lection of passages, of which the worst are to be assigned to some âme damnée, and the best triumphantly claimed for Shakspere. There are some, however, who judge of such matters upon broader principles. Mr. Hallam says, "Pericles is generally reckoned to be in part, and only in part, the work of Shakspeare. From the poverty and bad management of the fable, the want of any effective or distinguishable character, for Marina is no more than the common form of female virtue, such as all the dramatists of that age could draw, and a general feebleness of the tragedy as a whole, I should not believe the structure to have been Shakspeare's. But many passages are far more in his manner than in that of any contemporary writer with whom I am acquainted."* Here "the poverty and bad management of the fable "—" the want of any effective or distinguishable character," are assigned for the belief that the structure could not have been Shakspere's. But let us accept Dryden's opinion that

'Shakspeare's own muse his Pericles first bore,"

with reference to the original structure of the play, and the difficulty vanishes. It was impossible that the character of the early drama should not have been impressed upon Shakspere's earliest efforts. Sidney has given us a most distinct description of that drama; and we can thus understand how the author of Pericles improved upon what he found. Do we therefore think that the drama, as it has come down to us, is presented in the form in which it was first written? By no means. We agree with Mr. Hallam that in parts the language seems rather that of Shakspere's "second or third manner than of his first." But this belief is not inconsistent with the opinion that the original structure was Shakspere's. No other poet that existed at the beginning of the seventeenth century—perhaps no poet that came after that period, whether Massinger, or Fletcher, or Webster-could have written the greater part of the fifth act. Coarse as the comic scenes are, there are touches in them unlike any other writer but Shakspere. Horn, with the eye of a real critic, has pointed out the deep poetical profundity of one apparently slight passage in these unpleasant scenes:

"Mar. Are you a woman?

Bawd. What would you have me be, an I be not a woman?
Mar. An honest woman, or not a woman.”

Touches such as these are not put into the work of other men.
could have written

"The blind mole casts

Who but Shakspere

Copp'd hills towards heaven, to tell, the earth is throng'd
By man's oppression; and the poor worm doth die for 't."

And yet this passage comes naturally enough in a speech of no very high excellence. The purpurei panni must be fitted to a body, as well for use as for adornment. We think that Shakspere would not have taken the trouble to produce these costly robes for the decoration of what another had essentially created. We are willing to believe that, even in the very height of his fame, he would have bestowed any amount of labour for the improvement of an early production of his own, if the taste of his audiences had from time to time demanded its continuance upon the stage. It is for this reason that we think that the Pericles of the beginning of the seventeenth century was the revival of a play written by Shakspere some twenty years earlier.

'History of Literature,' vol. iii. p. 569.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

THIS play was first printed in 1634, with the following title: The Two Noble Kinsmen: presented at the Blackfriers by the King's Majesties servants, with great applause: written by the memorable Worthies of their Time, Mr. John Fletcher, and Mr. William Shakspeare, Gent. Printed at London, by Tho. Cotes, for John Waterson, and are to be sold at the signe of the Crowne, in Faul's Church-Yard, 1634.' In the first folio edition of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, in 1647, this play did not appear. In the second folio it is reprinted, with very slight alterations from the quarto. That second folio contains the following notice :-"In this edition you have the addition of no fewer than seventeen plays more than were in the former, which we have taken the pains and care to collect, and print out of 4to. in this volume, which for distinction sake are marked with a star in the catalogue of them facing the first page of the book."—(Prefuce.) The Two Noble Kinsmen is so marked.

Without prejudging the question as to Shakspere's participation in the authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen, we have thought it the most satisfactory course to print the play entire. The reader will be better prepared for entering upon the examination of the authorship, after its perusal; and we think that in itself it will abundantly repay him. We hardly need an apology for this course, when Coleridge has said, "I can scarcely retain a doubt as to the first act's having been written by Shakspeare;" and when Charles Lamb says, "That Fletcher should have copied Shakspeare's manner in so many entire scenes (which is the theory of Steevens) is not very probable; that he could have done it with such facility is, to me, not certain."