germs of them were not in the original conception of the characters: they strike us rather as choice pearls held together mechanically by a string, than as the organic adornings of nature, growing forth from an innate virtue, and so cohering in a common center or principle of life. COMMENTS By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS PERICLES Nathan Drake regarded him [Pericles] as buoyant with hope, ardent in enterprise, a model of knighthood, the devoted servant of glory and love. So much may praise be misplaced. This romantic sufferer exhibits far rather features of character entirely opposed to chivalrous feeling. His depth of soul and intellect and a touch of melancholy produce in him painful sensitiveness, which indeed, as long as he is unsuspicious, leaves him indifferent to danger; but after he has once perceived the evil of men, renders him more faint-hearted than bold, and more agitated and uneasy than enterprising. The motives which induce him to venture the dangerous wooing of Antiochus' daughter have not been previously depicted by the poet, but are subsequently intimated. The man who, when he perceives the dishonor of the house into which he has fallen, recognizes so quickly and acutely the danger that threatens him, who penetrates in a moment the wicked nature of the sinning father, declaring that he blushes no more for his own shame, and upon its discovery "seem'd not to strike, but smooth"; who, modest as he is prudent, ventures not to name openly, and scarcely even to himself, the perceived connection, and who thoughtfully considers his position; the man who speaks riddles proves that he is able also to solve them. And he, whose imagination, after fear has been once excited in him, is filled with ideas of a thousand dangers, whose mind is seized with the darkest melancholy, appears also in these touches to be a nature of such prominent mental qualities that, trusting rather to these than to chance, he ventured to undertake to guess the dangerous riddle of the daughter of Antiochus. Agitation, fear, and mistrust now drive him out into the wide world, and beset him in his happiness at Pentapolis, as in his danger in Antiochia; yielding to adversity, and more noble and tender than daring, he carefully conceals himself, and in a perfectly different position fears the same snares as with Antiochus; these are without doubt intentional additions by the last elaborator, for in the story and in the English narrations of it Pericles declares at once his name and origin. The tender nature of his character, which makes him anxious in moments of quiet action, renders him excited in misfortune, and robs him of the power of resistance in suffering. The same violent emotion, the same sinking into melancholy, the same change of his innermost feelings, which he remarks in himself in the first act, after his adventure in Antiochia, we see again rising in him after the supposed death of his wife and child; as at that time he again casts himself upon the wide world and yields to immoderate grief, forgetful of men and of his duties, until the unknown daughter restores him to himself, and he at the same time recovers wife and child. The ecstatic transition from sorrow to joy is here intimated in the same masterly manner as the sudden decline from hope and happiness to melancholy and mourning was before depicted.GERVINUS, Shakespeare Commentaries. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE PLAY A play which has such various and frequently shifting scenes as Pericles must always be read to a certain degree of disadvantage beyond the fortune of others of less diversified stage accident. These changes furnish a source of fatigue and refreshment to the spectator, which an experienced dramatist knows how to manage and control, and makes the most of by corrections which are lost or go counter in the closet. Even a reader, who is also a playgoer, finds much difficulty in saving these effects, and they slip from others entirely. Taking however, as well as one may, the point of view of the parterre, I confess I find much to admire in the skill with which the play of Pericles is constructed and put together. Whether we take the outline of the story in the form of argument, or read it in the verses that furnished it to the playwriter, we may be honestly struck with the ingenuity that could group, divide and connect it for dramatic purposes, with the requisite clearness and facility that are successfully attained. The story rambles dispersedly in various countries and by sea and land, and the incidents are of every degree of importance and insignificance; but the stages of the story as enacted are cleverly made to correspond with the relief of the divisions of the acts.-LLOYD, Critical Essays. POPULARITY OF THE PLAY Pericles was surpassed by few of Shakespeare's most authentic plays in popularity. In 1609 an anonymous satirist compared a crowd of outstretched throats to an audience come "to see Shore or Pericles." The name of Pericles became a by-word for good fortune, and Boult seems, like Pandarus, to have given a new sobriquet to his class. But the immense vogue of Pericles was chiefly among the populace of all ranks. Grave and scholarly persons resented its monstrous defects as a drama, as well as its pardonable if not legitimate grossness: and presently their voices began to be heard. Jonson, smarting from the derisive rejection of his The New Inn (1629), turned savagely upon the "mouldy tale" which it was still a safe venture to perform; and even Owen Feltham's Reply seems to admit that there were many whom Pericles "deeply displeased." After the Restoration it passed from the stage, on account of its offenses against art rather than against decency, though its grossness was of too primitive a type to please the contemporaries of Etherege. Dryden singles it out, with the English histories collectively, as a type of the "ridiculous incoherent story which in one play many times took up the business of an age"; and in an unfortunate, but often-quoted, line used it to illustrate the contention that no first plays are good, since Shakespeare's own Muse his Pericles first bore. -HEREFORD, The Eversley Shakespeare. THE PLAY NOT SHAKESPEAREAN The play does fall into a number of scenes that are only externally connected; it wants that organic arrangement, that internal and central point of unity which penetrates all the parts, and alone forms the various parts into an harmonious whole. Life is here not conceived from the center which determines the circumference, but more from without, that is, peripherically; the drama follows the different turns of the periphery and only touches upon what lies directly in its path. Several of the characters, therefore, are admitted into the action simply from without, and retire as the action advances; in short, the composition is certainly not Shakspearean in the eminent sense of the word as denoting Shakspeare's masterly style. In like manner the dramatic personages are characterized more from without than from within, that is, more in the mirror of their surroundings and conditions, of their doings and sufferings, than described from their inner nature, their mental life, disposition and feelings. Delineation and coloring are indeed everywhere correct, but there is wanting the depth of conception and the sharpness of individualization, the full rounding, the grandeur and beauty of the figures. Lastly, the tone and character of the diction corresponds with this-so far as can be judged from the exceedingly corrupt state of the text in the early prints; for although pervaded throughout by a poetical spirit, still, with the exception of a few passages, it lacks Shakspeare's pregnant expressions, his depth of thought, his power in the representation of passion, his grandeur and fullness in the description of emotion. Be |