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- PERICLES 15
Wilkins' novel of Pericles.
One curious association of Wilkins with the play of *Pericles* is attested under his own hand. He published in his own name a novel in prose which he plainly asserted to be based upon the play. The novel preceded the publication of the drama. The evidence of the filial relation in which the romance stands to the play is precisely stated alike in the title-page of the former and in ‘The Argument to the Whole Historie’. The title runs:—**THE** | Painfull Aduentures | of *Pericles* Prince of | Tyre. | *Being* | The true History of the Play of *Pericles*, as it was | lately presented by the worthy and an-|cient Poet Iohn Gower. | **AT LONDON** | *Printed by T. P. for Nat: Butter*, | 1608.|¹ In the Argument the reader is requested ‘to receive this Historie in the same maner as it was under the habite of ancient *Gower*, the famous English Poet, by the King’s Maiesties Players excellently presented’.
Wilkins’ novel follows the play closely in its general outline. The preliminary ‘Argument’ of the whole ‘Historie’ precisely summarizes the plot. There follows a list of the would assign those scenes to William Rowley, a professional collaborator who contributed scenes to a large number of plays designed by others. Rowley was undoubtedly capable of the *Pericles* brothel scenes, but they do not seem beyond the scope of Wilkins, who treats them with considerable fullness in the novel which he based on the play of *Pericles*.
¹ In the centre of the title-page is a rough woodcut portrait of the poet Gower. Only two copies of the novel are known, and of these only one is quite perfect. Some fragments of a third copy belonged to John Payne Collier. The copy in the British Museum, which formerly belonged to Nassau and Heber successively, lacks the dedication which is addressed to Master Henry Fermor, one of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Middlesex, and is signed ‘George Wilkins’. The other copy, which is quite perfect, is in the public library at Zürich, and was reprinted at Oldenburg by Prof. Tycho Mommsen in 1857, with an introduction by John Payne Collier. The Zürich copy seems to have been purchased in London about 1614 by Johann Rudolph Hess, of Zürich (1588–1655). It subsequently belonged to a Swiss poet, Martin Usteri (1742–1827). The ‘T. P.’ by whom the novel was printed (‘Printed by T. P. for Nat: Butter’) was the printer Thomas Purfoot, junior. He must not be confused with the bookseller Thomas Pavier, who published under the same initials, ‘T. P.’, the 1619 edition of the play of *Pericles*.
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