SMYTH — PERICLES AND APOLLONIUS. [Oct. 7, 



SHAKESPEARE'S PERICLES AND APOLLONIUS. OF 



TYRE. 



BY ALBERT H. SMYTH. 



{Mead October 7, 1898.) 



Shakespe3.re' s I'en'c/es J^n'nce o/ Tyre is the most singular example 

 in Elizabethan literature of a consistent copying of a venerable and 

 far-traveled story. The Apollonius Saga, from which it is wholly 

 drawn, is known to nearly every language of Europe, and persists 

 through more than a thousand years, flourishing in extraordinary 

 popularity. Its undiminished vitality through many centuries and its 

 almost unaltered integrity through many languages make it an attrac- 

 tive subject for critical exposition. From its untraced origin in the 

 late sophistic romance of Greece it entered the literatures of Europe 

 through a hundred manuscripts of an early Latin version. It was 

 popular in Italy, Russia, Hungary, Bohemia, Norway and Iceland ; 

 it is found in a Danish ballad and a Netherland drama; it was sung 

 by Provencal poets, and beyond the Pyrenees it was borrowed from 

 to praise the Cid ; it was translated in Crete into modern Greek in 

 the sixteenth century ; it was absorbed in France into the cycle of 

 Charlemagne, and it is the only romance in Anglo-Saxon literature. 

 The mythical Apollonius tossing on strange seas about the Mediter- 

 ranean coasts became a veritable hero of history to the Germans, 

 French and Italians, in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth cen- 

 turies. 



The long line of translations, imitations, mdrchen, iwlksbiicher^ 

 sagas, romances, ballads and plays, ends at last in the culminating 

 splendor of Shakespeare's Pericles Prince of Tyre. 



The Anglo-Saxon romance, Gower's version in Confessio Amantis, 

 and Shakespeare's drama have been studied with zeal and care ; 

 Al. Riese and M. Ring have edited the Latin text ; Prof. Erwin 

 Rohde, in Der griechische Roman und seine Voridufer, and Teuffel- 

 Schwabe, Geschichte der rbmische Litieratiir, have partly traced the 

 history of the saga; and S. Singer, Apollonius von Tyrus, Untersuchun- 

 gen iiber das P'ortleben des antiken Pomans in spdtern Zeiten, has 

 compared the chief versions of the story. I have attempted in this 

 new study to give a complete historical sketch of the romance, to 

 compare its more important narratives with particular reference to 



