Part 29

_Conclusion_, which formerly signified a trial or _experiment_, is here put for _riddle_, itself a trial of skill. The practice of proposing such riddles, with the penalty for not expounding them, is borrowed from ancient romances. In that of _Tristan de Leonnois_, there is a giant who detains all passengers that he meets, and puts them to the test of unfolding a riddle. If they fail, he kills them. A hero at length presents himself, who, after explaining the riddle, proposes one in his turn; the giant not being able to expound it, is himself put to death. The construction of these riddles is the same as that in the play, as will appear from the following specimen:--

"Je d'un arbre jouy jadis Que j'aimois mieux que paradis; C'est arbre bel fruict m'apporta Que sa grand' beauté m'entorta Tellement que la fleur en pris: Et puis du fruist tant je mespris Qu'a le manger fu irrité. Dy moy du cas la verité, La me disant la vie auras; Si non sois seur que tu mourras."

SCENE 1. Page 402.

DAUGH. _In all save that_, may'st thou prove prosperous!

This reading has been adopted in preference to that of the old copy, which was, _of all said yet_; and in support of it Mr. Mason has offered the following argument.

_She cannot wish him more prosperous in expounding the riddle than those who had preceded him; because his success would cause the publication of her own shame. Feeling a regard for the prince, she deprecates his fate, and wishes he may not succeed in solving the riddle; but that his failure may be attended with prosperous consequences._ Now she must have very well known that the failure in question could be attended with no other consequences than the forfeiture of his life, a condition that had been just before expressly declared. Nor was such a wish on the part of the lady likely to operate as an inducement to the prince to try his chance. The words "save that" appear to have no regular antecedent. Would it not therefore be more charitable towards the lady to suppose that her mind revolted at the guilty situation she was placed in; and that a sudden affection for the prince, and a desire to be honourably united to such a man, might take possession of her mind, and induce her to wish, according to a sense which may be extracted from the old reading, that, _as to all which had been uttered_, he might prove successful? It should be remembered too, that this idea corresponds entirely with the character of the princess in Gower. Should this interpretation be thought just, the present speech must be supposed to be _privately_ addressed to the prince.

SCENE 1. Page 410.

PER. ... for wisdom sees, those men Blush not in actions blacker than the night, Will _shun_ no course to keep them from the light.

The old reading was _show_ no course, which is equivalent with _take no means_; and the construction is, "they who blush not for bad actions will take no means to conceal them."

SCENE 2. Page 413.

PER. Let none disturb us: why this _charge_ of thoughts?

Both the old editions have _change_, which, as Mr. Mason has shown, may very well stand; and even the redundant word _should_, in the old copies, might be retained without diminishing the harmony of the line. The sense would then be, "Let none disturb us: why should this change of sentiment [disturb us]?"

SCENE 4. Page 426.

CLE. If _heaven_ slumber while _their_ creatures want, They may awake _their_ helps to comfort them.

As these lines stand they are ungrammatical. The original reading was, no doubt, _if the Gods slumber_, which was altered by the licencer of the press. This should either be restored, or the whole rendered correct.

ACT II.

Page 438.

GOW. ... what shall be next, Pardon old Gower; this _longs_ the text.

Which Mr. Steevens thus explains: "Excuse old Gower from telling you what follows. The very text to it has proved of too considerable a length already." But has he not missed the meaning of this elliptical mode of expression, which seems to be, "Excuse old Gower from relating what follows; this _belongs_ to the text, i. e. the play itself, not to me the commentator?" In the third Act he uses a similar speech,

"I will relate; action may Conveniently the rest convey."

_Longs_ should be printed _'longs_, as we have _'lated_ for _belated_ in _Macbeth_, Act. III. Scene 3.

SCENE 1. Page 450.

PER. ... I yet am unprovided Of a pair of _bases_.

These were a sort of petticoat that hung down to the knees, and were suggested by the Roman military dress, in which they seem to have been separate and parallel slips of cloth or leather. Gayton in his _Festivous notes on Don Quixote_, p. 218, says, that "all heroick persons are _pictured_ in _bases_ and buskins." In the celebrated story of _Friar John and Friar Richard_, as related in Heywood's _History of women_, p. 253, the skirts of the _armed_ friar's gown are made to serve as _bases_. At the justs that were held in honour of Queen Catherine in the second year of Henry VIII., some of the knights had "their _basses_ and trappers of cloth of golde, every of them his name embroudered on his _basse_ and trapper."--Halle's _Chronicle_. But here the term seems applied to the furniture of the horses. The bases appear to have been made of various materials. If in tilting they fell to the ground, the heralds claimed them as a fee, unless redeemed by money; this indeed was the case with respect to any piece of armour that happened to be detached from the owner. Sometimes _bases_ denoted the hose merely; as in the comedy of _Lingua_, 1607, where _Auditus_, one of the characters, is dressed in "a cloth of silver mantle upon a pair of sattin _bases_." In Rider's Latin Dictionary, 1659, _bases_ are rendered _palliolum curtum_. The term seems to have been borrowed from the French, who at a very early period used _bache_ for a woman's petticoat.--See Carpentier _Glossar. medii ævi_.

SCENE 2. Page 454.

THAISA. And his device, a _wreath_ of chivalry The word, _Me pompæ provexit apex_.

_Pompæ_, and not _Pompei_, is undoubtedly the true word; and the whole of Mr. Steevens's reasoning in favour of the latter is at once disposed of by referring to the work which appears to have furnished the author of the play with this and the two subsequent devices of the knights. It is a scarce little volume entitled, _The heroicall devises of M. Claudius Paradin canon of Beaujeu, whereunto are added the lord Gabriel Symeon's and others. Translated out of Latin into English, by P. S._ 1591, 24mo. The _sixth_ device, from its peculiar reference to the situation of Pericles, may perhaps have been altered from one in the same collection used by Diana of Poictiers. It is a green branch issuing from a tomb with the motto SOLA VIVIT IN ILLO. The following are what have been immediately borrowed from Paradin; but it is also proper to state that the torch and the hand issuing from a cloud are to be found in Whitney's _Emblems_, 1586, 4to. As they are all more elegantly engraved in the original editions of Paradin and Symeon than in the English book above mentioned, the copies here given have been made from the former.

ACT III.

SCENE 2. Page 498.

1. GENT. Or tie my treasure up in silken bags, To please the _fool and death_.

The notes on this passage having got into some little confusion by the introduction of the lines in _Measure for measure_ which relate to the _fool and death_ and the supplemental remarks on it, it will be necessary in all future editions to keep them separate, as it seems almost certain that they have no connection with each other.

Cerimon in most express terms declares that he feels more real satisfaction in his liberal employment as a physician, than he should in the uncertain pursuit of honour, or in the mere accumulation of wealth; which would assimilate him to a miser, the result of whose labour is merely to entertain the fool and death. But how was such amusement as this to affect those personages in the _other_ instance, where the vain attempts of a fool to escape the jaws of his adversary form the whole of the subject? The allusion therefore is to some such print as Mr. Steevens happily remembered to have seen, in which death plunders the miser of his money bags, whilst the fool is grinning at the process. It may be presumed that these subjects were common in Shakspeare's time. They might have ornamented the poor man's cottage in the shape of rude prints, or have been introduced into halfpenny ballads long since consigned to oblivion. The miser is at all times fair game; and to prove that this is not a chimerical opinion, and at the same time to show the extensive range of this popular subject, a few prints of the kind shall be mentioned. 1. Death and the two misers, by Michael Pregel. 2. An old couple counting their money, death and two devils attending, a mezzotint by Vander Bruggen. 3. A similar mezzotint by Meheux without the devils. 4. An old print on a _single sheet_ of a dance of death, on which both the _miser_ and the _fool_ are exhibited in the clutches of the grim monarch.

The rear may be closed with the same subject as represented in the various _dances of death_ that still remain. Nor should it be concluded that because these prints exhibit no fool to grin at the impending scene, others might not have done so. The satirical introduction of this character on many occasions supports the probability that they did. Thus in a painting of the school of Holbein, an old man makes love to a girl, attended by a fool and death, to show, in the first instance, the folly of the thing, and in the next, its consequences. It is unnecessary to pursue the argument, as every print of the above kind that may in future occur, will itself speak much more forcibly than any thing which can here be added.

ACT IV.

SCENE 3. Page 539.

The two last lines in the quotation from _The wife for a month_ should be printed thus:

Hung up _my_ picture in a market place, And sold _me_ to vile bawds.

SCENE 3. Page 540.

BAWD. ... to scatter his _crowns in the sun_.

"There is here," says Mr. Malone, "perhaps, some allusion to the _lues venerea_, though the words _French crowns_ in their literal acceptation were certainly also in Boult's thoughts." Mr. Mason sees no allusion whatever to the above disease. That a French crown did signify the _lues venerea_ cannot be doubted; but Mr. Mason's difference of opinion might be further supported by reflecting that if the Frenchman came to _renovate_[18] his malady, he could not well be said to scatter it. It must therefore be inferred that he was to scatter nothing but his money. As Mr. Mason has not favoured us with an explanation of the coins in question, it is necessary to state that they were _crowns of the sun_ specifically so called, _écus du soleil_; and in this instance, for the sake of antithesis, termed crowns _in_ the sun. They were of gold, originally coined by Louis XI. Their name was derived from the mint mark of a sun; and they were current in this kingdom by weight, in the same manner as certain English coins were in France.

SCENE 3. Page 541.

BOULT. ... we should lodge them with _this sign_.

_This sign_ is properly referred by Mr. Malone to the person of Marina, and cannot, for the reasons in the last note, allude to the _sun_, according to Mr. Mason's second explanation. Nor is this gentleman's argument supported by the instance adduced of the sun having been used as the sign of a brothel. It was by no means exclusively, or even particularly so. The following passage from Dekker's _Villanies discovered, or the belman's night walks_, may throw some light on the subject before us. "He saw the doores of notorious _carted bawdes_ (like hell gates) stand night and day wide open, with a _paire of harlots_ in taffata gownes (like two painted posts) garnishing out those doores, being better to the house then a _double signe_."

SCENE 6. Page 567.

MAR. Thou 'rt the damn'd door-keeper to every coystrel That hither comes enquiring for his _tib_.

Mr. Malone thinks _Tib_ a contraction of Tabitha; but quære if not of Isabel? In all events it was a name given to any lewd woman. In _Pasquil's mad cappe_, 1626, 4to, an excellent satire, mention is made of _a tinker and his tibbe_. Why this name was exclusively applied to a loose woman, or how it got into the game of gleek, does not appear.

ACT V.

SCENE 3. Page 607.

PER. Heav'ns make a _star_ of him!

So in 1 _Henry VI._ Act I.

"A far more glorious star thy soul will make Than Julius Cæsar----"

This notion is borrowed from the ancients, who expressed their mode of conferring divine honours and immortality on men, by placing them among the stars. Thus on a medal of Hadrian the adopted son of Trajan and Plotina, the divinity of his parents is expressed by placing a star over their heads; and in like manner the consecration medals of Faustina the elder exhibit her on an eagle, her head surrounded with stars. Other similar medals have the moon and stars; and some of Faustina the younger the inscription SIDERIBVS RECEPTA.

THE CLOWN.

Although Boult, the servant to the pandar and his wife, is not termed a _clown_ in the _dramatis personæ_, it should seem that he has an equal claim to the appellation with several other low characters that have been introduced into plays for the purpose of amusing the audience. He bears some affinity to the tapster in _Measure for measure_; but there is nothing that immediately constitutes him the jester to a brothel. See what has been said on such a character in the article relating to the clown in _Measure for measure_.

ON THE STORY OF PERICLES.

As the very great popularity of this play in former times may be supposed to have originated rather from the interest which the _story_, replete with incident, must have excited, than from any intrinsic merit as _a dramatic composition_, it may be worth while, and even interesting to many, to give the subject more ample discussion. To trace it beyond the period in which the favourite romance of _Apollonius Tyrius_ was composed, would be a vain attempt. That was the probable original; but of its author nothing decisive has been discovered. The following circumstance, however, has led to a conjecture concerning him, which shall be stated with as much brevity as possible. When Tarsia, the Marina of Pericles, has finished the song which she addresses to her unknown father Apollonius, she receives from him a hundred pieces of gold, with a command to leave him. Athenagoras, the Lysimachus of Pericles, afterwards meets her, gives her two hundred pieces, and prevails on her to make another effort to sooth the melancholy of Apollonius. She returns to him, requests permission to renew their conversation, and insists on his taking back his money, unless he can expound certain riddles which she proceeds to state. Now these riddles, three in number, are to be found in a work entitled _Symposii ænigmata_. The original editor of this book, Pierre Pithou, thought fit, without the smallest authority, to entitle the supposed author Cælius Firmianus Symposius. Heuman, a subsequent editor, placing implicit confidence in this name, maintained that this person could be no other than the celebrated father of the church Cælius Firmianus Lactantius; for having found that he had written a work, now lost, under the title of _Symposium_, he concluded that the name of _Symposius_, which occurs at the beginning of the ænigmas, was a mistake, and that he had therefore proved his point. But this futile reasoning was easily subverted by the superior critical talents of the truly learned Fabricius, who demonstrated the impossibility of such an error, and that Heuman had even misconceived the meaning of the word _Symposium_, which could not apply to a work like the ænigmas. Besides, the evidence of Saint Jerome remained to show that the symposium was not written, like the ænigmas, in hexameter verses. Lactantius is therefore out of the question; and though there is no immediate proof respecting the time in which Symposius lived, it appears that it must have been before the eighth century, as bishop Aldhelm, who died in 709, quotes the ænigmas _as composed by Symposius the poet_. This, and many other circumstances, sufficiently identify him against the ill-founded assertions of Heuman, who regarded him as a nonentity. Aldhelm himself wrote ænigmas so much in the manner of Symposius, that one might reasonably enough infer there was no great difference in their respective ages. The learned Barthius (see his _Adversaria_, lib. lviii. c. 1.), fully persuaded of the reality of Symposius, and acquainted with the occurrence of the riddles in the history of _Apollonius Tyrius_, concluded, with other learned men, that Symposius wrote the latter; and he justly terms the author _dulcis scriptor et eruditus_, as will be evident to any one who will take the trouble of reading it in Velser's edition, which is printed from a better manuscript than those used in the _Gesta Romanorum_. If, as Velser maintains, and Barthius admits, it was originally written in Greek, a difficulty arises with respect to Symposius, unless he be regarded as the translator. But, to say the truth, there does not appear to be any solid reason for supposing him the author, or even translator. It is not very probable that in either character he would have introduced his own matter from another work; and therefore, until some more fortunate discovery shall occur, the romance of Apollonius Tyrius must remain anonymous.

With respect to the language in which it was composed, Velser was of opinion, from certain Græco-Latin words which it contains, that this was Greek, and he speaks rather obscurely of a manuscript of it in that language at Constantinople. He seems to think that the translator was a Christian, living about the period of the decline of the Roman empire. Barthius conceived him to have been a monk of the sixth century. The _Saxon_ translation mentioned in Wanley's list of manuscripts, and now in Bennett College, Cambridge, is doubtless from the Latin, and is alone a sufficient testimony of the antiquity of the work. At what time it was made must be left to the decision of those who are critically skilled in the Saxon language. One Constantine is said to have translated it into modern Greek verse about the year 1500; and this is probably the manuscript mentioned in Dufresne's index of authors, and afterwards printed at Venice in 1563. Mr. Tyrwhitt has observed that Velser was not aware of its having been already published in the _Gesta Romanorum_; and it may be added that it had been printed separately at Augsburg in 1471; perhaps as early as in the _Gesta Romanorum_; a fact that cannot well be ascertained, because there are editions of the latter without date which might have been printed before. Mr. Warton has committed a slight mistake in supposing that Alamannus Rinucinus made a Latin translation corrected by Beroaldus about the year 1520.[19] Vossius, whom he had misconceived, was speaking of a translation of Philostratus's life of Apollonius _Tyaneus_. What Mr. Malone has said of the _English_ translations precludes the necessity of any further notice of them; but with respect to that gentleman's supposition, that there might have been an early prose translation from the _Gesta Romanorum, in which the name of Apollonius was changed to Pericles_, it becomes necessary to state that there are very good reasons for concluding that the story of _Apollonius Tyrius_, from the _Gesta Romanorum_, never was translated into English; and even that the _Gesta Romanorum in question_ did not appear in our language till the beginning of the eighteenth century, and then but a small portion of it.[20] The name of Pericles has been very well accounted for by Mr. Steevens.

To render this article as complete as possible, and to facilitate the reference to a story once so celebrated, a list of the various manuscripts and printed copies is subjoined.

MANUSCRIPTS.

Those in _Latin_ are, two in Bennett Coll. Cambridge; see Nasmith's _Catal._ Nos. cccxviii. ccccli.--Two in the Bodleian libr. Nos. 2435, 2540; see _Catal. MSS. Angliæ_, pp. 125, 134. Mr. Warton mentions a third, in _H. E. Poetry_, vol. i. p. 350, note h. A fourth is in the same library among Archb. Laud's MSS. No. 1302, _Catal. MSS. Angliæ_, p. 70; on what authority this is said to have been translated from the Greek, remains to be examined.

In Magdal. Coll. Ox. No. 2191, _Catal. MSS. Angliæ_, p. 72.--In Vossius's collection, No. 2409, _Catal. MSS. Angliæ_, p. 64.--In the Norfolk collection, now in the library of the Royal Society, No. 3181, _Catal. MSS. Angliæ_, p. 80.--Two in the Sloanian library; see Ascough's _Catal._ p. 854.--Two in the Vatican. See Montfaucon _Bibl. bibliothecarum_, i. 20, Nos. 275, 284.--In the Medicean library, Montfaucon _Bibl. bibl._ i. 372, No. xl.--In the royal library at Paris; Montfaucon _Bibl. bibl._ ii. 756, No. 5251.

A _Saxon_ translation. Bennett Coll. Camb. See Nasmith's _Catal._ No. cci. and Wanley, Libror. vett. septentrional. catal. apud Hickesij _Thesaur._ p. 146.

A _French_ translation is among the royal MSS. in the British museum, 20 c. ii. evidently made from the Latin about the 15th century.

A fragment in old _English_ verse, probably by Thomas Vicary of Wimborn minster in Dorsetshire, on the story of _Apollonius Tyrius_, was in the possession of the late reverend and learned Dr. Farmer of Cambridge. See it noticed in the present vol. of Mr. Steevens's Shakspeare, pp. 381, 609.

PRINTED COPIES.

_Apollonii Tyrii_ historia, no date, but before 1500, 8vo.

The same published by Velser, 1595, 4to.

In modern Greek verse. Venice, 1563, 1601, 1696, 8vo.

In Italian rime. Venice, 1486, and without place, 1489, 4to.

In Italian prose, _reformed_; and published for the benefit of the common people, _per piacer del popolo_, Milan, 1492, 4to.

In Spanish, in the _Patrañas_ of Juan Timoneda, Alcala, 1576, and Bilbao, 1580, 8vo. This translation may be presumed to have been made from the _Gesta Romanorum_, as other stories from it are in the same work.

In German, Augsburg, 1471, folio, and 1476, 4to.

In Dutch, Delft, 1493, 4to.

In French, b. l. Geneva, 4to, n. d. Again, transl. by Gilles Corrozet, Paris, 1530, 8vo. Again, Amst. 1710, _Paris_, 1711, 12mo, modernized by M. Le Brun. It is abridged in _Melanges tirées d'une grande bibliotheque_, vol. lxiv. p. 265. It is also among the _Hist. tragiques_ de Belleforest, tom. vii. 1604, 12mo.

In Engl. transl. by Rob. Copland from the French, and printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1510.

_The patterne of painful adventures &c. that befell unto Prince_ APPOLONIUS, &c. translated by T. Twine, 1607, Originally published by W. Howe, 1576.

In Gower's _Confessio amantis_, 1483, 1532, and 1554, folio, from Godfrey of Viterbo.

In the _Pantheon_ or _universal chronicle_ of Godfrey of Viterbo, compiled in Latin in the 12th century. First printed at Basil, 1569, folio, and afterwards in Pistorius's collection of German historians.

And lastly, in _most_ of the editions of the _Gesta Romanorum_, in which it makes the 153rd chapter. In comparing this with Velser's work, it will be perceived that it is the same, making allowance for the usual difference of manuscripts. In short, there is but one story.

A few years after the publication of this play, there appeared on the French stage a tragi-comedy on the same story, entitled _Les heureuses infortunes_. It is in two parts, each of five acts, and composed by Francois Bernier de la Brousse. It might be worth while to examine whether he had made any use of the English Pericles.