SOURCE: “The Beginnings of Pericles, Henry VIII, and Two Noble Kinsmen,” in Entering the Maze: Shakespeare's Art of Beginning, edited by Robert F. Willson, Jr., pp. 169-81, Peter Lang, 1995.

[In the essay below, Bergeron compares and contrasts the Prologues in Pericles, Henry VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, and links the plays' Epilogues to their respective beginning speeches. He argues that while each of these Prologues expresses a moral judgment, it also calls on the spectators to form their own opinions of what they will see.]

Three of Shakespeare's final plays contain a formal Prologue and Epilogue: Pericles, Henry VIII, and Two Noble Kinsmen.¹ Their subject matter differs radically as the first uses exotic material of romance; the second, somewhat recent English history; and the final one, medieval chivalric romance inspired by Chaucer. Each play begins with a choric figure who nevertheless points in different directions. I will suggest, oversimplifying somewhat, that Gower in Pericles emphasizes “narrative,” the Prologue in Henry VIII underscores “theatricality,” and the Prologue in Two Noble Kinsmen offers an amalgamation of these perspectives, tinged with a sexual metaphor. Shakespeare signals such possible distinction through Gower's references to “readers” of the text, the Prologue in Henry VIII's acknowledgement of “hearers,” and the final Prologue's recognition of Chaucer's narrative, combined with a plea for the audience's help, and the comment that we shall “hear scenes.” These phrases mark differences between the printed book and performance. I will also examine the Epilogues of these three plays and their connection to the beginnings as they frame the plays by circling back to the openings. Taken together, these prologues and epilogues provide entries into the artist's concept of his work, telegraphed in succinct speeches that resonate with self-reflexive significance.

“To sing a song that old was sung,” Gower begins.² Gower has come from “ashes ancient” and has assumed “man's infirmities,” the latter phrase ambiguously implying that Gower has “taken on” such human infirmities. In any event, the verse itself sings as Shakespeare atypically uses here octosyllabic couplets, calling attention to the archaic nature of Gower's verse, a style uncommon, perhaps unsuited, to drama. To me this indicates immediately that Gower is unlikely to participate actively in the drama; rather, he will remain on the periphery, looking in on the play, as it were. In style and purpose Shakespeare sets Gower apart from the play, an old-fashioned narrator who watches with us the unfolding of this drama. (I don’t intend here to go into Gower's function throughout, as that is a much larger subject and also one regularly commented on.)³

Concerned variously with matters of aesthetics, morality, and narrative, Gower insists that his story has purpose. He says: “And lords and ladies in their lives / Have read it for restoratives: / The purchase is to make men glorious” (7-9)—the edifying purpose of literature. Gower implies that people already know his story; they have “read” it. Or, as he says a few lines later: “I tell you what mine authors say” (20). A somewhat disingenuous comment, this statement calls attention to a text outside the speaker. This pose of narrator as mere conduit for rehearsing a prior narrative Gower assumes several times in the play. In part, it appeals to authority and deflects attention from the speaker as the begetter of the story. But it can only be a pose because Gower simultaneously serves as one who participates in the narrative, if not in the action. Shakespeare opens the play to considerations of the process of representation. Is Gower—is Shakespeare—a simple instrument for passing on an inherited story? Does Pericles, as Howard Felperin might argue,⁴ display the fossils of its source through representation? To tell the story means to live in and through it; disinterested perspective cannot be sustained.

Gower also, of course, presents the setting, the background, and the necessary exposition of the play's initial action as his speech takes a dramatic turn in line 17: “This Antioch. …” He rehearses the story of Antiochus' incestuous relationship with his daughter, “With whom the father liking took / And her to incest did provoke …” (25-26). Gower judges succinctly and with certainty: “Bad child, worse father …” (27). For all that we know at this moment the play's theme will be incest. Surely we must wonder about all those lords and ladies who have read this story “for restoratives.” But the tale of Antiochus' incest has not ended: it continues, as various suitors come to pursue the beautiful daughter: “To seek her as a bed-fellow, / In marriage-pleasures play-fellow …” (33-34). Antiochus has, as we learn, created an obstacle: the riddle that condemns the suitors. Here we find the kernel of the play's initial dramatic action. We cannot know, however, from Gower's opening speech what a small part the Antiochus story will finally play in the total drama. Gower never so much as mentions Pericles in this opening prologue; we would be right to conclude that the play focuses on Antiochus. Therefore, in a way, Gower misleads us—not perhaps intentionally but through omission. Although he possesses the entire story, he affords us here but a glimpse into part of it.

One can suggest that Gower functions iconographically. First, his very appearance, “From ancient ashes,” underscores the antiquity of the legend and evokes mystery. What can it mean for this ancient storyteller and poet to appear on stage? Gower binds up in his person images visual and mysterious. Coming from the dead, Gower chants a song that we obligingly heed. As he says “This Antioch,” he doubtlessly sweeps his hand across the stage, enabling us to perceive the correct setting for the story: he defines and points out. And when he describes the fate of the suitors—“for her many a wight did die” (39)—he points to their heads stuck on some kind of wall: “As yon grim looks do testify” (40)—memento mori with a vengeance!

Gower thus provides purpose, information, moral judgment, authority, and iconographic example. Finally, though, he defers to us the audience. He says: “What now ensues, to the judgement of your eye / I give my cause, who best can justify” (41-42). It's as if having already rendered his judgment about Antiochus, for example, he passes the task to the audience. If readers have read the tale for restorative, the hearers and seers must now exercise their judgment to decide what purpose this artistic work will fulfill. As a commentator cited in the Arden edition notes, words in the final lines, such as “testify,” “judgement,” “cause,” and “justify,” echo legal terminology. Gower rests his case, and we must render a verdict. In this he resembles the dramatist who offers his art to a critical public. We will see with our own eyes the evil of Antiochus and his daughter; we will see that beneath that alluring beauty lies a vile corruption. We will experience other characters about whom we will reach judgments. Being outside the drama, Gower makes his own judgment and thereby invites us to do likewise.

In the Epilogue, however, Gower returns to his function as moral judge of what has happened. In a chronological enumeration of the principal characters, Gower assesses the play's action and the characters' lives. Gower begins with Antiochus, thereby bringing this story full circle and taking us back to the prologue. He again condemns Antiochus and adds Cleon and his wife; but he praises Helicanus (“A figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty” [Epilogue, 8]) and “reverend” Cerimon. As he had earlier told us of the destruction of Antiochus and his daughter, so now he tells of a similar burning of Cleon and Dionyza by the people of their kingdom. Paradoxically, while citing all these specific events, Gower chooses an array of abstract words, such as “lust,” “fortune,” “virtue,” “joy,” “truth,” “faith,” “loyalty,” “charity,” “fame,” and “patience.” They all seem to demand capitalization. One could put them together in a sentence and offer a fairly accurate assessment of Pericles. These abstract nouns reinforce the idea of judgment.

I find particularly striking the play's last two lines: “So on your patience evermore attending, / New joy wait on you! Here our play has ending” (17-18). The ending in at least one sense echoes the beginning: if the former readers have found the tale to be a restorative, we may now experience “new joy”—at least that is Gower's hope, even benediction. The play rewards us with joy, certainly a quality inherent in restorative. Gower has taken us into his confidence, and now he offers joy—the apparent pay-off for our own judgment. We have been co-conspirators in the fiction, and the narrator/dramatist acknowledges and rewards our complicity.

The last line—“Here our play has ending”—has two key words: “play” and “ending.” For the first time in Pericles, Gower refers to “play” as opposed to “story,” as if his story has become play or drama.⁵ Indeed, it has. The narrative beginning has given way to dramatic realization. Gower also says “our” play, underscoring our involvement in making this story a play. This play has “ending.” Significantly, Gower does not say that the play “ends” or “has ended”; instead, he says that it has “ending.” To me, this calls attention to the ongoing life of the play. Or to put the issue in critical terms associated with romance, the play lacks final closure: it concludes, but it does not end. Gower and Shakespeare seem especially prescient here about our more recent critical understanding of generic closure or the lack thereof. In another sense, no artistic work ever ends so long as an audience carries with it memories of the art. Pericles shimmers in our imaginations long after Gower delivers his final lines, the performance concludes, and the audience disperses. In that sense, Gower's ending rather resembles his beginning: both are open-ended.

Gower has come from ashes to sing his song; and the Prologue speaker in Henry VIII begins: “I come no more to make you laugh …” (1).⁶ The “I” remains unspecified as does “no more.” To what does this choric figure refer? Seemingly, he has some prior history—possibly as the speaker in Pericles (a charming if unprovable speculation!)? Like Gower, the Prologue speaker refers to the function of the play, displays moral judgment, and provides information. Unlike Gower, this one in Henry VIII focuses on the theater audience in an explicit way. Like Gower, the Chorus here makes clear the serious purpose of what will follow—a seriousness defined in part by the speaker's presumed former history as one who induced mirth.

In contrast to this past appearance, the Chorus offers “things now / That bear a weighty and a serious brow, / Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe …” (1-3). Immediately we recognize the political nature of what will unfold in the drama, as opposed to the tale of incest that Gower announces. “Those that can pity,” the Prologue says, “here / May (if they think it well) let fall a tear, / The subject will deserve it” (5-7). The speaker insists on the seriousness of the drama and prepares us for tragedy; his aesthetic judgment conditions ours, or more precisely that of those in the first audience. Yet, interestingly, the speaker does not specify the precise nature of the drama's subject matter; that is, we move through the Prologue without any reference to Henry VIII himself or to his court. At least Gower mentioned Antiochus in his opening speech.

The Prologue rules out several groups of possible audience members or those who may be wasting their time. For example, “Those that come to see / Only a show or two” (9-10) and those “That come to hear a merry bawdy play” (14) or “to see a fellow / In a long motley coat guarded with yellow” (15-16): these will be deceived in what the Prologue defines as “two short hours” (13). Repeatedly, this chorus calls attention to the theater audience in ways that Gower did not, reflecting a self-consciousness about this piece of art as drama. For example, the speaker says: “Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow / We now present” (4-5). “Scenes” and the verb “present” reinforce the idea of a theatrical performance, not just a narrative rendering as in Pericles. By line 11 the Prologue refers to “the play.” The speaker here in Henry VIII identifies groups that obviously made up audiences in public theaters. He even flatters the present audience: “The first and happiest hearers of the town …” (23). They are either “first” as in the first to see the play or “first” as in stature or rank.

Like Gower who insists that he tells only what his authors say, the Chorus in Henry VIII alludes to its source, if indirectly. When he refers to “our chosen truth” (18), I think that the speaker means to imply the sources that the dramatist has used in constructing the play. Lines 14-19, referring to the fellow in the motley coat and “such a show,” contain apparently a slighting glance at Samuel Rowley's When You See Me (1605), one of Shakespeare's likely sources. Rowley's sometimes farcical play covers the reign of Henry VIII, 1514-1544. Clearly, Shakespeare turns his back on Rowley's treatment of the reign; instead, as the Chorus insists, he provides a serious dramatization of a portion of Henry's reign. Like Gower, the Prologue also perceives a purpose in the story that will unfold; indeed, the chorus states the purpose thus: “To make that only true we now intend …” (21). We confront here not the presence of a fiction but rather the example of truth. In line 9 the speaker indicates that viewers “May here find truth too.” Sir Henry Wotton's famous 1613 letter about the burning of the Globe during a performance of this play refers to it as “All is True” (a title that the editors of the new Oxford Shakespeare have adopted). To think that we see the “truth” (presumably meaning historical truth) nicely blurs the distinction between fiction and history.

The Prologue reinforces this view as he creates necessary dramatic illusion. “Think ye see,” he says, “The very persons of our noble story / As they were living: think you see them great, / And follow'd with the general throng, and sweat / Of thousand friends …” (25-29). This statement concedes that we will watch a representation of the past, truthfully full of nobility and sweat. The narrative path of this whole story follows tragedy: “How soon this mightiness meets misery” (30). But again the Prologue stops short of indicating the subject of the drama; rather, it busily focuses on tone and on the trajectory of the story: serious and tragic but leaving open the exact nature of the story.

Like Gower, the Prologue finally involves the judgment of the audience. If in light of the powerful and moving story “you can be merry then, I'll say / A man may weep upon his wedding day” (31-32). The speaker includes the “hearers” in a final response to the play. He has already carefully ruled out inappropriate motives or expectations from the audience—his judgment on the theater's spectators. Now the fit audience will be expected to respond with a judgment that respects the seriousness of the drama. But from the Prologue we can only know the direction of the narrative, not its content. The speaker risks offering us a generic beginning that might readily be attached to almost any serious play that contains tragic action in a political setting.

As we know, the Prologue speaker disappears in Henry VIII, unlike Gower in Pericles. I want to suggest, however, that something like a choric function occurs at the play's end in the person of Cranmer. His final prophetic vision enlarges the play and makes it touch the current history of 1613 quite precisely. Cranmer might have said, as Gower did in his Epilogue, “our play has ending,” with the same recognition that the play continues, here precisely because the Stuart royal family offers testimony to that assumption.

When Cranmer begins his great speech (V.iv.14-55), he says: … “the words I utter, / Let none think flattery, for they'll find ’em truth” (15-16). Sounding like the Prologue, Cranmer insists on his veracity as he launches his imaginative praise of the baby Elizabeth. Instead of looking backward as Gower does, Cranmer looks forward in time—in actual time to the reign of Elizabeth, her death, and the succession of James. For Elizabeth, “Truth shall nurse her” (28), and “God shall be truly known” (36). She will also be interpreted: “… those about her / From her shall read the perfect ways of honour …” (36-37). “Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror” (47) that once attended Elizabeth shall accompany her successor, according to Cranmer. Citing Cranmer's prophetic and choric role, Henry VIII refers to him as “This oracle of comfort” (66). He might have said that Cranmer offers “new joy,” as Gower did in his Epilogue. As such, one may argue that Cranmer has an “epilogue” function, helping complete the play.

The speaker of the brief formal Epilogue returns to the question of pleasing audiences, which had been a large part of the Prologue's focus: “’Tis ten to one this play can never please / All that are here” (1-2). Those who came “to hear the city / Abus'd extremely, and to cry ‘That's witty’” (5-6) will have been disappointed. Shakespeare through the speaker seems to be glancing at the satiric city comedies—perhaps of Jonson and Middleton—which had been much in vogue. Whatever final judgment we make of Henry VIII, we will probably not focus on its “wit.” The dramatist adds an interesting and topical twist to the preoccupation with performance: the Epilogue self-consciously glances at other popular dramatic forms of the time. Unlike Gower's epilogue that explicitly went back over the play, this one says very little precisely about the drama—again because primarily preoccupied with the performance. But at the close the speaker does praise the “merciful construction of good women, / For such a one we show'd ’em” (10-11). Possibly the speaker refers to Katherine, but where does that leave Anne? In any event, the final appeal for applause hinges on the response of women in the audience and recalls somewhat the Epilogue to As You Like It. Both Gower and the speaker in Henry VIII request the hearers' or readers' active judgment, signalled in the latter play by the request for applause. These plays do not allow the audience to remain idle.

In some ways the Prologue to Two Noble Kinsmen brings together qualities of the openings of both Pericles and Henry VIII; for it emphasizes its narrative link to Chaucer, and it calls attention to theatrical performance. Unlike the other two, the speaker here actively calls for our help—that is, applause: “… do but you hold out / Your helping hands, and we shall tack about, / And something do to save us” (25-27).⁷ This steps up in a consciously theatrical way the earlier insistence that our judgment would be required. The Prologue in Two Noble Kinsmen puts us on guard by letting us know that our hands will be needed in this enterprise. Gower's moral purpose does not appear; instead, the Prologue speaker more nearly resembles the one in Henry VIII by suggesting that this play may provide “content to you,” and it will keep “A little dull time from us” (31, 32). It may well be “Worth two hours' travail” (29). The irresistible pun in “travail” implicates us as well in this labor and in the narrative and dramatic journey that will unfold.

The Prologue has a three-part structure, divided as follows: lines 1-8, 9-23, and 24-32. The opening line announces in a succinct and graphic way the essential metaphor of this first section: “New Plays and maidenheads are near akin” (1). A good play, the speaker continues, “is like her / That after a holy tie and first night's stir / Yet still is modesty …” (5-7). Much pursued, new plays and maidenheads require “much money gi'en, / If they stand sound and well” (2-3). Unlike Gower who emphasizes the restorative nature of his narrative, or the Prologue in Henry VIII who examines the motives of the audience and insists on the verisimilitude of the dramatic action, the Prologue in Two Noble Kinsmen asserts an inherent sexuality of drama. Many late twentieth-century literary theorists would agree or would in fact see connections between all writing and sexuality. Shakespeare or Fletcher has the Prologue speaker posit such a theoretical possibility in the seventeenth century—at least as metaphor. Gower had revealed the incest of Antiochus and his daughter as part of the dramatic/narrative action, but here the Prologue speaker makes a link between sexual activity and the production of texts. One wonders, of course, where old plays fit in the sexual scheme of things. The speaker offers no clue.

Reflecting the play's indebtedness to Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, the second part of the Prologue refers to the poet in awestruck terms: “noble,” “pure,” “learned.” The speaker says simply: “Chaucer, of all admired, the story gives” (13). In a sense the playwright brings us back to Gower, at least historically. We learn that Chaucer will inform this play, although the speaker does not specify which of Chaucer's works will provide the source for the play. Gower told us that he would reveal “what mine authors say”; we infer that the dramatist in Two Noble Kinsmen will be doing something similar. But this second division of the Prologue worries primarily about Chaucer's possible reaction to the play—a charming fiction. If the play does not achieve adequate stature, “How will it shake the bones of that good man, / And make him cry from under ground, ‘O fan / From me the witless chaff of such a writer …’” (17-19). This reaction the speaker fears, and certainly it would be “too ambitious, to aspire to him” (23). We seem to be staring “anxiety of influence” in the face.

Such modesty permeates the final section of the Prologue: “Weak as we are …” (24). Hence the speaker pleads for the assistance of the audience and its favorable reaction, manifested in part by applause. Perhaps such a response could still Chaucer's roused ghost. The Prologue asks for the audience's judgment, as had Gower and the Prologue in Henry VIII, but as a possible counter to Chaucer's. The speaker here finally wishes for two things: “To his [Chaucer's] bones sweet sleep; / Content to you” (29-30). Likely also the playwright wishes some “content” for himself. The thematic progression of the Prologue seems to go something like this: sex—birth of the play—Oedipal struggle with an artistic father—hope for release. If this is Shakespeare's play and his Prologue, then how fascinating to think of Two Noble Kinsmen as the last play with a valedictory statement that acknowledges a possible life-long artistic struggle with his sources and a nervousness about measuring up.

Like the Epilogues to the other two plays, the one in Two Noble Kinsmen returns to the issue of possible reaction to the play: “I would now ask ye how ye like the play …” (1). About the audience's response the speaker remains “fearful” (3), worrying that some in the audience will “hiss, and kill / Our market” (8-9). Much here especially reminds us of the Epilogue to Henry VIII, except that the speaker in Two Noble Kinsmen couches his appeal to men, unlike the former's appeal to women. “No man smile?” the Prologue asks (4); and he continues: “He that has / Loved a young handsome wench, then, show his face” (4-5). The speaker in this final play cannot seem to avoid the subject of sex, reinforcing a connection between text and sex, enunciated in the Prologue. The speaker concludes: “Gentlemen, good night” (18). Perhaps this masculine slant derives from the play itself which focuses on two noble kinsmen.

“If the tale we have told— / … any way content ye, / For to that honest purpose it was meant ye, / We have our end …” (12-15). Suddenly through all this expected concern about reaction to the performance comes a recollection of the narrative tale that gave rise to the drama in the first place. Again, the speaker in Two Noble Kinsmen offers a subtle blend of narrative and dramatic perspectives. In the Epilogue the speaker moves from “play” in line 1 to “tale” in line 12, rather standing on its head Gower's conclusions in his Epilogue. “Content” becomes a key word in both the Prologue and Epilogue—a satisfaction to be derived from the tale and the performance. The speaker closes on a curious note: “… ye shall have ere long / I dare say many a better, to prolong / Your old loves to us” (15-17). This seems to promise more plays, or it could conceivably point in the direction of a printed collection of the plays. In any event, drama prolongs “old loves.” Perhaps here lies the response to “new plays and maidenheads”; that is, after the initial flush of sexual-textual excitement, an old love may be established, encouraged and prolonged by more texts.

Unlike the other Romances, Pericles, Henry VIII, and Two Noble Kinsmen begin and end with choric speakers who exercise their moral judgments, alert us to forthcoming action, create dramatic illusion, allude to the sources that inform the narrative, and require of the audience its own judgment. More so than the other Romances, these plays by their beginnings emphasize the theatrical nature of what will be presented, especially in the case of the Prologues of Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen, which refer to the audience in a direct and explicit way. These Prologues also reflect a tension between narrative or source and the play itself—the singing of old songs, telling of old tales, revealing the chosen truth and the necessity to make these come alive in performance. A nervousness hangs over these Prologues, manifested eventually in the sometimes special pleading of the Epilogues. I think this healthy tension reflects a serious dramatist's struggle to position himself with regard to his narrative sources and his own artistic imagination. The sexual metaphor that informs Two Noble Kinsmen reinforces such a battle. The dramatist hopes that these new plays may spark an attractive response that can ultimately lead to old loves, even a mutual love between playwright and audience. If so, the texts may provide a restorative; the performances, truth and contentment. Through such prologues we gain a special insight into the playwright's artistic perspective, particularly his concern for how he will be understood and received—his negotiations with an audience and with himself.

Notes

1. For the sake of the argument I am going to accept Shakespeare's authorship of Two Noble Kinsmen. I recognize that this is a vexed and debatable issue. I have no new evidence to present, but I think persuasive cases have been made for at least Shakespeare's collaboration with Fletcher in this play. For a convenient summary of the argument see Clifford Leech's introduction to his Signet edition of the play.

2. Quotations from Pericles come from the Arden edition: Pericles, ed. F. D. Hoeniger (London: Methuen, 1963).

3. See for example: Walter Eggers, “Shakespeare's Gower and the Role of the Authorial Presenter,” Philological Quarterly, 54 (1975), 434-43; Richard Hillman, “Shakespeare's Gower and Gower's Shakespeare: The Larger Debt of Pericles,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 36 (1985), 427-37.

4. Howard Felperin, Shakespearean Representation: Mimesis and Modernity in Elizabethan Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 58.

5. For further discussion of this point see my essay, “Reading and Writing in Shakespeare's Romances,” Criticism, 33 (1991), 91-113.

6. Quotations from this play come from Henry VIII, ed. R. A. Foakes (London: Methuen, 1964), the Arden edition.

7. Quotations come from Two Noble Kinsmen, ed. Clifford Leech in The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare, gen. ed. Sylvan Barnet (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972).