1898.] SMYTH — PERICLES AND APOLLONIUS. 269 



read to me." {Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, Series 

 i, 1874, p. 252).^ 



The Stability of the Story. 



It is remarkable that a saga so widespread should undergo so 

 little change in the course of centuries. Occasionally an episode is 

 broadened by the narrator, or local color is painted freely into the 

 work ; but the chief outlines of the story remain practically un- 

 changed. The Latin MSS. vary greatly in style and diction. It is 

 clear that many of them are slovenly copies, and Riese, in editing 

 the tale for the Teubner classics, produced an ideal text, that is to 

 say, he mixed the language of several MSS. in the effort to make a 

 clear and readable version. 



A careful examination of the MSS. and a consideration of their 

 discrepancies (chiefly verbal) lead to the conclusion that the story 

 has descended along three parallel lines : from the first Godfrey of 

 Viterbo was derived ; from the second the Gesta Rotnanorum and 

 the French MS. of the thirteenth century j and from the third the 

 Anglo-Saxon version. The principal mediaeval versions may be 

 classified as follows : 



Godfrey of Viterbo. Gesta Romanorum, 



Steinhowel. French and, indirectly, Italian. 



Gower. Twine. 



Shakespeare. Timoneda's Spanish. 



Wilkins. The Holland volksboek. 



The Hungarian, Swedish, Slavic 

 versions. 



Shakespeare is the first narrator of the ancient story to change 

 the name of the hero. The commentators upon the play have 

 usually been satisfied with the conjecture of Steevens that the name 

 Pericles was taken by Shakespeare from Sidney's Arcadia, where 

 Pyrocles figures as one of the characters. It is one of the curious 

 coincidences in the history of this saga, even if it be of no further 

 importance, that in the French prose version Apollonius calls him- 

 self Ferillie, in answer to the query of the daughter of Archistrates. 



The appearance of Gower as chorus and prologue points imme- 

 diately to Shakespeare's source of information. He says : 



1 George MacDonald made independently a similar division of scenes (see 

 Fleay's Marina). 



