Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PERICLES ACT I Enter GOWER. Before the Palace of Antioch. To sing a song that old was sung, Front ashes ancient Gower is come, Assuming man's infirmities, To glad your ear, and please your eyes. It hath been sung at festivals, 5 On ember-eves and holy-ales; 6. holy-ales'] Steevens; Holydayes Qq i, 3; Holy dayes Q 2; holy-dates Qq 4, 5; holi-dayes Q 6; holy-day es Ff 3, 4. ting on again the frail body of mortality. 6. ember-eves'] The vigils of ember- days, the four periods of fasting and prayer appointed by the Church to be observed respectively in the four seasons of the year. Each of these fasts occupies three days, viz., a Wednesday and the following Friday and Saturday after (i) the First Sunday in Lent, (2) the Feast of Pentecost, (3) I4th September, (4) 13th December. The origin of the element ember in this compound is doubtful. See New Eng. Diet. 6. holy-ales] An ale was a rural festival, where of course much ale was Acrf] The Folios have here Actus Primus. Scena Prima. In the rest of the play the Acts are marked, but not the scenes. There is no indication of either in the Quartos (The Cambridge Editors). Enter Gower'] Here and throughout the play the stage-directions as to place at the beginning of each scene are due to M alone. 1. old] if sound, is here used adverbially = of old. Steevens, on Ma- lone's conjecture, reads of old for that old. 2. Gower'] The author of Confessio Amantis in which this story is told. 3. Assuming man's infirmities'] put- l And lords and ladies in their lives Have read it for restoratives: The purchase is to make men glorious; Et bonum quo antiquius, eo melius. 10 If you, born in these latter times, When wit's more ripe, accept my rimes, And that to he...