DISCOVERY 



45 



the more safety, put in his bosom. Having thus all 

 his trinkets in a readiness, taking his staff in his hand 

 he bade his wife kiss him for good luck, and so he 

 went toward the palace." Now this very morning 

 Dorastus had laid his plans to sail away with Fawnia ; 

 and he had taken one Capnio into his confidence to 

 help him. Porrus meets Capnio, who suspects his 

 intention from his tidy appearance, and so decoys 

 him successfully on board the ship. Thus in the 

 novel are Fawnia, her lover, and the necessary evidence 

 of her high birth got conveniently together, to be 

 storm-driven unawares (as already said) upon her 

 father's kingdom. In Shakespeare, on the other 

 hand, the king Poli.xenes, by learning of the love- 

 making and surprising the culprits at the sheep- 

 shearing, compels the prince to plan escape on the 

 spur of the moment. There is no time to find or 

 consult a confidant. Shakespeare therefore drops 

 the Capnio of the novel, dividing his functions — first 

 of aiding the flight, and second of trapping the old 

 shepherd — between Camillo and Autolycus. The 

 latter, Shakespeare's own and greatest addition to the 

 characters of the play, created without the shadow of 

 a hint from Greene, performs his part with the shep- 

 herd, delighting us at the same time with some of 

 his best sallies. Camillo, meanwhile, the king's accom- 

 plice in the spying, having served his own desire to 

 get home again to Sicily by forwarding, and even 

 instigating, an escape thither, is on his way after the 

 king to court ; where he will duly relate the action 

 of his young friends, and contrive to join the company 

 sent after them. Shakespeare, that is, bj' having his 

 own instruments ready for a more rapid accomplish- 

 ment of this part of the story, secures also that the 

 pursuit shall not wait till some one of the search- 

 party, organised to find the missing prince, should 

 chance to meet with " a fisherman that was mending 

 his nets, when Dorastus and Fawnia (Florizel and 

 Perdita) took shipping." The two consequently reach 

 Leontes' court just before the arrival of messengers 

 from Polixenes and of Poli.xenes himself ; and Leontes, 

 though attracted by the beauty of Perdita, as recalling 

 his lost Hermione, is in no danger of displaj'ing such 

 grossness as Pandosto. 



But Shakespeare did more than omit and suppress. 

 His purpose of achieving a completely happy issue 

 appears even more clearlj? in what he added to the 

 story as told by Greene. 



Autolycus the pedlar is the greatest, perhaps also 

 the most significant of all the additions. As we have 

 seen he was needed to supply in part the omission of 

 the confidant Capnio. But this is only part, and a 

 small part, of the function assigned to him by Shake- 

 speare. Note that his entrance is earlier than is 

 strictly necessarj- for this service alone. The story 



has advanced no further than the mere announce- 

 ment of a shepherds' gathering, through the revelation 

 of Polixenes' design to attend it in disguise, when, 

 before the shepherds actually assemble, we first meet 

 Autolycus on his way there also. He enters singing ; 

 and his songs are the life and soul of this little scene 

 — a prelude to the revels and merry-making of the 

 shepherd-feast that succeeds. The true function of 

 Autolycus is to pitch the lyric note of the coming 

 love-scenes, and generally to herald by his songs and 

 his cheerfulness the dawn of happier days, of a 

 cloudless summer for those wc love and for all their 

 friends. 



Of Shakespeare's elaborations the most striking is 

 the sheep-shearing revel. Built upon a casual phrase 

 in Greene, this scene with the lovers' escape that 

 grows from it, occupies no less than half of the whole 

 second part of the play. Here again the change is 

 made to create the right atmosphere for the new 

 ending of all-round reconciliation. Moreover, the 

 essence and effect of the divergence reveals plainly 

 that Shakespeare's conception of Arcadia, of his 

 shepherd-world, is very different from Greene's. The 

 subordination of Porrus and his belongings at the 

 close of the first part of the play pointed in this 

 direction. And just as then Shakespeare's reshap- 

 ing of the incidents did not efface Greene's version, 

 but left it to exist by itself as a pleasant piece of 

 narrative ; so here it is significant that, while he re- 

 apportions everything else, he leaves altogether 

 unused just the best part of Greene — the account 

 already quoted of Porrus' setting out for the palace. 

 To dismiss this detail by citing in explanation the 

 obvious dramatic inconvenience of an extra scene and 

 the absence of the shepherd's wife from among the 

 personse, is to miss some of the point ; not only does 

 Shakespeare omit the incident itself, but nothing even 

 of its tone is carried over. Quite clearly this omis- 

 sion must be regarded as confirming the doubt raised 

 by the treatment of the old shepherd in the earlier 

 part of the play. Shakespeare and Greene conceive 

 their pastoral worlds from entirely opposite points of 

 view. Both men clothe their presentment of shepherd 

 life with humour. But while Greene, centring the 

 interest in Porrus and his household, works from a 

 basis in realism, Shakespeare, thinking more of an 

 effective foil to Perdita — " too noble for this place " — 

 and also of the sphere best adapted for the exercise 

 of the rogueries and accomplishments of the vagabond 

 Autolycus, allows us glimpses of the pastoral world 

 only in its more poetical aspects, its holiday revels 

 and sheep-shearings. Whether or not, as Georg 

 Brandes declares, Shakespeare was at all times 

 " totally opposed to the realistic dramatisation of 

 everyday scenes and characters," certainly in this 



