1898.] SMYTH — PERICLES AND APOLLONIUS. 273 



brothel scenes. In Pericles the brutal act is not performed, but a 

 reminiscence of it lingers in : 



** I said my lord, if you did know my parentage 

 You would not do me violence." (V, i, loo.) 



These lines are insusceptible of explanation without a knowledge 

 of the earlier versions of the story. There is a hiatus here that 

 must be supplied by reference to Shakespeare's predecessors (see 

 Appendix, p. 308). Twine has, ''Then Apollonius fell in a rage, 

 and forgetting all courtesie, his unbridled affection stirring him 

 thereunto, rose up sodainly and stroke the maiden on the face with 

 his foote, so that shee fell to the ground, and the bloud gushed 

 plentifully out of her cheekes. And like it is that shee was in a 

 swoone." Godfrey writes, '' Pulsaque calce patris Tharsia laesa 

 dolet," while in Gower it stands : 



" And after hire with his honde 

 He smote : and thus whan she hym fonde 

 Diseasyd, courtesly she saide 

 Avoy, my lorde, I am a mayde 

 And if you wiste what I am 

 And owte of what lynage I cam 

 Ye wolde not be so salvage. "^ 



The last element of the story that Pudmenzky employs for com- 

 parative purposes is the riddle (cf. Pudmenzky, Shakespeare' s Peri- 

 cles und d. Apol. des Heinrich v. Neustadt, p. 17). There is first 

 the evil riddle that Antiochus proposes to Apollonius, and later 

 occur the riddles that Tharsia puts to the King for his solution 

 when she plays the harp before him to dispel his melancholy. In 

 the old Latin Hisioria her riddles are eight in number, and the 

 answers are unda, pisces, navis, balneum, spongia, sph^ra, specu- 

 lum, rotae, scolae. These very riddles are in the riddle bag of the 

 mysterious Symphosius, to whom we have already referred Ccf. 

 Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare^ ii, 137). The Gesta Romano- 

 rum gives only three riddles. And none at all are found in God- 

 frey, Gower or Shakespeare (save in Shakespeare the first riddle bor- 

 rowed from Twine). The literary fashion of the time had changed, 

 and this particular form of diversion was obsolete, yet the appear- 

 ance of the one riddle in Shakespeare — wretched as it is — is an 



1 In the Greek romance of Chariton the hero kicks his wife so that she 

 falls unconscious, and is believed lo be dead. 



