To avoid the impending danger, which he is unable to resist, and to preserve his territories from invasion, Pericles quits his kingdom, and arrives at Tharsus, where his timely interposition preserves Cleon and his subjects from the horrors of famine. He is afterwards driven by a storm on the shore of Pentapolis, where he marries Thaisa, the daughter of king Simonides, who, in accompanying her husband to his kingdom, ist delivered of a daughter at sea, named Marina. The body of Thaisa, who is supposed to be dead, is enclosed in a box by her disconsolate husband, and committed to the waves, which drive it towards the coast of Ephesus, where Cerimon, a compassionate and skilful nobleman, succeeds in restoring the vital functions of the lady, who afterwards becomes the priestess of Diana. In the meantime, Pericles commits his infant to the custody of Cleon and his wife, and embarks for Tyre. At the age of fourteen, Marina excites the jealousy of her guardians by the superiority of her attainments, which obscures the talents of their own daughter a ruffian is accordingly hired to deprive her of life, who is about to execute his orders, when she is rescued from destruction by pirates, who hurry her to Mitylene; at which place she is recognized by her father who, deceived by the representations of his perfidious friends, is bitterly lamenting her supposed death. By the directions of the goddess Diana, who appears to him in a dream, he repairs to Ephesus, where he recovers his long-lost Thaisa, and unites his daughter in marriage to Lysimachus, the governor of Mitylene; while Cleon and his wife fall victims to the fury of the enraged populace.

HISTORICAL SUMMARY OF KING LEAR.'

THIS noble tragedy, the composition of which is assigned by Malone to the date of 1605, was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company Nov. 26, 1607, and is there mentioned to have been played the preceding Christmas before his majesty at Whitehall. The story was originally related by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and thence transcribed in Holinshed's Chronicle, which Shakespeare certainly consulted, though he appears to have been more indebted to an old drama on the same subject by an anonymous writer, which made its appearance in 1594. The episode of Gloster and his sons, which is blended by our author with such consummate skill in the development of his main design, was derived from the narrative of the blind king of Paphlagonia, in the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney.

Geoffrey of Monmouth informs us that Lear, who was the eldest son of Bladud, 'nobly governed his country for sixty years.' According to that historian, he died about eight hundred years before the Christian

era.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

LEAR, king of Britain.

KING OF FRANCE.

DUKE OF BUrgundy.

DUKE OF CORNWALL.

DUKE OF ALBANY.

EARL OF KENT.

EARL OF GLOSTER.

EDGAR, son to Gloster.

EDMUND, bastard son to Gloster.

CURAN, a courtier.

OLD MAN, tenant to Gloster.

PHYSICIAN.

FOOL.

OSWALD, steward to Goneril.

OFFICER, employed by Edmund.
GENTLEMAN, attendant on Cordelia.
HERALD.

SERVANTS to Cornwall.

GONERIL,

REGAN, daughters to Lear.

CORDELIA,

Knights attending on the king, Officers, Messengers, Soldiers, and Attendants.

SCENE, Britain, near Dover.

COMPENDIUM OF THE PLAY.

FATIGUED with the cares of royalty, Lear, king of Britain, determines to withdraw from public life, and