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- 13944
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- There is no notice in the Stationers’ Register of a transfer of the copyright of *Pericles* from Blount to Gosson. It may be that Gosson issued the work in defiance of Blount’s just claim to it, or that Blount tacitly withdrew his pretensions owing to inability to obtain an authentic copy of the piece. The incoherence of the text in the first edition, the carelessness with which it was printed and produced, indicates that the ‘copy’ followed some hasty and unauthorized transcript, and that the type was not corrected by an intelligent proofreader. Malone asserted with truth—‘There is I believe no play of our author’s, perhaps I might say in the English language, so incorrect as this. The most corrupt of Shakespeare’s other dramas, compared with *Pericles*, is purity itself.’
That the text was not derived from an authentic manuscript is proved most clearly by the circumstance that a very large portion of the blank verse is printed as prose, or is cut up into lines of unequal length (each beginning with a capital letter), which ignores all metrical characteristics. In the last two acts, in which figure many speeches from Shakespeare’s pen, very little of the verse escapes the disguise of prose.
translation from the Italian ‘Newes from Rome’, and in 1608 he commissioned Robert Raworth to print a new quarto edition in black letter of his father’s copyright, ‘The Contention between three brethren. The Whore-Monger, the Drunkard, and the Dice-Player.’ Raworth’s press had just reopened, after a temporary suppression on account of his endeavour to infringe Leake’s copyright by printing an unauthorized edition of Shakespeare’s *Venus and Adonis*. But such small evidence as exists suggests that William Jones was responsible for *Pericles*, rather than either Roberts or Raworth.
- Malone, *Supplement* (1780), vol. ii, p. 4w.
- Act iii, Sc. 3 offers a good example of the method of printing blank verse. It is a short scene, consisting, when printed properly, of no more than forty-one lines. Not one line is printed in accordance with the requirements of the metre. A dozen of the blank verse lines are printed as prose. All the others are combined in different lengths, each beginning with a capital, and are robbed of metrical significance. Cf. also iii. 4. 4-11; iv. 1. 1-8, 31-42, 72-81; iv. 6. 101-27 (the scene of Marina with Lysimachus).
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PERICLES 23
All Marina’s verse in Act iv is so disguised. In some of the early scenes blank verse is suffered suddenly to masquerade as prose, and then resumes its correct garb. At other times two lines are run into one (cf. ii. 3. 60-1; ii. 5. 4-5, 42-3); or one line is set out in two (cf. ii. 4. 25). Elsewhere prose is printed as irregular verse. The second fisherman’s final speech (ii. 1. 174-6) is printed thus:—
Wee’le sure prouide, thou shalt haue
My best Gowne to make thee a paire;
And Ile bring thee to the Court my selfe.
How Gosson acquired the corrupt ‘copy’ is not easily determined. The practice of taking down a piece in shorthand from the actor’s lips was not uncommon.¹ There is
¹ Plays were often ‘copied by the ear’. Thomas Heywood included in his *Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas*, 1637 (pp. 248-9), a prologue for the revival of an old play of his concerning Queen Elizabeth, called ‘If you know not me, you know Nobody’, of which he revised the acting version. Nathaniel Butter had published the first and second editions of the piece in 1605 and 1608, and Thomas Pavier the third in 1610. In a prose note preceding the new prologue the author denounced the printed edition as ‘the most corrupted copy, which was published without his consent’. In the prologue itself, Heywood declared that the piece had on its original production on the stage pleased the audience:
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