Chapter 28

[1]New Shakespeare Society's Transactions, 1874, pp. 130-194.

[2]Swinburne:A Study of Shakespeare, pp. 212-215.

[3]Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespearegesellschaft, iii. pp. 334-361.

The last, wildest words of this bitter outbreak had been spoken. The dark cloud had burst and the skies were slowly clearing.

It seems as though the blackest of his griefs had been lightened in the utterance, and now that the steadycrescendohad burst into its most furiousforte, he breathed more freely again. He had said his say; Timon had called for the extinction of humanity by plague, sexual disease, slaughter, and suicide. The powers of cursing could go no farther.

Shakespeare has shouted himself hoarse and his fury is spent. The fever is over and convalescence has set in. The darkened sun shines out once more, and the gloomy sky shines blue again.

How and why! Who shall say?

In all the obscurity of Shakespeare's life-history, nowhere do we feel our ignorance of his personal experiences more acutely than here. Some have sought an explanation in the resignation which comes with advancing years, and of which we certainly catch glimpses in his latest works. But Shakespeare neither was, nor felt himself, old at forty-five; and the word resignation is meaningless in connection with this marvellous softening of his long exasperated mood. It is more than a mere reconciliation; it is a revival of that free and lambent imagination which has lain so long in what seemed to be its death-swoon. There is no play of fancy in resignation.

Once more he finds life worth living, the earth beautiful, enchantingly, fantastically attractive, and those who dwell upon it worthy of his love.

In the purely external circumstances no change has occurred. The political outlook in England is the same, and it is not likely that he would be greatly stirred by events such as the assassination of Henry IV. of France in 1610 and the consequent expulsion of the Jesuits from Great Britain. Details—like the decree forbidding English Catholics (Recusants) from coming within ten miles of the Court, and James's removal of his mother's bones and their pompous re-interment in Westminster Abbey—could have little effect upon Shakespeare.

What has personally befallen him that has had such power tore-attune his spirit and lead it back from discord to the old melody and harmony? Surely we are now brought face to face with one of the decisive crises of his life.

Let us anticipate the works yet to be written—Pericles, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, andThe Tempest.

In this last splendid period of his life's glowing September, his dramatic activity, bearing about it the clear transparent atmosphere of early autumn, is more richly varied now than it has ever been.

What figures occupy the most prominent place in the poet's sumptuous harvest-home but the young, womanly forms of Marina, Imogen, Perdita, and Miranda. These girlish and forsaken creatures are lost and found again, suffer grievous wrongs, and are in no case cherished as they deserve; but their charm, purity, and nobility of nature triumph over everything.

They must have had their prototypes or type.

A new world has opened out to Shakespeare, but it would be profitless to spend much time on more or less probable conjectures concerning how and by whom it was revealed. We will, therefore, only lightly touch upon the possibility that Shakespeare, after and during the violent crisis of his loathing for humanity, was gradually reconciled to life by some young and womanly nobility of soul, and by all the poetry which surrounds it and follows in its train.

All these youthful women are akin, and are sharply separated from the heroines of his former plays. They are half-real, half-imaginary. The charm of youth and fantastic romance shines round them like a halo; the foulness of life has no power to defile them. They are self-reliant without being endowed with the buoyant spirit of his earlier adventurous maidens, and they are gentle without being overshadowed by the pathetic mournfulness of his sacrificial victims. Not one comes to a tragic end, and not one ever utters a jest, but all are holy in the poet's eyes.

The situations of Marina and Perdita are very similar; both are castaways, apparently fatherless and motherless, left solitary amidst dangerous or pitiable circumstances. Imogen is suspected and her life threatened, like Marina's, and although she is suspected and sentenced to death by her nearest and dearest, her strength never falters, and even her love for her unworthy husband is unimpaired.

Miranda is deprived of her rank and condemned to the solitude of a desert island, but is sheltered even there by a father's watchful care. There is indeed a half-fatherly tenderness in the delineation of Miranda, and the conception of the native charm of a young girl as a wonderful mystery of nature. Neither Molière's Agnes nor Shakespeare's Miranda have ever looked upon the face of a young man before they meet the one they love, but Agnes possesses only the artificially-preserved ignorance and innocencewhich disappear like dew before the sun of love. To Shakespeare, Miranda appears like a being from another world, an ideal of pure spiritual womanhood and maidenly passion, before which he almost kneels in worship.

Let us glance back at Shakespeare's gallery of women.

There are the viragoes of his youth, bloodthirsty women like Tamora, guilty and powerful ones like Margaret of Anjou, and later, Lady Macbeth, Goneril, and Regan; there are feeble women like Anne in Richard III., and shrews like Katharine and Adriana, in whom we seem to detect a reminiscence of the wife at Stratford.

Then we have the passionately loving, like Julia inTwo Gentlemen of Verona, Venus, Titania, Helena inAll's Well that Ends Well, and, above all, Juliet. There are the charmingly witty and often frolicsome young girls, like Rosaline inLove's Labours Lost, Portia in theMerchant of Venice, Beatrice, Viola, and Rosalind.

Then the simply-minded, deeply-feeling, silent natures, with an element of tragedy about them, pre-ordained to destruction—Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia. After these come the merely sensual types of his bitter mood—Cleopatra and Cressida.

And now, lastly, the young girl, drawn with the ripened man's rapture over her youth, and a certain passion of admiration.[1]. She had been lost to him, as Marina to her father Pericles, and Perdita to her father Leontes. He feels for her the same fatherly tenderness which his last incarnation, the magician Prospero, feels for his daughter Miranda.

He had taken a greater burden of life upon himself in the past than he well could bear, and he now lays its heaviest portion aside. No more tragedies! No more historical dramas! No more of the horrors of realism! In their stead a fantastic reflection of life, with all the changes and chances of fairy-tale and legend! A framework of fanciful poetry woven around the charming seriousness of the youthful woman and the serious charm of the young girl.

It works like a vision from another world, an enchantment set in surroundings as dream-like as itself. A ship in the open sea off Mitylene; a strange, delightful, ocean-encircled Bohemia; a lonely, magically-protected island; a Britain, where kings of the Roman period and Italians of the sixteenth century meet young princes who dwell in woodland caves and have never seen the face of woman.

Thus he gradually returns to those brighter moods of his youth from which the fairy dances of theMidsummer Night's Dreamhad evolved, or that unknown Forest of Arden in which cypresses grew and lions prowled, and happy youth and mirthful maidenhood carelessly roamed. Only the spirit of frolic has departed, while free play is given to a fancy unhampered by the laws of reality, and much earnest discernment lies behind the untrammelled sport of imagination. He waves the magician's wand and reality vanishes, now, as formerly. But the light heart has grown sorrowful, and its mirth is no more than a faint smile. He offers the daydreams of a lonely spirit now, rich but evanescent visions, occupying in all a period of from four to five years.

Then Prospero buries his magic wand a fathom deep in the earth for ever.

[1]In Mrs. Jameson's charming old book,Shakespeare's Female Characters, she has grouped his women in an arbitrary manner. Disregarding all chronological sequence, she divides twenty-three characters into four groups:—1. Characters of Intellect. 2. Characters of Passion and Imagination. 3. Characters of the Affections. 4. Historical characters. Heine characterises forty-five feminine figures in hisShakespeare's Mädchen und Frauen, but the last twenty-one are only distinguished by a few quotations, and he makes no attempt at any deeper interpretation, historical or psychological.

Sevenfold darkness surrounds Shakespeare's productions in that transition period during which morbid distrust was giving way to the brighter view of life we find in his later plays. We possess a brief series of plays:Timon of AthensandPericles, which are plainly only partially his work, andHenry VIII.andThe Two Noble Kinsmen, of which we may confidently assert that Shakespeare had nothing to do with them beyond the insertion of single important speeches and the addition of a few valuable touches.

He had not adapted other men's work since his novitiate, neither had he blended his own intellectual produce with alien and inferior efforts. What is the reason of such an association suddenly and repeatedly occurring now? I will state my view of the matter without any circumlocution or criticism of the opinion of others. We noticed inCoriolanusthat Shakespeare's changed attitude towards humanity had also affected his attitude towards his art. A certain carelessness of execution had made itself felt. His steadily increasing despair of finding any virtue or worth in the world, and the ever-growing resentment against the coarseness and thanklessness of men, were accompanied by his corresponding indifference and negligence as a dramatist.

We have followed Shakespeare through his early struggles and youthful happiness to the great and serious epoch of his life, and through the anything but brief period of gloom to its crisis in the wild outburst ofTimon of Athens; after which we recognised the first symptoms of convalescence. A perspective of not too profoundly-serious nor realistic dramas has opened out before us, whose freely playing fantasy proves that Shakespeare is once more reconciled to life.

It stands to reason that this reconciliation was not effected by any sudden change, and Shakespeare would not immediately return to the old striving after perfection in his profession—did not do so, in fact, until that very last work in which he laid aside his art for ever. We saw that he had strained too much at life,and he now realises that he has done the same with art. Either he no longer taxes his strength to the uttermost when he writes, or he has lost that power for which no task was too heavy, no horror too terrible to depict. From this moment we feel a foreboding that this mighty genius will lay down his pen some years before his life is to end, and we realise that his mind is being gradually withdrawn from the theatre. He has already ceased to act; soon he will have ceased to write for the stage. He longs for rest, for solitude, away from the town, far into the country; away from his life's battlefield to the quietude of his birthplace, there to pass his remaining years and die.

He may have reasoned thus: For whom should he write? Where were they for whom he had written the plays of his youth? They were dead or far away; he had lost sight of them and they of him—how long does any warm sympathy with a productive intellect usually last? With his ever-increasing indifference to fame, he shrank more and more from the exertion entailed by laborious planning and careful execution, and as little did he care whether the work he did was known by his or another man's name. In his utter contempt for what the crowd did or did not believe about him, he allowed piratical booksellers to publish one worthless play after another with his immortal name upon the title-page—Sir John Oldcastlein 1600,The London Prodigalin 1605,A Yorkshire Tragedyin 1608,Lord Cromwellin 1613—and he either obscured or permitted others to obscure his work by associating it with the feeble or affected productions of younger and inferior men. We saw inTimon, as we shall presently see inPericlesand other plays, how the lines drawn by his master-hand have been blurred by others, traced by clumsy and unsteady fingers. It is not always easy to distinguish whether it was Shakespeare who began the play and wearied of his work half-way through, as Michael Angelo so frequently did, carelessly looking on at its completion by another hand, or whether he had the attempts of others lying before him and hid his own poetical strength and greatness in these fungus growths of childish versification and unhealthy prose, leaving it to chance whether the future generations, to whom he never gave much thought, would be able to distinguish his part in them. It may be that he treated his work for the theatre much as a modern author does when he makes over his ideas to a collaborator, or writes anonymously in a newspaper or periodical. He believes that among his friends are three or four who will recognise his style, and if they do not (as frequently happens) it is no great matter.

On the title-page of the first quarto edition ofPericles, in 1609, are these words: "The late, and much admired play called Pericles, Prince of Tyre.... By William Shakespeare." "The late"—the play cannot have been acted before 1608, for there is no contemporary mention of it before that date, whereas from1609 onwards it is frequently noticed. "The much admired play"—everything witnesses to the truth of these words.[1]Many contemporary references testify to the favour the play enjoyed. In an anonymous poem,Pimlyco, or Runne Redcap(1609), Pericles is mentioned as the new play which gentle and simple crowd to see:

"Amazde I stood, to see a CrowdOf civill Throats stretched out so lowd(As at a New Play). All the RoomesDid swarm with Gentiles mix'd with Groomes,So that I truly thought all TheseCame to seeShoreorPericles."

The previously mentioned prologue (p. 539) to Robert Tailor'sThe Hog has Lost his Pearl(1614) cannot wish the play anything better than that it may succeed as well asPericles:

"And if it prove so happy as to please,Weele say 'tis fortunate likePericles."

In 1629, Ben Jonson, exasperated by the utter failure of his playThe New Inn, affords evidence, in the ode addressed to himself which accompanies the drama, of the persistent popularity ofPericles:

"No doubt some mouldy taleLike Pericles, and staleAs the shrieves crusts and nasty as his fish—Scraps out of every dishThrown forth and raked into the common tub,May keep up the Play-club."

In Sheppard's poem,The Times displayed in Six Sestyads.Shakespeare is said to equal Sophocles and surpass Aristophanes, and all forPericles'sake:

"With Sophocles we mayCompare great Shakespeare: AristophanesNever like him his Fancy could display,Witness thePrince of Tyre, his Pericles."

This play was not included in the First Folio edition, probably because the editors could not come to an agreement with the original publisher; for these pirates were protected by law as soon as the book was entered at Stationers' Hall. During Shakespeare's lifetime and after his death it was one of the most popular of English dramas.

Pericleswas formerly considered one of Shakespeare's earliest works, an opinion held strangely enough by Karl Elze in our own day. But all English critics now believe, what Hallam was the first to discover, that the language of such parts of it as were written by Shakespeare belongs in style to his latest period, and it is unanimously declared to have been written somewhere about the year 1608, afterAntony and Cleopatraand beforeCymbelineandThe Tempest. (See, for example, P. Z. Round's introduction to the Irving edition, or Furnival'sTriar Table of the order of Shakespeare's Plays, reprinted in Dowden and elsewhere.) My own opinion of course is, thatPericlesfollows naturally uponCoriolanusandTimon of Athens, and forms an appropriate overture to the succeeding fantastically idyllic plays. The reader will have noticed that, unlike Dowden and Furnivall, I have not been able to assign so early a date for the whole series of pessimistic dramas as 1608 would imply.[2]I assume that certain portions ofPericleswere forming in Shakespeare's mind even in the midst of the venom to which he was giving vent for the last time inTimon of Athens. In such periods of violent upheaval there may be an undercurrent to the surface-current in the mind of a poet as well as in another man's, and it is this undercurrent which will presently gain strength and become the prevalent mood.

The intelligent reader will have realised that all this dating of Shakespeare's pessimistic works can only be approximate. I am inclined to advance them a year, because I fancy I can trace a connection betweenCoriolanusand Shakespeare's own thoughts of his mother, who died in 1608. But a son does not only think of his mother at the moment she is taken from him, and the fear of losing her in the illness which probably preceded her death may have recalled his mother's image to Shakespeare's mind with special force long before he actually lost her. Here, as in all cases where it is not expressly mentioned, the reader is requested to see an underlying Perhaps or Possibly, and to add one where he feels the need of it. Only the main lines of the sequence are at all certain. Where external criterions are missing, the internal alone cannot determine the question of a year or a month. As far asPericlesis concerned, we do possess some guide, for it is most unlikely that Shakespeare's share in the play would be added after it was performed in 1608, especially in the face of the assurance on the title-page.

The work as it has come down to us is not in reality a drama at all, but an incompletely dramatised epic poem. We are taken back to the childhood of dramatic art. The prologue to each actand the various explanatory passages interpolated throughout the play are supposed to be spoken by the old English poet John Gower, who had treated the subject in narrative verse about the year 1390. He introduces the play to the audience and explains it, as it were, with his pointer. Anything that cannot well be acted he narrates, or has represented in dumb-show. He speaks in the old octosyllabic rhymed iambics, which, as a rule, however, do not rhyme:

"To sing a song that old wassungFrom ashes ancient Gower hascome,Assuming man'sinfirmities,To glad your ears and please youreyes"

And in the last lines of the prologue to the fourth act:

"Dionyza dothappear,With Leonine amurderer."

He jestingly alludes to the fact that the play includes nearly the whole of Pericles' life, from youth to old age. Marina is born at the beginning of the third act, and is about to be married at the close of the fifth. Nothing could well be farther from that unity of time and place which was attempted in France at a later period. The first act is laid at Antioch, Tyre, and Tarsus; the second in Pentapolis, on the sea-shore, in a corridor of Simonides' palace, and lastly in a hall of state. The third act opens on board ship and continues in the house of Cerimon at Ephesus. The fourth act begins with an open place near the sea-shore and ends in a brothel at Mitylerie; the fifth, on Pericles' ship off Mitylene, ending in the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. There is as little unity of action as of time and place about the play; its disconnected details are merely held together by the individuality of the principal characters, and there is neither rhyme nor reason in its various incidents; pure chance seems to rule all. The reader will seek in vain for any intention—I do not mean moral, but any fundamental idea in the play. Gower certainly institutes a contrast between an immoral princess at the beginning of the play and a virtuous one at the close, but this moral contrast has no connection with the intermediate acts.

Pericles was an old and very popular subject. Its earliest form was probably that of a Greek romance of the fifth century, of which a Latin translation is still extant. It was translated into various languages during the Middle Ages, and one version has found its way into theGesta Romanorum. In the twelfth century it was incorporated by Godfrey of Viterbo in his greatChronicle. John Gower, who adapts it in the eighth book of hisConfessio Amantis,gives Godfrey as his authority. The Latin tale was translated into English by Lawrence Twine in 1576, under the title ofThe Patterne of Paynfull Aduentures, a second edition ofwhich was published in 1607. In all but the English adaptations the hero's name is given as Apollonius of Tyre. There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's play was based upon the 1607 editon, and this in itself is sufficient to refute the antiquated notion that his part in it belonged to his youthful period. It was on the substance of this play, and doubtless also upon Shakespeare's share in it, that George Wilkins founded the romance he published in 1608 under the title ofThe Painfull Aduentures of Pericles Prince of Tyre, Being the true history of the Play of Pericles as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient John Gower. The fact that Wilkins, in the dedication of his book, which is a mere abstract of Twine and the play, calls it "a poor infant of my braine," and the still more remarkable similarity of the style and metrical structure of the first act ofPericleswith Wilkins' own play,The Miseries of enforced Marriage, would seem to point to him as the author of the extraneous portions ofPericles. In both dramas a quantity of disconnected material has been brought together in a long-drawn-out play, destitute of dramatic situations or interest, and in both we find the same jarring and awkward inversions of words. The incidents of theEnforced Marriagerecall some of the non-Shakespearian elements ofTimon; here, also, we are shown a spendthrift, evidently in possession of the sympathies of his author, by whom he is considered a victim. The mingling of prose, blank verse, and clumsily-introduced couplets with the same rhymes constantly recurring, reminds us of those acts and scenes in which Shakespeare had no part. Fleay observes that 195 rhymed lines occur in the two first acts ofPericles, and only fourteen in the last three, so marked is the contrast of style between the two parts, and he notices that this frequency of rhyme corresponds closely to the method of George Wilkins' own work. Both he and Boyle agree with Delius, who was the first to express the opinion, that Wilkins is the author of the first two acts. By dint of comparisons of style, Fleay came to the conclusion that Gower's two speeches in five-footed iambics, before and after Scenes 5 and 6 (which differ so markedly in form and language from his other monologues), were written by William Rowley, who had been associated in the previous year with Wilkins and Day in the production of a wretched melodrama,The Travels of Three English Brothers. His attempt, however, to ascribe to Rowley the two prose scenes which take place in the brothel is made more on moral than æsthetic grounds, and can have very little weight. My own opinion is that they were entirely written by Shakespeare. They are plainly presupposed in certain passages which are unmistakably Shakesparean; they accord with that general view of life from which he is but now beginning to escape, and they markedly recall the corresponding scenes inMeasure for Measure.

It is impossible to ascertain the precise circumstances under which the play was produced. Some critics have maintained that it originally began with what is now the third act, and that Shakespeare, having lain it aside, gave Wilkins and Rowley permission to complete it for the stage. But in reality the two men wrote the play in collaboration and disposed of it to Shakespeare's company, which in turn submitted it to the poet, who worked upon such parts as appealed to his imagination. As the play now belonged to the theatre, and Wilkins was not at liberty to publish it, he forestalled the booksellers by bringing it out as a story, taking all the credit of invention and execution upon himself.

Never was a drama contrived out of more unlikely material. The name of the knightly Prince of Tyre is changed, probably because it did not suit the metre, from Apollonius to Pericles, which was corrupted from the Pyrocles of Sidney'sArcadia. He comes to Antioch to risk his life on the solution of a riddle. According to his success or failure he is to be rewarded by the Princess's hand or death. The riddle betrays to him the abominable fact that the Princess is living in incest with her own father. He withdraws from the contest, and flies from the country to escape the wrath of the wicked prince, who is even more certain to slay him for success than for failure. He returns to Tyre, but feeling insecure even there, he falls into a state of melancholy, and quits his kingdom to escape the pursuit of Antiochus.

Arriving at Tarsus at a time when its inhabitants are suffering from famine, he succours them with corn from his ships. Soon afterwards he is wrecked off Pentapolis and cast ashore. His armour is dragged out of the sea in fishermen's nets, and Pericles takes part in a knightly tournament. The king's daughter, Thaisa, falls in love with him at first sight, as did Nausicaa with Odysseus. She ignores all the young knights around her for the sake of this noble stranger, who has suffered shipwreck and so many other misfortunes. She will marry him or none; he shines in comparison with the others as a precious stone beside glass. Pericles weds Thaisa, and bears her away with him on his ship. They are overtaken by a storm, during which Thaisa dies in giving birth to a daughter. The superstition of the sailors requires that her corpse shall be immediately thrown into the sea. The coffin drifts ashore at Ephesus, where Thaisa reawakes to life unharmed. The newborn child is left by Pericles to be nursed at Tarsus. As Marina grows up, her foster-mother determines to kill her because she outshines her daughter. Pirates land and prevent the murder; carrying off Marina, they sell her to the mistress of a brothel in Mitylene. She preserves her purity amidst these horrible surroundings, and, finding a protector, gains her release. She is taken on board Pericles' ship that she may charm away hismelancholy. A recognition ensues, and, in obedience to a sign from Diana, they sail to Ephesus; the husband is reunited to his wife and the newly-found daughter to her mother.

This is the dramatically impossible canvas which Shakespeare undertook to retouch and finish. That he should have made the first sketch of the play, as Fleay so warmly maintains, seems very improbable upon a careful study of the plot. To write such a beginning to an already finished end would have been an almost impossible task for Wilkins and his collaborator, involving a terribly active vigilance; for the setting of the Shakespearian scenes, Gower's prologues, interludes, and epilogues, &c., is a frame of their own making. Everything favours the theory that it was Shakespeare who undertook to shape a half- or wholly-finished piece of patchwork.

He hardly touched the first two acts, but they contain some traces of his pen—the delicacy with which the incest of the Princess is treated, for example, and Thaisa's timid, almost mute, though suddenly-aroused love for him who at first glance seems to her the chief of men. The scene between the three fishermen, with which the second act opens, owns some turns which speak of Shakespeare, especially where a fisherman says that the avaricious rich are the whales "o' the land, who never leave gaping till they've swallowed the whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all," and another replies, "But, master, if I had been the sexton, I would have been that day in the belfry."

"Second Fisherman. Why, man?"Third Fisherman. Because he should have swallowed me too: and when I had been in his belly, I would have kept such a jangling of the bells, that he should never have left till he cast bells, steeple, church, and parish up again."

"Second Fisherman. Why, man?

"Third Fisherman. Because he should have swallowed me too: and when I had been in his belly, I would have kept such a jangling of the bells, that he should never have left till he cast bells, steeple, church, and parish up again."

It is not impossible, however, that these gleams of Shakespearean wit are mere imitations of his manner. But, on the other hand, the obvious mimicry of theMidsummer Night's Dreamin Gower's prologue to the third act is commonplace and clumsy enough:

"Now sleep yslaked hath the rout;No din but snores the house about.. . . . . . .The cat, with eyne of burning coal,Now couches fore the mouse's hole;And crickets sing at the oven's mouth,E'er the blither for their drouth."

Compare this with Puck's:

"Now the wasted brands do glow,Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud," &c.

An awkwardly introduced pantomime interrupts the prologue, which is tediously renewed; then suddenly, like a voice from another world, a rich, full tone breaks in upon the feeble drivel, and we hear Shakespeare's own voice in unmistakable and royal power:

"Thou God of this great vast, rebuke these surges,Which wash both heaven and hell; and thou, that hastUpon the winds command, bind them in brass,Having called them from the deep! Oh, stillThy deafening, dreadful thunders; gently quenchThy nimble, sulphurous flashes!—Oh, how, Lychorida,How does my queen?—Thou stormest venomously:Wilt thou spit all thyself? The seaman's whistleIs as a whisper in the ears of death,Unheard."...

The nurse brings the tiny new-born babe, saying:

"Here is a thing too young for such a place,Who, if it had conceit, would die, as IAm like to do: take in your arms this pieceOf your dead queen.Pericles. How, how Lychorida!Lychorida. Patience, good sir; do not assist the storm.Here's all that is left living of your queen,A little daughter: for the sake of it,Be manly and take comfort."

The sailors enter, and, after a brief, masterly conversation, full of the raging storm and the struggle to save the ship, they superstitiously demand that the queen, who has but this instant drawn her last breath, should be thrown overboard. The king is compelled to yield, and turning a last look upon her, says:

"A terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear;No light, no fire: the unfriendly elementsForgot thee utterly; nor have I timeTo give thee hallowed to thy grave, but straightMust cast thee, scarcely coffined, in the ooze;Where, for a monument upon thy bones,And e'er-remaining lamps, the belching whaleAnd humming water must o'erwhelm thy corse,Lying with simple shells."

He gives orders to change the course of the ship and make for Tarsus, because "the babe cannot hold out to Tyrus." There is so mighty a breath of storm and raging seas, such rolling of thunder and flashing of lightning in these scenes, that nothing in English poetry, not excepting Shakespeare'sTempestitself, nor Byron's and Shelley's descriptions of Nature, can surpass it.The storm blows and howls, hisses and screams, till the sound of the boatswain's whistle is lost in the raging of the elements. These scenes are famous and beloved among that seafaring folk for whom they were written, and who know the subject-matter so well.

The effect is tremendously heightened by the struggles of human passion amidst the fury of the elements. The tender and strong grief expressed in Pericles' subdued lament for Thaisa is not drowned by the storm; it sounds a clear, spiritual note of contrast with the raging of the sea. And how touching is Pericles' greeting to his new-born child:

"Now, mild may be thy life!For a more blustrous birth had never babe:Quiet and gentle thy conditions, forThou art the rudeliest welcomed to this worldThat ever was prince's child. Happy what follows!Thou hast as chiding a nativityAs fire, air, water, earth, and heaven can make,To herald thee from the womb." ...

Although Wilkins' tale follows the course of the play very faithfully, there are but two points in which the resemblance between them extends to a similarity of wording. The first of these occurs in the second act, which was Wilkins' own work, and the second here. In his tale Wilkins says:

"Poor inch of nature! Thou art as rudely welcome to the world as ever princess' babe was, and hast as chiding a nativity as fire, air, earth, and water can afford thee."

Even more striking than the identity of words is the exclamation "Poor inch of nature!" It is so entirely Shakespearian that we are tempted to believe it must have been accidentally omitted in the manuscripts from which the first edition was printed.

It is not until the birth of Marina in the third act that Shakespeare really takes the play in hand. Why? Because it is only now that it begins to have any interest for him. It is the development of this character, this tender image of youthful charm and noble purity, which attracts him to the task.

How Shakespearian is the scene in which Marina is found strewing flowers on the grave of her dead nurse just before Dionyza sends her away to be murdered; it foreshadows two scenes in plays which are shortly to follow—the two brothers laying flowers on the supposed corpse of Fidelio inCymbelineand Perdita, disguised as a shepherdess, distributing all kinds of blossoms to the two strangers and her guests inThe Winter's Tale.

Marina says (Act iv. sc. I):

"No, I will rob Tellus of her weedTo strew thy green with flowers: the yellows, blues,The purple violets, and marigolds,Shall as a carpet hang upon thy graveWhile summer-days do last.—Ay me! poor maid,Born in a tempest, when my mother died,This world to me is like a lasting storm,Whirring me from my friends."

The words are simple, and not especially remarkable in themselves, but they are of the greatest importance as symptoms. They are the first mild tones escaping from an instrument which has long yielded only harsh and jarring sounds. There is nothing like them in the dramas of Shakespeare's despairing mood.

When, weary and sad, he consented to re-write parts of thisPericles, it was that he might embody the feeling by which he is now possessed. Pericles is a romantic Ulysses, a far-travelled, 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, restless and depressed. There is a touch of melancholy about him from the first, accompanied by an indifference to danger; later, when his distrust of men has been aroused, this characteristic despondency becomes intensified, and gives an appearance of depth of thought and feeling. His sensitive nature, brave enough in the midst of storm and shipwreck, sinks deeper and deeper into a depression which becomes almost melancholia. Feeling solitary and forsaken, he allows no one to approach him, pays no heed when he is spoken to, but sits, silent and stern, brooding over his griefs (Act iv. sc. I). Then Marina comes into his life. When she is first brought on board, she tries to attract his attention by her sweet, modest play and song; then she speaks to him, but is rebuffed, even angrily repulsed, until the gentle narrative of the circumstances of her birth and the misfortunes which have pursued her arrests the king's attention. The restoration of his daughter produces a sudden change from anguished melancholy to subdued happiness.

So, as a poet, had Shakespeare of late withdrawn from the world, and in just such a manner he looked upon men and their sympathy until the appearance of Marina and her sisters in his poetry.

It is probable that Shakespeare wrote the part of Pericles for Burbage, but there is much of himself in it. The two men had more in common than one would be apt to suppose from the only too well-known story of their rivalry on a certain intimateoccasion. It is just such trivial anecdotes as this that make their way and are remembered.

Shakespeare has spiritualised Pericles; Marina, in his hands, is a glorified being, who is scarcely grown up before her charm and rare qualities rouse envy and hatred. We first see her strewing flowers on a grave, and immediately after this we listen to her attempt to disarm the man who has undertaken to murder her. She proves herself as innocent as the Queen Dagmar of the ancient ballad. She "never spake bad word nor did ill turn to any living creature." She never killed a mouse or hurt a fly; once she trod upon a worm against her will and wept for it. No human creature could be cast in gentler mould, and truth and nobility unite with this mildness to shed, as it were, a halo round her.

When, after rebuffing and rejecting her, Pericles has gradually softened towards Marina, he asks her where she was born and who provided the rich raiment she is wearing. She replies that if she were to tell the story of her life none would believe her, and she prefers to remain silent. Pericles urges her:

"Prithee, speak:Falseness cannot come from thee; for thou look'stModest as Justice, and thou seem'st a palaceFor the crowned Truth to dwell in; I will believe thee.. . . . . . . . .Tell thy story;If thine considered prove the thousandth partOf my endurance, thou art a man, and IHave suffered like a girl: yet thou dost lookLike Patience gazing on kings' graves, and smilingExtremity out of act."

All this rich imagery brings Marina before us with the nobility of character which is so fitly expressed in her outward seeming. It is Pericles himself who feels like a buried prince, and it is he who has need of her patient sympathy, that the violence of his grief may be softened by her smile. It is all very dramatically effective. The old Greek tragedies frequently relied on these scenes of recovery and recognition, and they never failed to produce their effect. The dialogue here is softly subdued, it is no painting in strong burning colours that we are shown, but a delicately blended pastel. In order to gain an insight into Shakespeare's humour at the timeAs You Like ItandTwelfth Nightwere written, the reader was asked to think of a day on which he felt especially well and strong and sensible that all his bodily organs were in a healthy condition,—one of those days in which there is a festive feeling in the sunshine, a gentle caress in the air.

To enter into his mood in a similar manner now you wouldneed to recall some day of convalescence, when health is just returning after a long and severe illness. You are still so weak that you shrink from any exertion, and, though no longer ill, you are as yet far from being well; your walk is unsteady, and the grasp of your hand is weak. But the senses are keener than usual, and in little much is seen; one gleam of sunshine in the room has more power to cheer and enliven than a whole landscape bathed in sunshine at another time. The twitter of a bird in the garden, just a few chirps, has more meaning than a whole chorus of nightingales by moonlight at other moments. A single pink in a glass gives as much pleasure as a whole conservatory of exotic plants. You are grateful for a trifle, touched by friendliness, and easily moved to admiration. He who has but just returned to life has an appreciative spirit.

As Shakespeare, with the greater susceptibility of genius, was more keenly alive to the joyousness of youth, so more intensely than others he felt the quiet, half-sad pleasures of convalescence.

Wishing to accentuate the sublime innocence of Marina's nature, he submits it to the grimmest test, and gives it the blackest foil one could well imagine. The gently nurtured girl is sold by pirates to a brothel, and the delineation of the inmates of the house, and Marina's bearing towards them and their customers, occupies the greater part of the fourth act.

As we have already said, we can see no reason why Fleay should reject these scenes as non-Shakespearian. When this critic (whose reputation has suffered by his arbitrariness and inconsistency) does not venture to ascribe them to Wilkins, and yet will not admit them to be Shakespeare's, he is in reality pandering to the narrow-mindedness of the clergyman, who insists that any art which is to be recognised shall only be allowed to overstep the bounds of propriety in a humorously jocose manner. These scenes, so bluntly true to nature in the vile picture they set before us, are limned in just that Caravaggio colouring which distinstinguished Shakespeare's work during the period which is now about to close. Marina's utterances, the best he has put into her mouth, are animated by a sublimity which recalls Jesus' answers to his persecutors. Finally, the wholepersonnelis exactly that ofMeasure for Measure,whose genuineness no one has ever disputed. There is also an occasional resemblance of situation. Isabella, in her robes of spotless purity, offers precisely the same contrast to the world of pimps and panders who riot through the play that Marina does here to the woman of the brothel and her servants.

After all that he had suffered, it was hardly possible Shakespeare would relapse into the romantic, mediæval worship of woman as woman. But his natural rectitude of spirit soon led him to make exceptions from the general condemnation which he was inclined for a time to pass upon the sex; and now that his soul's health was returning to him, he felt drawn, after havingdwelt solely upon women of the merely sensual type, to place a halo round the head of the young girl, and so he brings her with unspotted innocence out of the most terrible situations.

When she sees that she is locked into the house, she says:

"Alack, that Leonine was so slack, so slow!He should have struck, not spoke; or that these pirates,Not enough barbarous, had but o'erboard thrown meFor to seek my mother!Bawd. Why lament you, pretty one?Marina. That I am pretty.Bawd. Come, the gods have done their part in you.Marina. I accuse them not.Bawd. You are 'light into my hands, where you are like to live.Marina. The more my faultTo 'scape his hands where I was like to die.. . . Are you a woman?Bawd.What would you have me be, an I be not a woman?Marina.An honest woman, or not a woman."

The governor Lysimachus seeks the house, and is left alone with Marina. He begins:

"Now, pretty one, how long have you been at this trade?Marina. What trade, sir?Lysimachus. Why, I cannot name't but I shall offend.Marina. I cannot be offended with my trade. Please you to name it.Lysimachus. How long have you been of this profession?Marina. E'er since I can remember.Lysimachus. Did you go to't so young? Were you a gamester at five or at seven?Marina. Earlier too, sir, if now I be one.Lysimachus. Why, the house you dwell in proclaims you to be a creature of sale.Marina. Do you know this house to be a place of such resort, and will come into't? I hear say you are of honourable parts, and are the governor of this place.Lysimachus. Why, hath your principal made known unto you who I am?Marina. Who is my principal?Lysimachus. Why, your herb-woman; she that sets seeds and roots of shame and iniquity. Oh, you have heard something of my power, and so stand aloof for more serious wooing. . . . Come, bring me to some private place: come, come.Marina. If you were born to honour, show it now; If put upon you, make the judgment good That thought you worthy of it."

"Now, pretty one, how long have you been at this trade?Marina. What trade, sir?

Lysimachus. Why, I cannot name't but I shall offend.

Marina. I cannot be offended with my trade. Please you to name it.

Lysimachus. How long have you been of this profession?

Marina. E'er since I can remember.

Lysimachus. Did you go to't so young? Were you a gamester at five or at seven?

Marina. Earlier too, sir, if now I be one.

Lysimachus. Why, the house you dwell in proclaims you to be a creature of sale.

Marina. Do you know this house to be a place of such resort, and will come into't? I hear say you are of honourable parts, and are the governor of this place.

Lysimachus. Why, hath your principal made known unto you who I am?

Marina. Who is my principal?

Lysimachus. Why, your herb-woman; she that sets seeds and roots of shame and iniquity. Oh, you have heard something of my power, and so stand aloof for more serious wooing. . . . Come, bring me to some private place: come, come.

Marina. If you were born to honour, show it now; If put upon you, make the judgment good That thought you worthy of it."

Lysimachus is arrested by her words and his purpose changed. He gives her gold, bids her persevere in the ways of purity, andprays the gods will strengthen her. She succeeds in obtaining her freedom and in supporting herself by her talents. The lasting impression she had made on the governor in her degradation is proved by his sending for her to charm King Pericles' melancholy, and later he aspires to her hand.

The scenes quoted do not give an intellectual equivalent for all that has been dared in order to produce them, but they bear witness to the desire Shakespeare felt of painting youthful womanly purity shining whitely in a very snake-pit of vice, and the spirit in which it is accomplished is that of both Shakespeare and the Renaissance.

At a somewhat earlier period such a subject would have assumed, in England, the form of aMorality, an allegorical religious play, in which the steadfastness of the virtuous woman would have triumphed overVice. At a somewhat later period, in France, it would have been a Christian drama, in which heathen wickedness and incredulity were put to confusion by the youthful believer. Shakespeare carries it back to the days of Diana; his virtue and vice are alike heathen, owning no connection with church or creed.

Thirty-seven years later, during the minority of Louis XIV., Pierre Corneille made use of a very similar subject in his but little-known tragedy,Théodore, Vierge et Martyre. The scene is laid in the same place in whichPericlesbegins, in Antioch during the reign of Diocletian.

Marcella, the wicked wife of the governor of the province, determines that her daughter Flavia shall marry the object of her passion, Placidus. He, however, has no thought but for the Princess Theodora, a descendant of the old Syrian kings. Theodora is a Christian, and these are the times of Christian persecution. In order to revenge herself upon the young girl and estrange Placidus from her, Marcella causes her to be confined in just such another house as that into which Marina was sold.

The dramatic interest would naturally lie in the development of Theodora's feelings when, she finds herself abandoned to her fate. But the chaste young girl will not, and cannot, express in words the horror she must feel; and in any case the laws of propriety would not allow her to do so on the French stage. Corneille avoided the difficulty by exchanging action for narrative. Various false or incomplete accounts of what has taken place keep the audience in anxious expectation.

Placidus is told that Theodora's sentence has been commuted to one of simple banishment. He breathes again. Then he hears that Theodora has actually been taken to the house; that Didymus, her Christian admirer, bribed the soldiers to allow him to enter first, and that shortly afterwards he returned, covering his face with his cloak as though ashamed.He is furious. The third announcement informs him that it was Theodora who came out disguised in Didymus's clothes. Placidus' rage now gives way to agonising jealousy. He believes that Theodora has yielded willingly to Didymus, and he suffers tortures. Finally we learn the truth. Didymus himself tells how he rescued Theodora unharmed; he is a Christian, and expects to die. "Live thou without jealousy," he says to Placidus; "I can endure the death penalty." "Alas!" answers Placidus, "how can I be other than jealous, knowing that this glorious creature owes more than life to thee. Thou hast given thy life to save her honour; how can I but envy thy happiness!" Both Theodora and Didymus are martyred, and the pagan lover, who did nothing to help his love, is left alone with his shame.

The sole contrast intended here is between the noble qualities developed by the Christian faith and that baseness which was considered inseparable from heathendom.

Two things arrest our attention in this comparison: firstly, the superiority of the English drama, which openly represents all things on the stage, even such subjects as are only passingly alluded to by society; and, secondly, the marked difference in the spirit of that Old England of the Renaissance from the all-pervading Christianism of the early classic period in "most Christian" France.

The calm dignity of Marina's innocence has none of that taint of the confessional which was plainly obnoxious to Shakespeare, and which neither the mediæval plays before him, nor Corneille and Calderon after, could escape. Corneille's Theodora is a saint by profession and a martyr from choice. She gives herself up to her enemies at the end of the play, because she has been assured by supernatural revelation that she will not again be imprisoned in the house from which she has just escaped. Shakespeare's Marina, the tenderly and carefully outlined sketch of the type which is presently to wholly possess his imagination, is purely human in her innate nobility of nature.

It is deeply interesting to trace in this sombre yet fantastically romantic play ofPericlesthe germs of all his succeeding works.

Marina and her mother, long lost and late recovered by a sorrowing king, are the preliminary studies for Perdita and Hermione inA Winter's Tale. Perdita, as her name tells us, is lost and is living, ignorant of her parentage, in a strange country. Marina's flower-strewing suggests Perdita's distribution of blossoms, accompanied by words which reveal a profound understanding of flower-nature, and Hermione is recovered by Leontes as is Thaisa by Pericles.

The wicked stepmother inCymbelinecorresponds to the wicked foster-mother inPericles. She hates Imogen as Dionyza hates Marina. Pisanio is supposed to have murdered her as Leonine isbelieved to have slain Marina, and Cymbeline recovers both sons and daughter as Pericles his wife and child.

The tendency to substitute some easy process of explanation, such as melodramatic music or supernatural revelation, in the place of severe dramatic technique, which appears at this time, betrays a certain weariness of the demands of the art. Diana appears to the slumbering Pericles as Jupiter does to Posthumus inCymbeline.

But it is forThe TempestthatPericlesmore especially prepares us. The attitude of the melancholy prince towards his daughter seems to foreshadow that of the noble Prospero towards his child Miranda. Prospero is also living in exile from his home. But it is Cerimon who approaches more nearly in character to Prospero. Note his great speech:

"I held it ever,Virtue and cunning were endowments greaterThan nobleness and richer: careless heirsMay the two latter darken and expend;But immortality attends the former,Making a man a god. 'Tis known I everHave studied physic, through which secret art,By turning o'er authorities, I have,Together with my practice, made familiarTo me and to my aid the blest infusionsThat dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones;And I can speak of the disturbancesThat Nature works, and of her cures; which doth give meA more content in course of true delightThan to be thirsty after tottering honourOr tie my treasure up in silken bags,To please the fool and death" (Act iii. sc. 2).

The position in which Thaisa and Pericles stand in the second act towards the angry father, who has in reality no serious objection to their union, closely resembles that of Ferdinand and Miranda before the feigned wrath of Prospero. Most notable of all is the preliminary sketch we find inPericlesof the tempest which ushers in the play of that name. Over and above the resemblance between the storm scenes, we have Marina's description of the hurricane during which she was born (Pericles, Act iv. sc. I), and Ariel's description of the shipwreck (Tempest, Act i. sc. 2).

Many other slight touches prove a relationship between the two plays. InThe Tempest(Act ii. sc. I), as inPericles(Act v. sc. I), we have soothing slumbrous music and, mention of harpies (Tempest, Act iii. sc. 3, andPericles, Act iv. sc. 3). The words "virgin knot," so charmingly used by Marina:

"If fires be hot, knives sharp, or waters deep,Untied I still my virgin knot will keep" (Act iv. sc. 2),

are also employed by Prospero in reference to Miranda inThe Tempest(Act iv. sc. I); and it will be observed that these are the only two instances in which they occur in Shakespeare.

Thus the germs of all his latest works lie in this unjustly neglected and despised play, which has suffered under a double disadvantage: it is not entirely Shakespeare's work, and in such portions of it as are his own there exist, in the dark shadow cast by her hideous surroundings about Marina, traces of that gloomy mood from which he was but just emerging. But for all that, whether we look upon it as a contribution to Shakespeare's biography or as a poem, this beautiful and remarkable fragment,Pericles, is a work of the greatest interest.[3]

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