Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 2 of 2] / Including the Biography of the Poet; criticisms on his genius and writings; a new chronology of his plays; a disquisition on the on the object of his sonnets; and a history of the manners, customs, and amusements, superstitions, poetry, and elegant literature of his age

by Nathan Drake

The evidence required for the establishment of a high degree of probability under the first of these positions necessarily divides itself into two parts; the external and the internal evidence. The former commences with the original edition of Pericles, which was entered on the Stationers' books by Edward Blount, one of the printers of the first folio edition of Shakspeare's plays, on the 20th of May[262:A], 1608, but did not pass the press until the subsequent year, when it was published, not, as might have been expected, by Blount, but by one Henry Gosson, who placed Shakspeare's name at full length in the title-page.

It is worthy of remark, also, that this edition was entered at Stationers' Hall together with Antony and Cleopatra, and that it, and the three following editions, which were also in quarto, were styled in the title-page, the much admired play of Pericles. As the entry, however, was by Blount, and the edition by Gosson, it is probable, as Mr. Malone has remarked, that the former had been anticipated by the latter, through the procurance of a play-house copy.[263:A] It may also be added, that Pericles was performed at Shakspeare's own theatre, The Globe. The next ascription of this play to our author, is found in a poem entitled The Times Displayed in Six Sestyads, by S. Sheppard, 4to. 1646, dedicated to Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and containing, in the ninth stanza of the sixth Sestiad, a positive assertion of Shakspeare's property in this drama:—

"See him whose tragick sceans Euripides

Doth equal, and with Sophocles we may

Compare great Shakspear; Aristophanes

Never like him his fancy could display,

Witness the Prince of Tyre, HIS Pericles."[263:B]

This high eulogium on Pericles received a direct contradiction very shortly afterwards from the pen of an obscure poet named Tatham, who bears, however, an equally strong testimony as to Shakspeare being the author of the piece, which he thus presumes to censure:—

"But Shakespeare, the plebeian driller, was

Founder'd in HIS Pericles, and must not pass."[263:C]