1898.] SMYTH — PERICLES AND APOLLONIUS. 261 



ularity of the play is apparently attested by Robert Tailor in The 

 Hogge hath lost his Pearle (yfyf ) : 



'* If it prove so happy as to please 

 Weele say 'tis fortunate like Pericles ^ 



Richard Brathwaite, in his Strappado for the Diuell (1615), 

 mentions ''valiant Boults," who might therefore be a popular 

 stage character. The story itself was declaimed against by the 

 judicious. Chaucer assumed indignation at the publication of the 

 story by Gower, and denounced Apollonius as ''so horrible a tale 

 for to rede." Owen Feltham, in Lusoria (1661), has the line : 



" displease as deep as Pericles.''^ 



And in like spirit Ben Jonson in his ode, Co?ne Leave the Lothed 

 Stage {\^y), complains of "Some mouldy tale like Pericles.''' 

 Neither is the contemporary allusion to the success of the play all 

 of one mind. Jo : Tatham, in verses prefixed to R. Brome'sybz//^// 

 Crew (1652), says: 



" There is a Faction (Friend) in Town, that cries, 

 Down with the Dagon-Poet, "Johnson dies. 

 Beaumont and Fletcher (they say) perhaps, might 

 Passe (well) for current Coin, in a dark night : 

 But Shakespeare the Plebeian Driller, was 

 Founder'd in 's Pericles, and must not pass. 

 And so, at all men flie, that have but been 

 Thought worthy of applause." 



On the other hand, Dryden (in 1672), in his Prologue to The 

 Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards, speaking of the early plays 

 as notable for " some ridiculous incoherent story, which, in one 

 play, many times took up the business of an age," supposes he 

 "need not name Pericles, Prince of Tyre nor the historical plays of 

 Shakespeare." 



In June, 1631, the play was performed on a special occasion, and 

 the receipts, ;£'3.io, taken at the Globe, were paid to Sir Henry 

 Herbert, Master of the Revels, "for a gratuity for the liberty 

 gain'd unto them of playinge, upon the cessation of the plague.'^ 

 Halliwell-Phillipps printed " a copy of a letter of News, written to 

 Sir Dudley Carleton, at the Hague, May 24, 1619, containing a 

 curious account of the Performance of the Drama of Pericles at the 

 English Court. Printed anno domini 1865." [This performance 

 of the play at court probably led to the publication of the fourth 



