Note 132 — THE ART OF PAINTING;
Reading edition
“Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” which has been generally imputed to Shakespeare, though the internal evidence is not in favour of the supposition. Dryden believed it to be one of his earliest pieces:
Shakespeare’s own muse his Pericles first bore, The Prince of Tyre was elder than the Moor.
This order was probably assigned from the confessed inferiority of Pericles to Shakespeare’s later plays. But that apology cannot be received; for if Shakespeare had any hand in Pericles at all, it was at a late period of his dramatic career.—See Vol. X. p. 335, and the remarks on Pericles in Malone’s Shakespeare.