and sundry times acted by | his Maiesties Seruants, at the Globe on the Banck-side. | By William Shakespeare. Imprinted at London for Henry Gosson, and are | to be sold at the signe of the Sunne in | Pater-noster row, Another edition, with the same title-page, was issued in the same year. It has generally been supposed that there was but one edition, and that the discrepancies between the copies were due to printers' corrections made while the sheets were passing through the press; but the Cambridge editors are satisfied from a careful examination of the different copies that there were really two distinct editions, and that it is possible to determine which was the earlier. * A third quarto edition (of which there is a unique copy in the British Museum) appeared in 1611. The title-page is the same as that of the quartos of 1609, except for one or two slight variations in spelling and the imprint, which reads, "Printed at London by S. S. | 1611." It is apparently printed from a copy of the 2d quarto. A fourth quarto bears the imprint, "Printed for T. P. 1619." The "signatures" of this edition are a continuation of those of The Whole Contention between the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke, printed without date but for the same publisher, Thomas Pavier (see our ed. of 2 Henry VI., p. 10), showing that the two plays originally formed parts of the same volume. A fifth quarto was brought out in 1630, some copies of which have the imprint: "LONDON, | Printed by I. N. for R. B. and are to be sould | at his shop in Cheapside, at the signe of the | Bible. 1630."; while others have simply "LONDON, | Printed by F. N. for R. B. 1630." In all other respects the latter are identical with the former. A sixth quarto (printed from the fourth) has the imprint, "Printed at London by Thomas Cotes, 1635." *Copies of the 1st edition, according to the Cambridge editors, are found in the Bodleian Library, in the Capell Collection, and in the British Museum; of the 2d edition, in the Duke of Devonshire's library, in the British Museum, and in the Public Library at Hamburg. Pericles was not included in either the 1st or the 2d folio, but was reprinted, with several plays wrongly attributed to Shakespeare, in the 3d folio (1664), and in the 4th (1685). The folio text is taken from that of the 6th quarto. Rowe included Pericles in both his editions (1709 and 1714), but it was rejected by Pope and subsequent editors down to the time of Malone, who put it in his Supplement to Steevens's edition of 1778, and in his edition of 1790. Steevens followed his example in 1793, and has been followed by all the recent editors with the exception of Keightley.* It is now, however, generally agreed by the critics that the first two acts of the play, together with the brothel scenes in the fourth act, were written by some other author than Shakespeare. "What remains is the pure and charming romance of Marina, the sea-born child of Pericles, her loss, and the recovery of both child and mother by the afflicted prince" (Dowden). Whether the poet enlarged and reconstructed an earlier play, or some other writer or writers filled out an unfinished work of his, we cannot positively decide, but the latter seems by far the more reasonable hypothesis. This view has been ably set forth by Fleay in a paper the greater part of which is reprinted below. The date of the play in its present form is probably about 1607. It was first printed, as we have seen, in 1609, but it was entered on the Stationers' Registers on the 20th of May, 1608. If, as Fleay tells us (Introd. to Shakes. Study, p. 28), the second scene of the third act is palpably imitated in The Puritan (iv. 3)," which was acted in 1606, the date of Pericles cannot be later than that year. II. THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT. The story upon which the play is founded is given in Lau * For a fuller account of modern critical opinion concerning the play, see the extract from Verplanck below. |