The mutilation of Philomela by the hands of Tereus was a jest compared to
the mutilation of Shakespeare by the hands of Fletcher: who thereby
reduced the close of the first verse into agreement if not into
accordance with the close of his own. This appended verse, as all the
world does not and need not know, ends thus:
But first set my poor heart free,
Bound in those icy chains by thee.
Even an earless owner of fingers enough to count on may by their help
convince himself of the difference in metre here. But not only does the
last line, with unsolicited and literally superfluous liberality, offer
us a syllable over measure; the words are such as absolutely to defy
antiphonal repetition or reverberation of the three last in either line.
Let us therefore, like good scriptural scholars, according equally to the
letter and the spirit of the text, render unto Fletcher the things which
be Fletcher's, and unto Shakespeare the things which be Shakespeare's.
{210} It is worth remark that in a still older sample of an older and
ruder form of play than can have been the very earliest mould in which
the pristine or pre-Shakespearean model of _Pericles_ was cast, the part
of Chorus here assigned to Gower was filled by a representative of his
fellow-poet Lydgate.
Pages:
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332