PHILEMON, Servant to Cerimon.

LEONINE, Servant to Dionyza. Marshal.

A Pandar, and his Wife.

GOWER, as Chorus.

BOULT, their Servant.

The Daughter of Antiochus. DIONYZA, Wife to Cleon THAISA, Daughter to Simonides.

MARINA, Daughter to Pericles and Thaisa.

LYCHORIDA, Nurse to Marina.

DIANA.

Lords, Ladies, Knights, Gentlemen, Sailors, Pirates, Fishermen, and Messengers, &c.

SCENE, dispersedly in various Countries.†

* We meet with Pentapolitana regio, a country in Africa, consisting of five cities. Pentapolis occurs in the thirty-seventh chapter of King Appolyn of Tyre, 1510; in Gower; the Gesta Romanorum; and Twine's translation from it. Its site is marked in an ancient map of the world, MS. in the Cotton Library, Brit. Mus. Tiberius, b. v. In the original Latin romance of Appolonius Tyrius it is most accurately called Pentapolis Cyrenorum, and was, as both Strabo and Ptolemy inform us, a district of Cyrenaica in Africa, comprising five cities, of which Cyrene was one.

†That the reader may know through how many regions the scene of this drama is dispersed, it is necessary to observe that Antioch was the metropolis of Syria; Tyre, a city of Phoenicia in Asia; Tharsus, the metropolis of Cilicia, a country of Asia Minor; Mitylene, the capital of Lesbos, an island in the Ægean sea; and Ephesus, the capital of Ionia, a country of the Lesser Asia.

O sing a song that old was sung,
From ashes ancient Gower is come3;
Assuming man's infirmities,

To glad your ear, and please your eyes.

It hath been sung at festivals,

On ember-eves, and holy ales;

And lords and ladies in their lives

Have read it for restoratives:

1 Chorus, in the character of Gower, an ancient English poet, who has related the story of this play in his Confessio Amantis. 2 i. e. that of old.

3 The defect of metre (sung and come being no rhymes) points out that we should read

"From ancient ashes Gower sprung;" alluding to the restoration of the Phoenix.

4 The old copies have "holy-dayes." The emendation was made by Dr. Farmer, and is obviously necessary for the rhyme. Church-ales were periodical festivals, like the wakes in many parishes, held at various periods of the year. What is known respecting them is collected in Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i. p. 226, 4to. ed.

The purchase is to make men glorious;
Et bonum quo antiquius, eo melius.
If you, born in these latter times,
When wit's more ripe, accept my rhymes,
And that to hear an old man sing,
May to your wishes pleasure bring,
I life would wish, and that I might
Waste it for you, like taper-light.-
This Antioch then: Antiochus the Great
Built up this city for his chiefest seat,
The fairest in all Syria;

(I tell

you

what mine authors say):
This king unto him took a pheere,
Who died and left a female heir,
So buxom, blithe, and full of face",
As heaven had lent her all his grace;
With whom the father liking took,
And her to incest did provoke :

5 "The purchase" is the reading of the old copy; which Steevens, among other capricious alterations, changed to purpose. That the true meaning of the word purchase has been mistaken by all the commentators, I have shown in a note on the 2d Part of K. Henry IV. Act iv. Sc. 4. It was anciently used to signify gain, profit; any good or advantage obtained; as in the following instances:-James the First, when he made the extravagant gift of 30,000l. to Rich, said, “You think now that you have a great purchase; but I am far happier in giving you that sum than you can be in receiving it."

66

"No purchase passes a good wife, no losse
Is, than a bad wife, a more cursed crosse."

Chapman's Georgics of Hesiod, b. ii. 44, p. 32.
Long would it be ere thou hast purchase bought,
Or welthier wexen by such idle thought."

Hall, satire ii. b. 2. "Some fall in love with accesse to princes, others with popular fame and applause, supposinge they are things of greate purchase, when in many cases they are but matters of envy, perill, and impediment." -Bacon Adv. of Learning.

6 Pheere, i. e. wife: the word signifies a mate or companion. 7 i. e. completely, exuberantly beautiful. A full fortune, in Othello, means a complete one.

Bad child, worse father! to entice his own
To evil, should be done by none.
By custom, what they did begin,
Was, with long use, counted no sin.
The beauty of this sinful dame
Made many princes thither frame.
To seek her as a bed-fellow,
In marriage-pleasures playfellow :
Which to prevent, he made a law
(To keep her still, and men in awe
That whoso ask'd her for his wife,
His riddle told not, lost his life:
So for her many a wight did die,
As yond grim looks do testify",

What now ensues, to the judgment of your eye I give, my cause who best can justify 12.

[Exit.

SCENE I. Antioch. A Room in the Palace.

Enter ANTIOCHUS, PERICLES, and Attendants. Ant. Young prince of Tyre', you have at large receiv'd

The danger of the task you undertake.

* The old copies have But.

9ie. shape or direct their course thither.

10 To keep her still to himself, and to deter others from demanding her in marriage.

Gower must be supposed to point to the scene of the palara gate at Antioch, on which the heads of those unfortunate wights were fixed.

12 Which (the judgment of your eye) best can justify, 1 prove its resemblance to the ordinary course of nature. This w ward:

"When thou shalt kneel and justify in knowledge?

1 It does not appear in the present dame the the ther of Pericles is living. By prince, thefox, throngdoee play, we are to understand prince regt het on Appolonius is king of free, and Apply to Copland's translatio from the French. An wine's samlation he repeatedly cal prince of Tyrus, as he too

Per. I have, Antiochus, and with a soul Embolden'd with the glory of her praise,

Think death no hazard, in this enterprize. [Music.
Ant. Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride2,
For the embracements even of Jove himself;
At whose conception, till Lucina reign'd,
(Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence3),
The senate-house of planets all did sit,

To knit in her their best perfections.

Enter the Daughter of ANTIOCHUS.

Per. See, where she comes, apparell'd like the spring,

Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king
Of
every virtue gives renown to men*!

Her face, the book of praises5, where is read
Nothing but curious pleasures, as from thence
Sorrow were ever ras'd, and testy wrath

2 In the old copy this line stands :

Musick, bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride." Malone thinks it a marginal direction, inserted in the text by mistake. Mr. Boswell thinks it only an Alexandrine, and adds, "It does not seem probable that musick would commence at the close of Pericles' speech, without an order from the king."

3 The words whose and her refer to the daughter of Antiochus. A slight change of punctuation renders this passage clearer. "At whose conception till Lucina reign'd," means from the commencement of her existence till she was born. The leading thought may have been taken from Sidney's Arcadia, book ii." The senatehouse of the planets was at no time to set for the decreeing of perfection in a man," &c. Thus also Milton, Paradise Lost, viii. 511:

"All heaven,

And happy constellations, on that hour
Shed their selectest influence."

The Graces are her subjects, and her thoughts the sovereign of every virtue that gives renown to men. The ellipsis in the second line is what obscured this passage, which Steevens would have altered, because he did not comprehend it.

5 Her face is a book where may be read all that is praise-worthy, every thing that is the cause of admiration and praise. Shakespeare has often this image.