AFTER the most persevering researches of all the writers on Shakespeare, during more than a century, it is strange that no story has come to light which can have supplied the great poet with his raw material, even to the extent that Green's "Pan-dosto " served his purpose in the " Winter's Tale," or Lodge's "Rosalind" in "As You Like it." It seems likely that he drew his facts and the thread of his story from several publications and occurrences of or about the time, and was not considerably indebted to any single original. Thus Florio's Montaigne, published in 1603—a book, of which Shakespeare's own copy is in the British Museuml—has been followed pretty implicitly as regards the speech of Gonzalo in act ii., scene I ; and the passage is for that reason reprinted below ; and again it appears to me worth suggesting that another volume which Shakespeare in all probability read—or at any rate which was very well known to the author (or authors) of " Pericles," the " Pattern of Painful Adventures," may have supplied a hint, where the description is so vividly given, in the fourth chapter, of the shipwreck of Apollonius, Prince of Tyre, on the coast of Pentapolis. Douce's remark ("Illustr. of Shakespeare," i. 5), seems to me much to the purpose here :—" Several contemporary narratives of the above event [voyage of Sir George Som-ners] were published, which Shakespeare might have consulted, and the conversation of the time might have furnished, or at least suggested, some particulars, that are not to be found in any of the printed accounts?
In " Green's Tu Quoque," 1614 (Hazlitt's Dodsley, xi. 187), Bubble says, when his master speaks of going to sea :—
*' To sea? Lord bless us ! methinks I hear of a tempest already"
It seems to have been a tempestuous period. The play here cited was written and acted some time before 1614.
1 An account of this precious volume* was given in a pimphlet published by Sir Frederic Madden, 8°, 1838.