can imagine that he would have omitted certain details, would have brought the different parts into more complete harmony, and left us in no doubt as to points that have given rise to debate. While, therefore, as regards the dialogue I hold that wherever Marina is on the stage, Shakespeare is present too, and that throughout the rest his contributions are manifold, my main contention is that not without set purpose did he pourtray Lysimachus as we have him in the sixth scene, nor without a motive sufficiently obvious.

Apart from these scenes, with perhaps the Gower parts, the Dumb Show and the Vision, no question is made as to Shakespeare's authorship of the last three Acts. If, however, we suppose with Fleay that he had nothing to do with the first two, there is to me a stumbling-block impossible to get over. His work concludes the play. Now, while he would not have considered these three Acts sufficient in themselves for an acting drama, it is almost equally beyond belief that he should have begun in the middle, or that, having so far worked out the details of the plot as to put its climax into final shape, he should have left himself the task of adapting the earlier portions to the incidents that follow. To a piece of work so preposterous, in the strict sense of the word, so useless for theatrical purposes, so unsuitable for publication, the history of literature affords, I think, no parallel. Had the fragment been one commencing the story, we could account for its being laid aside for various reasons: a reversal of the process is to my mind inconceivable. Nor can I admit that the Marina portion "gives a perfect artistic and organic whole," especially when stripped of the Gower

which Fleay repudiates as non-Shakespearean; for ntroduction of the characters and some outline of is events would be necessary to the understanding of ry.

then, we may take it for granted that Shakespeare the greater part of the last three Acts; that he could ve left behind him a headless torso; that metrical coupled with considerations of style, prove almost the of the first two Acts to be by some other author; and the brothel scenes there are abundant manifestations akespeare's hand: there seems to me no option left believe that he furbished up a play already in the sion of the Globe Theatre-a play which as it stood ot in the opinion of the company promise to be a S. That he did at times revise the work of other tists is admitted; and, since he would regard such reas little else than a matter of business, we need feel prise at his handling a theme that would have been hant to his own free choice. When, therefore, to ns's declared interest in the story there is superadded larity on so many points between the earlier Acts of es and his one extant drama, there seems no extravain supposing him to have been the author of the whole play in its first form. The facts that he was attached Globe Theatre as one of its staff, and that his Miseries forced Marriage had there been staged shortly before st Quarto of Pericles was published, add, I think, not e to the likelihood of this inference.

pon such hypotheses, I conceive Shakespeare's treatof the material before him to have been somewhat of

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this kind. Finding that the Antiochus and Simonides stories were worked out in a fairly adequate manner, and feeling little interest in those stories, he was at no great pains to interfere with the original author; though, if we may judge from the prose versions, he improved both Acts by compression, and, unless I am mistaken, rewrote in a great measure the first Scene of the second Act. When he came to the Marina story, he saw in it a subject congenial to his mind and one affording scope for effective development. He therefore made this portion wholly his own, rejecting all but the outline of events on which it was based. The brothel scenes were integral to the plot as narrated in the original sources. These he largely revised, strengthening and vivifying the dialogue with humour of his own, and, in particular, so presenting Lysimachus that his union with Marina should not offend against consistency and good taste: while at the close of the play he discarded many details found in the Confessio Amantis and Twine's novel as not essential or suitable to a dramatic ending. If in the first draft of the play Wilkins, as in the novel, had closely followed those authorities, we have only another proof of Shakespeare's finer judgment in the omission of such superfluities.

Such a theory, I submit, holds together throughout, removes all difficulties as to the composition of the play, and avoids recourse to fanciful assumptions.

By more than one critic it has been sought to strengthen Wilkins's claim to a share in Pericles by asserting that he calls it "a poore infant of my braine". He does nothing of the sort. The words occur in the dedication of his novel and refer to that only. That there may be no doubt on this

I quote the whole passage. "A poore infant of my comes naked vnto you without other clothing than ue, and craves your hospitalitie. If you take this to , her father dooth promise, that with more labored she can inheighten your Name and Memorie, and n shall appeere he will not die ingrateful. Yet nuch he dare say, in behalfe of this, somewhat it conh that may inuite the choicest eie to reade, nothing [sic? hee] is sure may breede displeasure to arise.

So

g your spare houres to the recreation thereof, and my
nesse now submitting it selfe to your censure, not willing
ake a great waie to a little house, I rest Most desirous
held all yours, GEORGE WILKINS." Upon this the
utmost that can be conjectured is that Wilkins may
bly be darkly hinting at the fact of his play not having
allowed to come to full maturity-in other words, at its
ng under the parentage of Shakespeare. As, however,
ar periphrastic forms of dedication were so frequent,
no reason whatever why the expression should not be
n in its most natural sense. Be this as it may, to
t categorically that in these words Wilkins claims
cles as his own is to torture language beyond endurance.
adds that Wilkins "plumes himself on the arrange-
t of the Gower choruses as his own". There being
ing in the Dedication or the Argument or the body of
novel that will bear such construction, Fleay must refer
e opening lines of the first chorus. But this is to beg
question of authorship and to assume that Wilkins
ks in his own person.
"Gower" is the deus ex machina,
her more nor less than "Rumour" in the Induction to

y

1

the Second Part of Henry the Fourth and "Time" in the first scene of the fourth Act of The Winter's Tale. However certain, therefore, we may feel that Wilkins was the original author of the play, we have again an inference only. One other small point it is perhaps worth while to notice here. Delius suggests the possibility of Pericles having been acted before it came under Shakespeare's revision. If this were so, ingenuity might find a special significance in the wording of the title-page of the novel, "Being the true history of the play of Pericles". Such phrases as "the true chronicle history of the life and death of King Lear," "the tragical history of Hamlet," "the excellent history of The Merchant of Venice," are frequent enough. But here it is "the true history of the play," etc., and though the words probably mean nothing more than the true history of Pericles as told in the play, it is just conceivable that Wilkins was alluding to his own version as having been tampered with by Shakespeare. In regard to the date at which Pericles, in whatever form, was first acted, we have no evidence, nor of course need the "divers and sundry times be more rigidly interpreted than a modern advertisement. But the novel was published a year before the first Quarto.

In the Introduction to Troilus and Cressida I have acknowledged my obligations to the Cambridge Editors. In the present play, corrupt as it is beyond any other of Shakespeare's, that debt has been multiplied many times over. For, though I have had before me almost all the chief modern editions, including the Variorum of 1821, it would, in default of access to the old copies, have been impossible for me to register with any fulness the various readings to