edge of life. Metrical tests soon overshadowed everything else in the society's work, Shakespeare was turned into a calculation table for the enumeration of feminine endings, stopt lines, middle cæsura, weak endings, middle extra syllables, and for the experiment of the initial trochee test, pause test, prevalent word test, and choric reflection test. Out of these researches and the development in the so-called æsthetic criticism of such uncouth terminology as "first reconciliation period," "second recognition period," etc., etc., there was constructed an ideal biography of Shakespeare. And without being actually advanced a single step in our knowledge and enjoyment of the Shakespearian drama, we were told to recognize in the order of the plays as fancifully set forth by the commentators the whole of Shakespeare's spiritual experience. We were to see him "in the workshop, in the world, out of the depths, and on the heights." Moreover, the New Shakspere Society made much of the discovery of strange hands in Shakespeare's text. This reference of dubious or dolorous lines to anonymous or conjectural aliens is as old as Coleridge, who, like Simpson, of Edinburgh, who was unalterably convinced of the infallibility of Euclid, fancied it impossible for Shakespeare to drowse, and so pronounced all his faults to be the intrusion of some unknown playwright. Our better informed critics identify the perpetrator of the outrage and brand upon him his mischievous meddling.

All of Shakespeare's plays, according to the laborious researches of the New Shakspere Society, fall into three or perhaps four groups-the lyric and fantastic, the comic and historic, and the tragic and romantic. And these groups comprehend the years that lie between 1590 and 1610. "The entrance to the third period of Shakespeare," says Mr. Swinburne, "is like the entrance to that last and lesser Paradise of old with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.'" It is the period of stormiest tragedy beyond and upon which shine the mellow glory and serene splendor of the romantic plays with which Shakespeare's career, victorious after years of disaster and bitter experience, concludes. In this final period Pericles is classed. With all his unrestrained eloquence, Mr. Swinburne, after washing his hands of the brothel scene in deference to a public of "nice and nasty mind," has said of Pericles: "But what shall I now say that may not be too pitifully unworthy of the glories and the beauties, the unsurpassable pathos and sublimity inwoven with the imperial texture of this very play? The

blood-red Tyrian purple of tragic maternal jealousy which might seem to array it in a worthy attire of its Tyrian name, the flowersoft loveliness of maiden lamentation on the flower-strewn seaside grave of Marina's old sea-tossed nurse." The romantic character of the play, its blending of classical form and mediæval tradition-Goth and Greek each by the other-places Pericles in companionship with The Tempest, Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale. Without accepting or approving the methods of the New Shakspere Society, we may agree that Pericles belongs to Shakespeare's later years.

The results of the researches of Dr. Boyle (Transactions of New Shak. Soc., 1880-1885, Pt. ii, pp. 323-340), P. Z. Round (Intro. to Pericles, Qu. 2) and Delius (Jahrbuch, 1868,) seem to indicate that George Wilkins wrote the first two acts and most of the Gower choruses, and that Rowley (?) wrote the brothel

scenes.

Shakespeare's part, I hold to be his unfinished work upon what he meant to be the beginning and the end of a play of Marina. As we have the text it is marred throughout by the incapacity of the reporter and printer, pirates both. Shakespeare's unfinished work in the last three acts was completed and extended to five acts by a writer who added the Gower choruses. Delius was the first to discover this writer to be George Wilkins (Shak. Jahrbuch, 1868, pp. 175-204), but Delius erred in supposing that Wilkins' work preceded Shakespeare's.

Dr. Furnival, at a meeting of the New Shakspere Society, quoted Tennyson as saying that Shakespeare "wrote all the part relating to the birth and recovery of Marina and the recovery of Thaisa. I settled that long ago; come upstairs and I'll read it to you.' Upstairs to the smoking-room in Seamore Place we went, and then I had the rare treat of hearing the poet read in his deep voice— with an occasional triumphant'Isn't that Shakespeare?' '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. But I stupidly forgot to write down the numbers of the scenes. However, when the proof of Mr. Fleay's print of The Birth and Life of Marina came, its first words, Thou God of this great Vast,' brought the whole thing back to me, and I recognized in its pages the same scenes that Mr. Tennyson had

read to me."

(Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, Series

i, 1874, p. 252).'

THE STABILITY OF THE STORY.

It is remarkable that a saga so widespread should undergo so little change in the course of centuries. Occasionally an episode is broadened by the narrator, or local color is painted freely into the work; but the chief outlines of the story remain practically unchanged. The Latin MSS. vary greatly in style and diction. It is clear that many of them are slovenly copies, and Riese, in editing the tale for the Teubner classics, produced an ideal text, that is to say, he mixed the language of several MSS. in the effort to make a clear and readable version.

A careful examination of the MSS. and a consideration of their discrepancies (chiefly verbal) lead to the conclusion that the story has descended along three parallel lines from the first Godfrey of Viterbo was derived; from the second the Gesta Romanorum and the French MS. of the thirteenth century; and from the third the Anglo-Saxon version. The principal mediæval versions may be classified as follows:

Shakespeare is the first narrator of the ancient story to change the name of the hero. The commentators upon the play have usually been satisfied with the conjecture of Steevens that the name Pericles was taken by Shakespeare from Sidney's Arcadia, where Pyrocles figures as one of the characters. It is one of the curious coincidences in the history of this saga, even if it be of no further importance, that in the French prose version Apollonius calls himself Perillie, in answer to the query of the daughter of Archistrates. The appearance of Gower as chorus and prologue points immediately to Shakespeare's source of information. He says:

1 George MacDonald made independently a similar division of scenes (see Fleay's Marina).

"This Antioch, then, Antiochus the Great
Built up, this city, for his chiefest seat :
The fairest in all Syria."

This is an expansion of the Historia, which simply affirms, "In civitate Antiochia rex fuit quidam nomine Antiochus, a quo ipsa civitas nomen accepit Antiochia." Twine is the source of Shakespeare's lines in this instance. "The most famous and mightie king Antiochus, which builded the goodly citie of Antiochia in Syria, and called it after his own name, as the chiefest seat of all his dominions." Twine's version in this as in many places corresponds with the Swedish, both proceeding from a common source in the Gesta.

When Pericles appears in the palace at Antioch (Act i, Sc. 1), Antiochus says to him:

Here Shakespeare

And Pericles answers, "I have, Antiochus." follows the Historia as translated by Twine: "juvenis nosti nuptiarum condicionem? At ille ait 'novi'" (" Dost thou knowe the condition of this marriage? Yea, sir King, said Apollonius," Twine).

Singer, Apollonius von Tyrus, has carefully compared the readings of the play with the corresponding passages in the other versions; and to his book (pp. 32-67) the student is referred for more minute observation than is possible here.

When Antiochus declares that Pericles has misinterpreted the riddle, he respites him forty days, which is the time allowed in the Italian version of Leone del Prete; the Greek has twenty; Steinhöwel has three; the French and Bohemian have one; all other versions have thirty. Sometimes a reason is given for the respite, sometimes not. When a reason is given it is usually like that in Pericles.

"This mercy shows we'll joy in such a son" (I, i, 118). (Cf. Heinrich von Neustadt, "Waerstu nicht so ritterlich, schön, mächtig und reich.")

The names of the characters undergo considerable change, the murderer sent forth by Antiochus is called by Shakespeare Thaliard, in Gower he is called Taliart, in Latin Thaliarchus, in Twine Thaliarch, and in the Vienna incunabulum Taliardus.

The friend of Pericles, who is called by Shakespeare Helicanus,

appears in the Latin MSS. as Hellenicus, Hellanicus, Ellanicus; in Italian, Ellanicho; in Heinrich, Elanicus; in the incunabulum and the Gesta, Elamicus; in Steinhöwel, Elemitus; in Bohemian, Klavik; but in Polish and Russian, Elavik; in Timoneda, Heliato; in the Swedish, Elancius; in French, Heliquain; in Gower, Helican; in Twine, Elinatus.

Cleon is the name which Shakespeare gives Stranguilio, as he is called in Gower and Twine and the Gesta and most of the MSS., though he becomes Stragul in Bohemian ; Stragwilio in the Munich codex; Estrangilo in Spanish; Tranquilio in Godfrey; Tranquyle in Copland, and Transqualeon in French. His wife is named Dionyza; in Latin, Dionysias; Dionysiades in Steinhöwel, Twine, Heinrich and Bohemian; Deonise in French, and Dionise in Gower. In Shakespeare the servant of Cerimon is named Philemon, nearly as in Heinrich, Philominus, and in Bohemian Silemon. In Twine he is called Machaon; in Swiss Pandekta.

Boult is called in some MSS. Amiantus; in Heinrich, Turpian; in Greek, Пlwzapóza; in Italian, Pocaroba (Singer conjectures that Boult or Bolt is used euphemistically for penis).

Leonine is Shakespeare's name for the servant of Dionyza; he is called Theophilus in most versions, while Leonine is the name of the keeper of the brothel in Gower.

Shakespeare departs widely from the Historia in the names of the dramatis persona. In the play Athenagoras becomes Lysimachus; Archistrates becomes Simonides; Hellenicus becomes Helicanus; Tharsia becomes Marina; Stranguillio becomes King Cleon; Apollonius becomes Pericles.

Dionyza takes under Shakespeare's hand almost the demoniac character of Lady Macbeth. Boult is not new to the story, but is remade. Shakespeare takes Gower's form of a name wherever it differs from the name in Twine.

PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXVII. 158. R. PRINTED DEC. 16, 1898.