ANTIOCHUS, King of Antioch. PERICLES, Prince of Tyre. HELICANUS, ESCANES, } two Lords of Tyre. SIMONIDES, King of Pentapolis'. CERIMON, a Lord of Ephesus. Marshal. BOULT, their Servant. The Daughter of Antiochus. DIONYZA, Wife to CLEON. THAISA, Daughter to SIMONIDES. MARINA, Daughter to PERICLES and THAISA. LYCHORIDA, Nurse to MARINA. DIANA. Lords, Ladies, Knights, Gentlemen, Sailors, Pirates, Fishermen, and Messengers, &c. SCENE, dispersedly in various Countries. Pentapolis.] This is an imaginary city, and its name might have been borrowed from some romance. We meet indeed in history with Pentapolitana regio, a country in Africa, consisting of five cities; and from thence perhaps some novelist furnished the sounding title of Pentapolis, which occurs likewise in the 37th chapter of Kyng Appolyn of Tyre, 1510, as well as in Gower, the Gesta Romanorum, and Twine's translation from it. It should not, however, be concealed, that Pentapolis is also found in an ancient map of the world, MS. in the Cotton Library, British Museum, Tiberius, b. v. That the reader may know through how many regions the scene of this drama is dispersed, it is necessary to observe that Antioch was the metropolis of Syria: Tyre, a city of Phoenicia in Asia; Tarsus, the metropolis of Cicilia, a country of Asia Minor; Mitylene, the capital of Lesbos, an island in the Ægean Sea; and Ephesus, the capital of Ionia, a country of the lesser Asia. STEEVENS. PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE. 2 ACT I. Enter Gower. Before the Palace of Antioch. To sing a song that old was sung2, To glad your ear, and please your eyes. On ember-eves, and holy ales *; THAT OLD was sung,] I do not know that old is by any author used adverbially. We might read : But the poet is so licentious in the language which he has attributed to Gower in this piece, that I have not ventured to make any change. MALONE. I have adopted Mr. Malone's emendation, which was evidently wanted. STEEVENS. 3 1 Gower is COME;] The defect of metre (sung and come being no rhymes) points out, in my opinion, that we should read: "From ashes ancient Gower sprung ; alluding to the restoration of the Phonix. STEEvens. 4 It hath been sung at festivals, On ember-eves, and holy-ALES ;] i. e. says Dr. Farmer, by whom this emendation was made, church-ales. The old copy has -holy days. Gower's speeches were certainly intended to rhyme throughout. MALONE. And lords and ladies of their lives" Have read it for restoratives: The purpose is to make men glorious"; 5 of their lives-] The old copies read-in their lives. The emendation was suggested by Dr. Farmer. MALONE. I cannot think it necessary. 'Lords and ladies, who lived long ago, whilst they lived, read it with delight.' BOSWELL. 6 'PURPOSE to make glorious; &c.] Old copy: STEEVENS. "The purchase is to make men glorious; "&c. There is an irregularity of metre in this couplet. The same variation is observable in Macbeth: Mr. Steevens sug MALONE. "I am for the air; this night I'll spend "Unto a dismal and a fatal end." The old copies read-The purchase, &c. gested this emendation of purpose for purchase. Being now convinced that all the irregular lines detected in The Midsummer-Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Pericles have been prolonged by interpolations which afford no additional beauties, I am become more confident in my attempt to mend the passage before us. Throughout this play it should seem to be a very frequent practice of the reciter, or transcriber, to supply words which, for some foolish reason or other, were supposed to be wanting. Unskilled in the language of poetry, and more especially in that which was clouded by an affectation of antiquity, these ignorant people regarded many contractions and ellipses, as indications of somewhat accidentally omitted; and while they inserted only monosyllables or unimportant words in imaginary vacancies, they conceived themselves to be doing little mischief. Liberties of this kind must have been taken with the piece under consideration. The measure of it is too regular and harmonious in many places, for us to think it was utterly neglected in the rest. As this play will never be received as the entire composition of Shakspeare, and as violent disorders require medicines of proportionable violence, I have been by no means scrupulous in striving to reduce the metre to that exactness which I suppose it originally to have possessed. Of the same license I should not have availed myself, had I been employed on any of the undisputed dramas of our author. Those experiments which we are forbidden to perform on living subjects, may properly be attempted on dead ones, among which our Pericles may be reckoned; being dead, in its present form, to all purposes of the stage, and of no very promising life in the closet. 66 The purpose is to make men glorious, "Et bonum quo antiquius eo melius." The original saying isBonum quo communius, co melius. If you, born in these latter times, As I suppose these lines, with their context, to have originally stood as follows, I have so given them: 66 And lords and ladies, of their lives "Have read it as restoratives: "Purpose to make men glorious; "Et quo antiquius, eo melius." This innovation may seem to introduce obscurity; but in huddling words on each other, without their necessary articles and prepositions, the chief skill of our present imitator of antiquated rhyme appears to have consisted. Again, old copy: "This Antioch then, Antiochus the great "Built up; this city, for his chiefest seat." I suppose the original lines were these, and as such have printed them: "This city then, Antioch the great "Built up for his chiefest seat." Another redundant line offers itself in the same chorus: "Bad child, worse father! to entice his own-." which I also give as I conceive it to have originally stood, thus: "Bad father! to entice his own. The words omitted are of little consequence, and the artificial comparison between the guilt of the parent and the child, has no resemblance to the simplicity of Gower's narratives. The lady's frailty is sufficiently stigmatized in the ensuing lines. See my further sentiments concerning the irregularities of Shakspeare's metre, in a note on The Tempest, vol. xv. p. 84, n.9; and again in vol. xi. p. 182, n. 1. STEEVENS. See them opposed in the Essay on Shakspeare's Versification, vol. ii. BoSWELL. 7 for his CHIEFEST SEAT;] So, in Twine's translation :"The most famous and mighty King Antiochus, which builded the goodlie city of Antiochia in Syria, and called it after his owne name, as the chiefest seat of all his dominions." STEEVENS. 8 The fairest in all Syria; 8 (I tell you what mine authors say :) Bad child, worse father! to entice his own (I tell you what mine authors say :)] This is added in imitation of Gower's manner, and that of Chaucer, Lydgate, &c. who often thus refer to the original of these tales.-These choruses resemble Gower in few other particulars. STEEVENS. 9 unto him took a PHEERE,] This word, which is frequently used by our old poets, signifies a mate or companion. The old copies have peer. For the emendation I am answerable. Throughout this piece, the poet, though he has not closely copied the language of Gower's poem, has endeavoured to give his speeches somewhat of an antique air. MALONE. I-FULL of face,] i. e. completely, exuberantly beautiful. A full fortune, in Othello, means a complete, a large one. MALONE. 2 By custom, what they did begin,] All the copies read, unintelligibly-But custom, &c. MALONE. 3 ACCOUNT no sin.] Account for accounted. So, in King John, waft for wafted: "Than now the English bottoms have waft o'er." STEEVENS. Again, in Gascoigne's Complaint of Philomene, 1575 : "And by the lawde of his pretence "His lewdness was acquit." The old copies read account'd. For the correction I am answerable. MALONE. 4 thither FRAME,] i. e. shape or direct their course thither. MALONE. |
