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THE

COMPLETE WORKS

OF

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

WITH

A LIFE OF THE POET, EXPLANATORY FOOT-NOTES, CRITICAL
NOTES, AND A GLOSSARIAL INDEX.

Harvard Edition.

BY THE

REV. HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D.

IN TWENTY VOLUMES.

VOL. XIX.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY GINN, HEATH, & CO.

1881.

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY!
LIBRARY
APR 1004

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by HENRY N. HUDSON,

in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

GINN & HEATH:

J. S. CUSHING, PRINTER, 16 HAWLEY STREET,

BOSTON.

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE.

FIRS

66

IRST heard of through an entry in the Stationers' Register by Edward Blount, dated the 20th of May, 1608. The next year, a quarto edition of it was published, the title-page reading as follows: The late and much admired play, called Pericles, Prince of Tyre: with the true relation of the history, adventures, and fortunes of the said Prince; as also the no less strange and worthy accidents of the birth and life of his daughter Marina. As it hath been divers and sundry times acted by his Majesty's Servants at the Globe on the Bank-side. By William Shakespeare. Imprinted at London for Henry Gosson." The play was issued again in the same form in 1611; also in 1619, 1630, and 1635; but was not included in any collection of the Poet's dramas till the folio of 1664. In all these copies the text is shockingly corrupt and mangled throughout; each later issue being just like the earlier in this respect, only more

So.

It is all but certain that the first issue of Pericles was "stolen and surreptitious"; and the state of the text naturally infers the copy to have been made up, at least in part, from short-hand reports taken at the theatre. Why the play was not included in the folio of 1623, as also how it came to be published by Gosson after being registered by Blount, are questions not likely to be settled. Blount was one of the publishers of the folio, and he may have transferred his right to Gosson, or the latter may have managed to get a copy in advance of the former. As the play was vastly popular on the stage, this would naturally render the company the more unwilling to have it printed, and at the same time sharpen the desire of publishers to get hold of it. And its exclusion from the folio may well have grown from the fact of its being a joint production of several authors. On this point, Collier writes as follows: Ben Jonson, when printing the volume of his works, in 1616, excluded for this reason The Case is

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