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- PERICLES
19
Pericles renewed its popularity in the theatre, and Betterton was much applauded in the title rôle.
From an early date critics were divided as to its merits. Early criticism. An admirer, Samuel Sheppard, in 1646, in *The Times Displayed* blindly instanced the piece as that work of ‘great Shakespeare’ wherein he outran the powers of Aristophanes. Owen Feltham, in 1630, wrote more intelligibly of ‘th’ unlikely plot of pieces that ‘do displease As deep as Pericles’. Another poet, John Tatham, who personally approved the play, quoted in 1652 some current censure which condemned Pericles as one of Shakespeare’s conspicuous failures:
But *Shakespeare*, the *Plebean Driller*¹, was Founder’d in’s *Pericles*, and must not pass.
A greater critic, Dryden, took a low view of the piece, although he never doubted Shakespeare’s responsibility. He wrongly excused the incompetence that he detected in it on the ground that it was Shakespeare’s first experiment in drama (*Prologue to Charles Davenant’s Circe*, 1684):
*Shakespear’s* own Muse her *Pericles* first bore, The Prince of Tyre was elder than the *Moore*.
Although the exclusion of the piece from the Folios of 1623 and 1632 may have been due to suspicion of Shakespeare’s full responsibility, the belief that Shakespeare was author, not of the whole play, but only of those scenes which are dominated by Marina, was not expressly stated till 1738. On August 1 in that year the dramatist George Lillo produced at Covent Garden Theatre an adaptation of the later portions of the drama in a piece entitled *Marina; a play in three Acts*. In the prologue the author, although no professional critic,
¹ Driller is probably a misprint for ‘droller’.
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