All hawthorns do not bloom on Christmas-day.
A slender poet must have time to grow,
And spread and burnish, as his brothers do:
Who still looks lean, sure with some p— is curst,
But no man can be Falstaff fat at first."[281:A]
This passage, if it mean any thing, must imply, not only from the bare assertion of one line, but from all the accessory matter, that Pericles was the first young flight of Shakspeare, that it was the first offspring of his dramatic muse, his first play. That this was the meaning of Dryden, and not merely that Pericles was produced before Othello, will be further evident from recollecting the occasion of the Prologue whence these lines are taken. It was written to introduce the first play of Dr. Charles D'Avenant, then only nineteen years of age, and the bard expressly calls it "the blossom of his green years," the "rude essay of a youthful poet, who may grow up to write," expressions which can assimilate it with Pericles only on the supposition that the latter was, like Circe, a firstling of dramatic genius.
That Dryden, who wrote this prologue in 1675, possessed, from his approximation to the age of Shakspeare, many advantages for ascertaining the truth, none will deny. When the former had attained the age of twenty, the latter had been dead but thirty-five years, and the subsequent connection of the modern bard with the stage, and his intimacy with Sir William D'Avenant, who had produced his first play in 1629, and had been well acquainted with Heminge and the surviving companions of Shakspeare, would furnish him with sufficient
data for his assertion, independent of any reliance on the similar declarations of Shepherd and Tatham.
Taking the statement of Dryden, therefore, as a disclosure of the fact, it follows, of course, from what has been previously said on the epoch of Shakspeare's commencement as a dramatic writer, that Pericles must be referred to the autumn of the year 1590, an assignment which the consideration of a few particulars will tend to corroborate.
In the first place, it may be remarked, that the numerous dumb shows of this play, are of themselves a striking presumptive proof of its antiquity, indicating that Shakspeare, who subsequently laughed at these clumsy expedients, thought it necessary, at the opening of his career, to fall in with the fashion of the times, with a fashion which had reigned from the earliest establishment of our stage, which was still in vogue in 1590, but soon after this period became an object of ridicule, and began to decline.