sides this, the diction appears unequal, in some instances more like Shakspeare's, in others less so, and frequently obscure, involved, rich in ellipses and passages in rhyme; the versification and rhythm unequal, irregular, or treated very carelessly.-ULRICI, Shakspeare's Dramatic Art.

AN EARLY WORK OF SHAKESPEARE

We advocate the belief that Pyrocles, or Pericles, was a very early work of Shakspere, in some form, however, different from that which we possess. That it was an early work we are constrained to believe; not from the evidence of particular passages, which may be deficient in power or devoid of refinement, but from the entire construction of the dramatic action. The play is essentially one of movement, which is a great requisite for dramatic success; but that movement is not held in subjection to an unity of idea. The writer, in constructing the plot, had not arrived to a perfect conception of the principle "That a tragedy is tied to the laws of Poesy, and not of History, not bound to follow the story, but having liberty either to feign a quite new matter, or to frame the history to the most tragical convenience." But with this essential disadvantage we cannot doubt that, even with very imperfect dialogue, the action presented a succession of scenes of very absorbing interest. The introduction of Gower, however inartificial it may seem, was the result of very profound skill. The presence of Gower supplied the unity of idea which the desultory nature of the story wanted; and thus it is that, in "the true history" formed upon the play which Mr. Collier has analyzed, the unity of idea is kept in the expression of the title-page, "as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient poet, John Gower." Nevertheless, such a story we believe could not have been chosen by Shakspere in the seventeenth century, when his art was fully developed in all its wondrous powers and combinations. With his perfect mastery of the faculty of representing, instead of recording, the treatment of a story

which would have required perpetual explanation and connection would have been painful to him, if not impossible. -KNIGHT, Pictorial Shakspere.

RELATED TO OTHER PLAYS

Our chief interest in Pericles lies in the fact that it contains work by Shakespeare which is preparatory to others of his romantic plays. That Pericles is thus closely related to the other romances, and these to one another, is proved by a resemblance of language, style, sentiment, plot, and incident, and above all, by the kinship of the central figures in each play, Marina, Imogen, Perdita, and Miranda, whose very names, like their characters, are fashioned after one fair and pure pattern. It may be that Pericles was not completed by Shakespeare, owing partly to the fact that it anticipated the leading elements in all the other romances; their main theme, for instance, which is the losing and the finding of wife or child.-LUCE, Handbook to Shakespeare's Works.

METRICAL DEVELOPMENT

The development of Shakespeare's art might be traced in detail along the line of his characterization, but it can be as well and more simply traced through the development of his metrical power; for his verse, always supple and adequate, from first to last fits his thought like a skin. The plays have been subjected throughout to the most minute metrical analysis. It has been clearly shown that the metrical structure of all plays known to be early in date differs profoundly from that of all plays known to be late; while every intermediate stage between this early and this late verse is also found. The change from the earliest to the latest verse being traceable through a regular series of gradations, the character of the verse alone enables us approximately to date a particular play. Approximately only: since it would be absurd to contend that by the use

of the metrical tests, as they are called, we are able to establish any exact chronological order among the plays. A slight increase in the percentage of unstopped lines or weak endings does not suffice to show that one play is later than another: it is only when the difference of metrical structure is very strongly marked between two plays that certainty is reached. Taken in connection with what is certainly known as to the order of the plays, the metrical tests would prove positively that Henry V is later than Love's Labor's Lost, and Hamlet than Henry V: they would not suffice to prove that Henry V is earlier or later than Much Ado or The Merchant of Venice. The results of the application of metrical tests, however, coincide remarkably closely with the order worked out by critics on grounds of external evidence, and of critical conjecture based upon other than metrical grounds. The verse of Shakespeare's early dramas is fluent and facile, full of antithesis, abounding in rhyme, quick and trim in movement, but lacking in melody and in variety of cadence. Formally, it is highly conventional and careful to assert itself unmistakably as verse. The line is so absolutely the unit of it that it is rarely unstopped: that is, a distinct pause usually occurs at the end of a line, and comparatively very rarely before the end of one. The verse has a tendency to resolve itself into a series of couplets, whether "blank" or rhymed. As Shakespeare's power developed his verse became continually more flexible and free, more various in cadence, and more regardless of regularity. Unstopped lines and light endings continually increase in frequency. Rhyme becomes more and more rare, and extra syllables are more and more often placed at the end of the line. The line itself becomes less and less insistent. The verse pauses anywhere, at quite irregular intervals, and the tendency to pause at the end of a line as such disappears almost completely if not altogether. It depends less and less on line structure, or any orderly and regular sequence of sound within the line, and more and more on the balance of sentences and on emphasis. Gradually it ap

proaches prose. But though Shakespeare's latest blank verse not infrequently verges on a cadenced and magnificent prose, it never actually becomes prose even in Henry VIII. The fact that the poet clung to blank verse as the right and legitimate form of the romantic or tragic drama is full of significance. An increasing use of double or feminine endings, that is, of a redundant syllable at the end of a line, is another important feature of Shakespeare's metrical development. In Shakespeare's hands blank verse gradually became a measure capable of almost unlimited variety of music and expression. If there is comparatively little verse in his plays which strikes us as of quite extraordinary, pure musical quality, that is because the utterance of passion or thought not merely ideal but positive, the result of an actual and defined situation, can rarely be made perfectly musical without psychological untruth. The language of passion is not that of epic or of lyric. Nor indeed is it that of Shakespeare's drama: but though Shakespeare's diction is ideal, it is not employed in the presentment of ideal, but of real passions, positive and complex. He rarely finds occasion for verse of purely magnificent sound; and whether his melody suffer or not, Shakespeare in his maturity is always equal to the occasion. He is never preoccupied with verbal music, but it comes from him when it should come and as far as it should come.— SECCOMBE AND ALLEN, The Age of Shakespeare.

THE METRICAL TEST

Yet when internal evidence is brought to bear upon the authorship of the play, we find that in so far as it supports Shakspere's claim, it proves the work to belong not to his first but his last period. The incidents of the birth of Marina at sea, her separation from her parents and ultimate recovery, and the restoration of Thaisa, as from the dead, to her husband's arms, are so strikingly similar to the events in The Winter's Tale that it is evident that the scenes in which they occur must have been written by

This

the same author within the same period of his career. is fully borne out by the metrical evidence; the language in these portions of Pericles, which include the greater part of Acts II to V, has the elliptical pregnancy characteristic of Shakspere's final period; there are few rhyming lines, and the percentage of light and weak endings is 4-17. If, therefore, the play was an early production of the dramatist, the last three Acts must have been completely remodeled about 1608-9, just before the issue of the first quarto, and it would be in the first two Acts that we must look for the youthful Shakspere's handiwork. When we turn to them we find them indeed marked off from the rest of the play by a looser rhythm and by the frequent occurrence of rhymed lines in the dialogue. But the metrical effect is not akin to that of Shakspere's earlier plays; double endings are too frequent, and, as Delius has pointed out, the rhyming couplets are often introduced into the middle of speeches in a manner unusual with Shakspere. Moreover, the incidents in these first two Acts, the visit of Pericles to the palace of the incestuous King Antiochus, his guessing of the riddle, his subsequent wanderings, his shipwreck near Pentapolis, and his achievements at the court of Simonides, have scarcely any connection with the later events of the play. Had Shakspere been revising a youthful production of his own it seems improbable that he would have left us this dramatic hotch-potch as the result of his labors.-Boas, Shakspere and his Predecessors.

SHAKESPEARE PERSONIFIED IN PERICLES

When, weary and sad, he consented to re-write parts of this Pericles, it was that he might embody the feeling by which he is now possessed. Pericles is a romantic Ulysses, a far-traveled, sorely tried, much-enduring man, who has, little by little, lost all that was dear to him. When first we meet him, he is threatened with death because he has correctly solved a horrible riddle of life. How symbolic this! and he is thus made cautious and introspective, rest