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P. 91. If that thy prosperous-artificial feat

Can draw him, &c. - So Steevens and Walker. The old copies read "thy prosperous and artificiall fate." Shakespeare has many similar compounds, such as dismal-fatal, mortal-staring, childishfoolish, &c.

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P. 93. I think so. Pray you, turn your eyes upon me. copies read "I do thinke so."

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P. 93. You are like something that—What countrywoman?
Here of these shores?

Mar.

No, nor of any shores. The old copies read "what Countrey-women heare of these shewes? and have shewes again in Marina's reply. The happy emendation is Lord Charlemont's.

P. 94. Didst thou not say, when I did push thee back, &c. copies have stay instead of say. Corrected by Malone.

P. 94.

How lost thou them? "how lost thou thy name."

What were thy friends?

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Thy name, &c. - The old copies read Corrected by Malone.

P. 95. Have you a working pulse? and are no fairy?

No motion? Well; speak on. Where were you born? — So Steevens. The old copies omit No before motion, and punctuate the passage in various ways. Dyce prints "Motion!" and takes it as an exclamation of Pericles after feeling Marina's pulse. I cannot see it so.

P. 95. Who died the very minute I was born, &c.- So Malone. The old copies omit very.

P. 96. You'll scarce believe me. -The old copies read “ you scorne, beleeve me." Corrected by Malone.

P. 96.

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She would never tell

Her parentage, &c. The old copies read "She never would tell." Corrected by Steevens.

P. 97. I'm Pericles of Tyre: but tell me now

My drown'd Queen's name, (as in the rest you've said
Thou hast been godlike perfect,) and thou art

The heir of kingdoms, and another life

To Pericles thy father. In the second of these lines, the old copies read "the rest you said "; in the third, they lack the words and thou art; and in the fourth have like instead of life. The latter correction is Mason's.

P. 97. I embrace you, sir.

Supplied by Steevens.

Here, again, the old copies omit sir.

P. 98. Per. Rarest sounds! Do ye not hear?

Lys.

Per. I hear most heavenly music :

Music, my lord?

It nips me into listening, &c. -- I here adopt the arrangement proposed by the Cambridge Editors. The oldest copies give the second speech thus: "Musicke my lord? I hear." Dyce prints Music as a stage-direction, and is followed by several, and even by the Cambridge Editors themselves; who, however, justly observe in a note as follows: "No music is mentioned in Wilkins's novel, and any music of earth would be likely to jar with that music of the spheres' which was already lulling Pericles to sleep."

P. 98. And give them repetition to the life.

Perform my bidding, or thou livest in woe; &c. -So Malone. Here, again, the old copies have like for life; and also read "Or perform my bidding."

P. 99. With all my heart; and, when you come ashore,

I have another suit. The old copies have sleight for suit.

Corrected by Malone.

P. 99. This my last boon, pray you, give me,

For such kindness must relieve me,

That you, &c. - The old copies are without the words pray you in the first of these lines. See, further on, "The interim, pray you, all confound."

P. 100. That he can hither come so soon,

Is by your fancies thankful boon. So Steevens. - The old copies have doom instead of boon.

ACT V., SCENE 2.

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P. 100. The fair Thaisa at Pentapolis. - The old copies have "At Pentapolis the fair Thaisa." Malone's correction.

P. 101. What means the nun? — Instead of nun, the old copies have mum and woman. Corrected by Collier. Wilkins's novel shows beyond question that nun is right.

P. 101. Early one blustering morn, &c. copies have in for one.

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So Malone. The old

P. 102. Lord Cerimon, my lord; this is the man, &c. The old copies read “this man.”

P. 103. Pure Dian, bless thee for thy vision! I
Will offer night-oblations to thee.

omit I.

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So Malone. The old copies

P. 103. Virtue preserved from fell destruction's blast. copies have preferd for preserved. Corrected by Malone.

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P. 104. Had spread their cursèd deed, and honour'd name Of Pericles, &c. So the third folio. The earlier editions have the instead of and.

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P. 104. To punish crime, although not done, but meant. Malone. The old copies omit crime.

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THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN.

FIR

IRST printed in 1634, with the following in the title-page: "THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN: Presented at the Blackfriars by the King's Majesty's Servants, with great applause. Written by the memorable Worthies of their time, Mr. JOHN FLETCHER and Mr. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Gentlemen." This was nine years after the death of Fletcher, and eighteen years after that of Shakespeare. The play was included in the third folio of Shakespeare, 1664, also in the folio of Beaumont and Fletcher, 1679. Its appearance with Shakespeare's name in 1634, and in the folio of 1664, is by no means decisive as to the authorship; for several plays were put forth as Shakespeare's during his lifetime, and also included in the same collection, which he most certainly had no hand in writing. On the other hand, however, in 1634 the popularity of Shakespeare had so far declined, or been eclipsed by later writers, as to leave little motive, apparently, for publishers to forge his name. There was also a strong and steady tradition of the play's having been written by Shakespeare and Fletcher in conjunction.

But Shakespeare's participation in The Two Noble Kinsmen was not fully established till our own time, and the argument to that end proceeds mainly on internal evidence. In the first place, the play itself bears clear and unmistakable tokens of two widely-different hands; so much so as to put the ascribing of the whole to one and the same author quite out of the question. In the second place, in certain portions the cast of thought, the manner of expression, the mode of conceiving and unfolding character, in short, the whole texture and grain of the workmanship, are so totally diverse from the Fletcherian idiom, and so vastly beyond any thing else of Fletcher's known writing, that we are in effect forced to admit the presence of a far mightier

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hand than his: and whose but Shakespeare's own sweet and cunning hand" can that be? In the third place, in proportion as the characteristics of thought and diction draw away from the Fletcherian idiom, in the same proportion they draw towards the Shakespearian, as we taste them in the acknowledged workmanship of Shakespeare's latest period.

Accordingly we find Coleridge saying, in 1833, "I have no doubt whatever that the first Act and the first scene of the second Act are Shakespeare's." Sidney Walker, also, declares that the whole of the first Act bears indisputable marks of Shakespeare's hand"; that in the first scene we have "surely aut Shakespearius aut Diabolus!" and that the first scene of the fifth Act "surely is Shakespeare's also." Mr. J. Spalding also, a very acute critic, writes that "the whole of the first Act may be safely pronounced to be Shakespeare's "; that "in the fifth Act we again feel the presence of the master of the spell"; and that several passages in this portion are marked by as striking tokens of his art as any thing we read in Macbeth or Coriolanus." Last, not least, Dyce observes, “ I believe that Shakespeare wrote all those portions of the play which Mr. Spalding assigns to him; though I conceive that in some places they may have been altered and interpolated by Fletcher."

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But the fullest and ablest discussion of the matter appeared in The Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, April, 1847; from the pen of the late Mr. Samuel Hickson, the same judicious critic whom we met with in connection with King Henry the Eighth. Mr. Hickson's criticism is chiefly æsthetic in its scope and method, but works so near the core of the subject, that I have deemed it advisable to throw considerable portions of it into the form of foot-notes, and so print them in what seemed the most appropriate places. I must here, however, give one markworthy passage, which applies equally to all the verse parts of the play: "Of all the writers of blank-verse, Shakespeare is the most musical. His verses flow into each other with the most perfect harmony; never monotonous, but seldom rugged. His words seem rather to fall naturally into verse than to be measured out into lines; and his varied pauses break, without disjoining, the longest passages, so that none can be said to be

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