How Thaliard came full bent with sin, Should house him safe, is wreck'd and split*; By waves from coast to coast is tost; All perishen of man, of pelf, Ne aught escapen but himself"; The old copy seems to me to be clearer-" Good Helicane, &c. sends word of all." The lines between the first and sixth I read in a parenthesis. BOSWELL. I And HID INTENT, to murder him ;] The first quarto reads: And hid in Tent to murder him." 66 This is only mentioned to show how inaccurately this play was originally printed, and to justify the liberty that has been taken in correcting the preceding passage. The reading of the text is that of the quarto 1619. MALONE. 66 How Thaliard came full bent with SIN, "And HID intent to murder him." Sin and him cannot be received as rhymes. Perhaps the author wrote, 66 full bent with scheme, "And hid intent," &c. The old reading, in the second line, is certainly the true one. Hid intent is concealed design, such as was that of Thaliard. 2 STEEVENS. -WAS not best-] The construction is, And that for him to make his rest longer in Tharsus, was not best; i. e. his best course. MALONE. 3 He KNOWING so,] i. e. says Mr. Steevens, by whom this emendation was made, "he being thus informed." The old copy has-" He doing so." MALONE. 4- that the SHIP Should house him safe, is wreck'd and split ;] Ship and split are such defective rhymes, that I suppose our author wrote fleet. Pericles, in the storm, lost his feet as well as the vessel in which he was himself embarked. STEEVENS. 5 Ne aught ESCAPEN but himself;] [Old copy-escapen'd-] It should be printed either escapen or escaped. Till fortune, tired with doing bad, SCENE I. [Exit. Pentapolis. An open Place by the Sea Side. Enter PERICLES, wet. PER. Yet cease your ire, ye angry stars of heaven! Wind, rain, and thunder, remember, earthly man Is but a substance that must yield to you; And I, as fits my nature, do obey you; Alas, the sea hath cast me on the rocks, 8 Wash'd me from shore to shore, and left me breath 9 Nothing to think on, but ensuing death: Our ancestors had a plural number in their tenses which is now lost out of the language; e. g. in the present tense, Ι I escape Thou escapest We escapen But it did not, I believe, extend to the preter-imperfects, otherwise than thus: They didden [for did] escape. PERCY. 6 to GIVE him glad :] Dr. Percy asks if we should not read-to make him glad. Perhaps we should but the language of our fictitious Gower, like that of our Pseudo-Rowley, is so often irreconcileable to the practice of any age, that criticism on such bungling imitations is almost thrown away. STEEVENS. 7- what shall be next, Pardon old Gower; this long's the text.] The meaning of this may be-"Excuse old Gower from telling you what follows. The very text to it has proved of too considerable length already." STEEVENS. 8 and left ME breath Nothing to think on, &c.] The quarto 1609, reads-and left my breath. I read-and left me breath, that is, left me life, only to aggravate my misfortunes, by enabling me to think on the death that awaits me. MALONE. Let it suffice the greatness of your powers, Enter Three Fishermen, 1 FISH. What, ho, Pilche1! 2 FISH. HO! come, and bring away the nets. Mr. Malone's correction is certainly proper; and the passage before us can have no other meaning, than-left me alive only that ensuing death might become the object of my contemplation. So, in the second book of Sidney's Arcadia, where the shipwreck of Pyrocles is described: "left nothing but despair of safetie, and expectation of a loathsome end." Again, in Chapman's version of the fifth book of Homer's Odyssey, where the shipwrecked Ulysses is described: 66 Two nights yet and days "He spent in wrestling with the sable seas: 9 Enter three Fishermen.] This scene seems to have been formed on the following lines in the Confessio Amantis : "Thus was the yonge lorde all alone, "All naked in a poure plite.. "There came a fisher in the weye, "And sigh a man there naked stonde, "With great pitee this lorde he cladde: 66 'He sayd, ye Pentapolim, "Where both kynge and quene dwellen. "He gladdeth him, and gan beseche, "That he the weye hym wolde teche." Shakspeare delighting to describe the manners of such people, has introduced three fishermen instead of one, and extended the dialogue to a considerable length. MALONE. I What, HO, PILCHE!] All the old copies read-What to 1 FISH. What Patch-breech, I say ! 3 FISH. What say you, master ? I FISH. Look how thou stirrest now! come away, or I'll fetch thee with a wannion 2. 3 FISH. 'Faith, master, I am thinking of the poor men that were cast away before us, even now. 1 FISH. Alas, poor souls, it grieved my heart to hear what pitiful cries they made to us, to help them3, when, well-a-day, we could scarce help ourselves. 3 FISH. Nay, master, said not I as much, when I saw the porpus, how he bounced and tumbled * ? pelche. The latter emendation was made by Mr. Tyrwhitt. For the other I am responsible. Pilche, as he has observed, is a leathern coat. The context confirms this correction. The first fisherman appears to be the master, and speaks with authority, and some degree of contempt, to the third fisherman, who is a servant. His next speech, "What, Patch-breech, I say!" is in the same style. The second fisherman seems to be a servant likewise; and, after the master has called-What, ho Pilche!(for so I read,)-explains what it is he wants :- Ho, come and bring away the nets." MALONE, "He 66 In Twine's translation we have the following passage:was a rough fisherman, with an hoode upon his head, and a filthie leatherne pelt upon his backe." STEEVENS. 2 with a WANNION.] A phrase of which the meaning is obvious, though I cannot explain the word at the end of it. It is common in many of our old plays. STEEVENS. I would without much confidence offer a conjecture as to this word, since no other has been suggested. May not wannion be a corruption of winnowing? Vanneure, in Cotgrave, is explained "a winnowing, also a chiding, bayting, schooling." BOSWELL. 3 Alas, poor souls, it grieved my heart, &c.] So, in The Winter's Tale: "O the most piteous cry of the poor souls! Sometimes to see'em, and not to see'em ;-now the ship boring the moon with her main mast and anon swallowed with yest and froth, as you'd thrust a cork into a hogshead. And then for the land-service. To see how the bear tore out his shoulder-bone ; how he cried to me for help." MALONE. 4 when I saw the PORPUS, how he bounced and tumbled ?] The rising of porpuses near a vessel at sea, has long been considered by the superstition of sailors, as the fore-runner of a they say, they are half fish, half flesh: a plague on them, they ne'er come, but I look to be washed. Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea. 1 FISH. Why as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones: I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale; 'a plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful. Such whales have I heard on a'the land, who never leave gaping, till they've swallowed the whole parish, church, steeple, bells and all. PER. A pretty moral. 3 FISH. But, master, if I had been the sexton, I would have been that day in the belfry7. 2 FISH. Why, man? 3 FISH. Because he should have swallowed me too: and when I had been in his belly, I would have kept such a jangling of the bells, that he should never have left, till he cast bells, steeple, church, and parish, up again. But if the good king Simonides were of my mind PER. Simonides ? storm. So, in The Duchess of Malfy, by Webster, 1623: "He lifts up his nose like a foul porpus before a storm." MALONE. Malone considers this prognostick as arising merely from the superstition of the sailors: but Captain Cook, in his second voyage to the South Seas, mentions the playing of porpusses round the ship as a certain sign of a violent gale of wind. M. MASON. 5-a-land ;] This word occurs several times in Twine's translation, as well as in P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. STEEVENS. 6 - as to a whale; 'a plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him,] So, in Coriolanus: "Before the belching whale." STEEVENS. 7 I would have been that day in the belfry.] That is, I should wish to have been that day in the belfry. M. MASON. He does not express a wish, but says he would actually have been there. BOSWELL. |