tion certainly gives us an accurate idea of the dramatic exhibitions of his time. When dialogue-poetry had taken possession of the stage, pantomime remained as an ornament and addition to the performance. In most of the plays anterior to Shakspeare, personages of an almost invariably emblematical character appear between the acts, to indicate the subjects of the scenes about to follow. An historical or allegorical personage is introduced to explain these emblems, and to moralize the piece, that is, to point out the moral truths contained in it. In “Pericles,” Gower, a poet of the fourteenth century—celebrated for his “Confessio Amantis,” in which he has related, in English verse, the story of Pericles as told by more ancient writers—comes upon the stage to state to the public, not that which is about to happen, but such anterior facts as require to be explained, that the drama may be properly understood. Sometimes his narrative is interrupted and supplemented by the dumb representation of the facts themselves. Gower then explains all that the mute action has not elucidated. He appears not only at the commencement of the play and between the acts, but even during the course of an act, whenever it is found convenient to abridge by narrative some less interesting part of the action, in order to apprise the spectator of a change of place or a lapse of time, and thus to transport his imagination wherever a new scene requires its presence. This was decidedly a step in advance; a useless accessory had become a means of development and of clearness. But Shakspeare speedily rejected this factitious and awkward contrivance as unworthy of his art; and ere long he inspired the action with power to explain itself, to make itself understood on appearance, and thus to give dramatic performances that aspect of life and reality which could
