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Heywood's Pericles, Revised by Shakespeare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Henry David Gray
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Extract

The fact that Pericles was Dot included in the First Folio has thrown discredit upon Heminge and Condell; for even if, as has been conjectured, difficulties of copyright prevented their publishing this very popular play, it is felt that they should not have claimed that they presented in their volume all of Shakespeare's dramas. Since the play could scarcely be ignored, as some of the earlier dramas of divided authorship might have been, the most natural conjecture seems to be that Pericles was generally regarded as substantially another man's play. I believe that in 1623 not only those friends and fellows of Shakespeare who had access to his papers (and who made no other mistake so far as we can determine), but many of those who were urged to buy, would think of the play as “Heywood's Pericles,” in a way that they would not think of “Fletcher's Henry VIII”—nor of any play in the Folio as being essentially the work of an important living dramatist. Most critics believe that Shakespeare was only the reviser of the piece, and assign to him Acts III-V without the choruses and brothel scenes. This leaves only 754 lines, including some we do not really prize and which may not be his. If these scenes were a mere revamping of scenes already in existence, we need not bother about the omission of Pericles from the Folio; if Shakespeare was the original composer of those scenes, and wrote the brothel scenes also, we are put to shifts to explain it. Of course no such consideration would prevent the play's being printed in quarto as Shakespeare's, for we know that in the case of other dramas no warrant at all was needed.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , September 1925 , pp. 507 - 529
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1925

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References

1 Shakespeare Jahrbuch, III, 175.

2 New Shakespeare Society Transactions, 1882.

3 Shakspere and his Predecessors, p. 554.

4 Introd. to Pericles, Arden ed , p. xx.

5 Harper's Magazine, 1909.

6 P. Z. Round, Introd. to First Quarto Facsimile.

7 Harry T. Baker, P. M. L. A., XXIII, 104.

8 Sir Sidney Lee, Introd. to facsimile reproduction of Q1.

9 Engl. Stud., XXXIX, 210-239.

10 Supplementing Mr. Thomas, I should say that to me Wilkins' statement, “Being the true history of the play of Pericles, as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient poet John Gower,” was primarily an attempt to take advantage of the play's popularity, and also may have been something of a blind—to direct attention away from the fact he was basing his story upon that of Twine, another prose narrative like his own. He wished to give his version the advantage that Twine did not have. Yet he paraphrased Twine even in the portion which corresponds to Acts I and II of the play. Mr. Baker, in the article referred to above, lists 28 echoes, an even half of which come from the latter half of the drama. If these echoes were sufficient to show the verbal memory of an actor who had taken part in the production, I think they would date the play for us as before Wilkins left the King's men in 1607.

11 The ten plays of Heywood nearest in time to Pericles are all dramatized narratives, and some of them, like Pericles, follow the source to the minutest detail. (Thomas.)

12 Of the ten plays nearest in time to Pericles, “eight make use of chorus and seven of dumb show.” Gower appears at the beginning of each act, within two acts, and at the end; Homer in the Silver Age and Brazen Age at the beginning of each act, within one, and at the end. (Thomas.)

13 Table of abbreviations used for Heywood's plays:

B A, The Brazen Age

Cap, The Captives

C for B, A Challenge for Beauty

E IV, King Edward the Fourth

E T, The English Traveller

FLS, Fortune by Land and Sea

F M E, The Fair Maid of the Exchange

F M W, The Fair Maid of the West

F P, The Four Prentices of London

G A, The Golden Age

H M C, How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad

I A, The Iron Age

If you, If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody

L M, Love's Mistress

M W L, A Maidenhead Well Lost

R K, The Royal King and Loyal Subject

R L, The Rape of Lucrece

S A, The Silver Age

W K K, A Woman Killed with Kindness

W L, The Witches of Lancashire

W W H, The Wise Woman of Hogsdon

As lines are not numbered in the standard edition (Pearson's, 1874), the page number is given. For H M C, Swaen's edition, Materialien zur Kunde des alteren Englischen Dramas, 35, with the line number. For Cap, Bullen's Old Plays, vol. iv.

14 Elizabethan Drama, I: 204. Professor Aronstein (“Die verfassershaft des dramas The Fair Maid of the Exchange”) notes the same similarity. He denies Shakespeare's authorship of the brothel scenes and refers to Thomas's thesis, merely commenting: “This similarity would be a support for this assertion.” (Engl. Stud., XLV, 56.) The next year, however, in his survey of Heywood's life and works, though he includes Dick of Devonshire, he makes no mention of Pericles. (Anglia XXXVII, 163-268.)

15 Honest, and live there? What, in a public tavern? (264)

16 As is shown by the choice of names, and other details.

17 Engl. Stud. XLV, 30; P. M. L. A. XXVIII, 539; J. E. G. Ph. XV, 107.

18 Mod. Phil. VII, 384.

19 M. L. Review, XVI, 1.

20 John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama.

21 I find I have been anticipated here. “But the name is something more than an echo of Athenian history. It is a reminiscence of Pyrocles, one of the heroes of Sidney's romance of Arcadia. In the early scenes of the play, too, many expressions reflect a recent study of Sidney's romance.” Lee, Introd. to Facsimile reproduction, p. 10. A foot-note also calls attention to the Mucedorus of 1595.

22 E T, “To the Reader.”

23 Since writing this paper I have read the article on Pericles by Mr. H. Dugdale Sykes, in his Side-Lights on Shakespeare. Mr. Sykes reopens the case for Wilkins, citing in proof some half dozen characteristics every one of which is likewise a characteristic of Hey wood! Mr. Sykes does not attempt to answer the points raised by Mr. Thomas, but, noting the omission of the relative pronoun in the nominative as occurring 15 times in the first two acts of Pericles, he states that this alone is sufficient to dispose of Mr. Thomas' candidate, Heywood. Should not one be a trifle more guarded? Choosing at random the first two acts of W K K, I found precisely 15 instances of this very feature! There is not one point raised by Mr. Sykes which does not substantiate the claim of Heywood.