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- PERICLES 11
Act iv, where she is a full-grown woman. The choruses, which are themselves interrupted by dumb-shows, supply essential links in the narrative. They ‘stand i’ the gaps to teach the stages of the story’. The whole construction gives the impression of clumsy incoherence.¹ Dryden, when defending the construction of his own play, *The Conquest of Granada*, in 1672, instanced *Pericles* and the ‘Historical Plays of Shakespeare’ as illustrative of the awkward practice of dramatists of the past in working on ‘some ridiculous, incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age’. The censure is fully applicable to *Pericles*.
The play was produced in the spring of 1608 at the Globe Theatre by the King’s Company of players, of which Shakespeare was a member. On May 20 of that year a licence was secured for its publication. The drama was published, with a title-page bearing the date 1609² and assigning the authorship to ‘William Shakespeare’.
## II
The literary quality of the bulk of the play, and some external evidence, refute the assertion of the title-page of 1609 that Shakespeare was sole author of the drama. Such testimony as the title-page offers counts in itself for little. There are several instances of the appearance of Shakespeare’s
¹ In 1656 Richard Flecknoe, in his *Diarium*, p. 96, has the epigram:—
‘On the play of the life and death of Pyrocles.’
Ars longa, vita brevis, as they say,
But who inverts that saying made this play.
² The conjecture that there was an edition of 1608 is uncorroborated. The statement that the Duke of Roxburghe’s copy of the First Quarto (now in the Boston Public Library, No. VII *infra*) bore the date 1608 is untrue. Some sentences in the fishermen’s talk in *Pericles*, Act ii, Sc. 1, are closely copied in John Day’s comedy called *Law Tricks*, which was undoubtedly published in 1608. But the fishermen’s talk was generally reproduced in Wilkins’ novel of 1608, and Day might have read it there.
Shakespeare’s alleged authorship.
Publisher’s misuse of Shakespeare’s name.
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