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SHAKESPEARE'S USE OF "ROUGH" IN THE TEMPEST to describe the magic that Prospero must "abjure" (5.1.50, 51) has inspired debate over the adjective's meaning, some critics finding in it the key not only to Prospero's powers but to the play as a whole.1 A less well-studied but similarly ambiguous use of "rough" occurs in the 1609 quarto of Pericles (Q1), where it modifies the "Musick" that precedes Cerimon's revival of Thaisa, Pericles's presumed-dead wife and queen (sig. E4^sup r^).2 Owing to the questionable status of QI Pericles, however, "rough" in this case has frequently been emended to "still" in important editions, including the Arden; the Cambridge; the Penguin; and, most recently, the Oxford, from which the word "still" has been adopted for mass pedagogical use by the Norton Shakespeare.3 While rough music does present interpretive difficulties in the context of a dire medical emergency, I will argue here that its emendation is not necessary. Rough music may, in fact, be critical to an understanding of the healing powers of Cerimon, a minor character whom critics and directors often treat as an early modern practitioner of occult magic despite the classical setting and context in which he is presented.
The Q1 passage in question appears as follows, featuring Cerimon as speaker:
Well sayd, well sayd; the fire and clothes: the rough and
Wofull Musick that we haue, cause it to sound beseech you:
The Violl once more; how thou stirr'st thou blocke?
The Musicke there: I pray you giue her ayer ....
(sig. E4^sup r^)
Bolstered by a parallel moment in The Painfull Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre, a 1608 novelized version of the play by the London innkeeper George Wilkins, some editors have substituted Wilkins's descriptor"still" on the assumption that"Wofull" music is more likely to be dulcet in tone than the "rough" of quarto descriptions (The passage from Wilkins reads: "[Then calling softly to the Gentlemen who were witnesses about him, he bade them that they should commaund some still musicke to sound" [emphasis added].6) Of the various definitions the Oxford English Dictionary gives for still, the archaic meaning of "Subdued, soft, not loud" as applied to sounds does nicely complement the somberness implied in "wofull."7 The phrase still music was even current in...