Shakespeare\u2019s Pericles, Prince of Tyre Commentary A. Drake<\/title><meta name= \"description\" content= \"Pericles, Prince of Tyre commentary addresses major themes, major characters such as Pericles, Thaisa, Helicanus, Cerimon, literary analysis, drama theory.\"><\/head><\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Commentaries on Shakespeare’s Romance Plays<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-4f6cdd05 uag-hide-mob\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-dcba7b2a wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">HOME<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div 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target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">GUIDES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-d5da63d7 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-links\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">LINKS<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-19d28286\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-69502be5 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act1\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 1<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0ec42142 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act2\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 2<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-6ac70dcb wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act3\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 3<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-bfd6ecc9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act4\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 4<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-55716ff6 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act5\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 5<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0246bad9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#endnotes\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ENDNOTES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nShakespeare, William. The Play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.<\/em> (The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems,<\/em> 3rd ed. 150-206).<\/p>\n\n\n\nOf Interest:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rsc.org.uk\/pericles\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">RSC Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/Library\/Texts\/Per\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ISE Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespeare-online.com\/sources\/periclessources.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">S-O Sources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/digital.lib.miamioh.edu\/digital\/collection\/wshakespeare\/id\/13491\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Third Folio 1664 <\/em>915-34<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitale-sammlungen.de\/en\/view\/bsb10929634?page=292,293\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gower\u2019s Confessio<\/em> Bk 8<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/doc\/Twine_Q1\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Twine\u2019s Pattern of Painful Adventures<\/em><\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.umsl.edu\/~gradyf\/chaucer\/apollonius.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Scanlon\u2019s \u201cApollonius\u201d Plot Summary<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/culture-desk\/the-continual-riddle-of-shakespeares-pericles\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Continual Riddle\u2026 (New Yorker)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/explore\/shakespeares-works\/pericles\/an-introduction-to-this-text\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Folger Pub. History<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEAREAN ROMANCE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy, <\/em>Northrop Frye writes with precision about the defining characteristics of the tragic vision. What underlies this vision, he posits, \u201cis being in time, the sense of the one-directional quality of life \u2026 where every act brings unavoidable and fateful consequences, and where all experience vanishes \u2026 into nothingness, annihilation. In the tragic vision death \u2026 gives shape and form to life.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn1\" id=\"_ednref1\">[1]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nBy contrast, in Frye\u2019s schema,<\/em> the romance pattern is cyclical, not linear. In romance plays, death does not define life. Instead, romance characters get a chance to recover what they have lost and to redeem themselves and the order within which they function. In Shakespeare\u2019s romance plays (and often in his comedies as well), the social order borrows from the stability and perpetuity of the great seasonal cycles that literary cultures have invoked for thousands of years.<\/p>\n\n\n\nShakespearean romance (Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Cymbeline; The Winter\u2019s Tale; The Tempest;<\/em> The Two Noble Kinsmen<\/em>) clearly differs from the straightforwardly tragic mode of action and perception, but it isn\u2019t identical with comedy, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile both comedy and romance depend partly on the renovation of a corrupt social order, often by temporary removal into a green world of nature where magic rules and things can be turned around for the better, romance is to be distinguished from tragedy and comedy in its Janus-like quality, its ambivalence about even the bittersweet endings it supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn The Tempest, <\/em>for instance, we enjoy a felicitous ending with the expectation of a marriage between Ferdinand and Miranda back in Naples and a return to power for Prospero as Duke of Milan. The old wizard shows himself a benevolent ruler on his island and, we presume, he will be equally benevolent when he returns to his Italian duchy. <\/p>\n\n\n\nAll of that sounds comic enough. Still, it is easy to see that Prospero is potentially a tyrant who could plausibly misuse his powers: death, disorder, and tyranny are real threats in The Tempest,<\/em> even though things turn out well. <\/p>\n\n\n\nA key point is that in Shakespeare\u2019s romance plays, we get not simple second chances or \u201cdo-overs\u201d but rather second chances in altered circumstances. Events and persons may come full circle, but there is loss and sorrow along the way, leaving even triumphant conclusions with a bittersweet taste. Still, in the end, the romance plays are uplifting.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s also worth suggesting that at least in a limited sense, Shakespeare\u2019s romance plays offer a more \u201crealistic\u201d orientation towards life than we might at first suppose\u2014not an offer of ultimate insight and intense clarity near the point of being crushed by inexorable forces, as in tragedy; not a sunny representation of individual satisfaction and happy communities, as in the lighter Shakespearean comedies; but a kind of experiential wisdom through recurrence that\u2014if we live long enough\u2014allows us to abide in uncertainty, accept the changes and loss that time brings, and be thankful for the rare and all but miraculous second chances we may receive. If we live long enough, our lives may take on something of a \u201cromance\u201d cast.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen my father was growing up during the Great Depression, his father used to take him on weekly visits to an ice-cream parlor, and in those bleak times, the son\u2019s choice was \u201cplain, white, or vanilla.\u201d My dad assured me that he enjoyed all three flavors.<\/em> It took him a good while to figure out that the choice wasn\u2019t quite what it seemed. It\u2019s a silly anecdote from a lifetime ago, perhaps, but the point is that the best romance characters have much the same capacity, much the same grace, to see wonder in things even when they fall short of cornucopia or perfection.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn romance, endurance matters. And to bear the necessary suffering, as Apollo tells the other gods towards the end of Homer\u2019s Iliad,<\/em> \u201ca steadfast spirit have the Fates given unto men.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn2\" id=\"_ednref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles, Prince of Tyre, <\/em>based on the story of Apollonius within the medieval poet John Gower\u2019s Confessio Amantis <\/em>(and Lawrence Twine\u2019s prose version of that text, The Pattern of Painful Adventures<\/em>) and co-written most likely with the not exactly reputable George Wilkins (author of The Painful Adventures of Pericles<\/em>), is the earliest of Shakespeare\u2019s attempts in what we now call the romance genre. <a href=\"#_edn3\" id=\"_ednref3\">[3]<\/a> Despite its rough edges stylistically, the play turned out to be popular on the stage. Wilkins seems to have written the first two acts, and Shakespeare most or all of the final three acts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt is easy to tell when we arrive at Shakespeare\u2019s handiwork: the opening of Act 3, Scene 1 is magnificent in its dramatic staging and in the beauty of its language. One can hardly miss the Shakespearean energy of these lines spoken by Pericles during a storm at sea: \u201cThou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges, \/ Which wash both heaven and hell!\u201d (176, 3.1.1-2)<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis popular play appears to have begun performance around 1609, making it a later work in spite of its complicated textual history. <a href=\"#_edn4\" id=\"_ednref4\">[4]<\/a> It is, however, Shakespeare\u2019s first play in the romance genre, and its characters do not achieve the distinctiveness, for the most part, as those in the more well-rounded romance efforts do. All the same, with its dangerous sea ventures and wonderful turnarounds of fortune, it\u2019s a moving and dramatically effective play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act1\">ACT 1<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 1.0, Prologue (151-152, John Gower sets up the story: King Antiochus of Antioch lost his wife and is now in an incestuous relationship with his daughter; Gower tells us that Prince Pericles seeks to marry Antiochus\u2019s daughter.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe real John Gower (c. 1330-1408), whom Shakespeare and Wilkins have enlisted as their Prologue, was a medieval poet and contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, and the author of the Confessio Amantis, <\/em>one of the sources for Pericles.<\/em> For more on Gower\u2019s function in the play, see my comments on the Epilogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 1 (152-156, Pericles discerns the King\u2019s scandal but decides not to reveal its details in the court\u2019s presence; Antiochus offers him forty days of entertainment, but plots to kill him forthwith; Pericles, wise to this, flees first; Antiochus sends his agent Thaliart after Pericles.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Norton editors offer useful information about Shakespeare\u2019s interweaving of sources. He borrowed from John Gower himself, but also from medieval Christian accounts involving women condemned to brothels, as well as from ancient Greek romance. <a href=\"#_edn5\" id=\"_ednref5\">[5]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe editors also point out that Gower adds a certain medieval quality to the whole affair, thereby keeping us at some emotional distance from the unfolding story, at least for a while. In the end, the play turns out to be effective in terms of its emotional impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human,<\/em> Harold Bloom writes that only the brothel characters come across as authentically human\u2014Marina and Pericles himself, says Bloom, are narratival and moral abstractions. <a href=\"#_edn6\" id=\"_ednref6\">[6]<\/a> The term \u201cethical universe\u201d describes the world in which the characters in Pericles<\/em> live. That is, of course, a feature of many medieval narratives and dramas. The play Everyman<\/em>, for example, represents the protagonist as moving through just such a grayscape towards salvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt may be that Gower\u2019s reference to the medicinal qualities of his tale, his description of it as a \u201crestorative,\u201d fits well with the thesis that from time to time, value systems need to be restored, renewed. So often in Shakespeare, a society seems to have become a hollow place for hollow men and women, emptied of anything like truly animating moral values and passions. Discourse, language, will play a vital role in the restoration of Pericles to Marina, and in his recovery of Thaisa.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe action opens with Prince Pericles having just arrived in Antioch to take his chances with the King\u2019s guilty riddle, marriage to his beautiful daughter being the prize. Antiochus offers what sounds like the ancient version of a legal disclaimer regarding the trial Pericles is about to undergo. The young man is quite the romance hero at this point, all fired up to put his life on the line for supreme beauty and eros.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nAntiochus\u2019s arrogance shows already when he refers to his daughter as fit for \u201cthe embracements even of Jove himself\u201d (152, 1.1.8). Is he comparing himself to Zeus, i.e. to Jove, who married his own sister Hera? In any case, the young lady is characterized as a wondrous, perfect work of nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe girl is also likened to the Hesperides who lived in a garden filled with golden apples. Again, her beauty is supreme, but dangerous and forbidden. Almost everything either Pericles or Antiochus says about her bespeaks this forbidden quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe myth of the Hesperides is that they were tasked with guarding the golden apples in the gardens commemorating the marriage of Zeus and Hera. A dragon kept them from stealing the apples themselves, but one of the apples makes its way to the destructive scene of the Judgment of Paris. The goddess Strife made one golden apple the prize for judging which of three goddesses was the most beautiful: Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite. The outcome of that contest was the Trojan War. <a href=\"#_edn7\" id=\"_ednref7\">[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAntiochus\u2019s daughter is, according to him, quite irresistible. We may take as projection both this assertion and the attribution of haughtiness or arrogance to Pericles and his fellow princes who have sought her favors. Pericles professes to take Antiochus\u2019s warnings to heart, and declares himself \u201cready for the way of life or death\u201d (153, 1.1.55).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAntiochus seems angry that yet another young challenger has insisted upon competing with him for his daughter\u2019s love. In this regard, he is a typical Freudian jealous father. The daughter declares that of all the men who have sought marriage to her, she wishes most of all that he should succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps it is cynical to say it, but it is difficult to avoid thinking that Antiochus\u2019s daughter says this to all the applicants. There is something ritualistic about the pronouncement. She must be quite used to this rigmarole by now. Should we suppose that she is desperate to escape the clutches of her wicked father? It is impossible to say, but we are told by Gower that over time, habit or custom took over, and neither party to the sin felt the sting of conscience.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for the riddle itself, part of it leads obviously to the life-preserving answer, and part is confusing or muddled: we can see how Antiochus makes his daughter his wife and himself her husband, but how does he become her son and she his mother?<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps the Freudian framework will be of service here: in rejecting his daughter as a daughter, we might say, Antiochus deranges the temporal scheme of his relationship, and opens the door to the family secret that the male child desires his mother first of all. In this sense, every woman he sleeps with is his mother, just as every man the daughter sleeps with is symbolically her father. The glaringly obvious part of the riddle remains unspoken to the King\u2019s face.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn a sense, this is a power play on Antiochus\u2019s part: like a typical bully, he tosses out damning information and double-dares anyone to make it plain in his angry, forbidding presence. When bullies tell obvious lies to their hearers, they are really saying, \u201cI know I\u2019m lying and I know you know that, and you know that I know you know it, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere\u2019s a mise-en-ab\u00eeme quality to this operation. Since none of Pericles\u2019s predecessor knights answered the riddle correctly, we may assume that even if they did figure out the riddle, they blinked, just as Pericles himself now does. He knows the answer, but it\u2019s taboo to blurt it out. Either way, he\u2019s at grave risk of losing his life. That\u2019s the Freudian interdiction at work: a dark, unsettling truth that may be glimpsed in distorted or screened form, but never revealed in its simplicity. <a href=\"#_edn8\" id=\"_ednref8\">[8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nWith regard to the political-theory dimension that we find in many of Shakespeare\u2019s plays, Antiochus\u2019s sexual secret may parallel a secret regarding governance and authority, one not unrelated to the Platonic dilemma of rulership: he has guilty knowledge of human nature and of the realities involved in keeping control of his realm. He is daring subjects and foreigners alike to make this knowledge common, knowing that they won\u2019t reveal the taboo from sheer terror.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe riddle, then, aside from its incest dimension, involves the nature of political authority and the capacity to govern. Consider in this regard Aeschylus\u2019s carefully articulated renaming and relegation of the Furies to the Eumenides (well-abiding, well-attending, or perhaps even \u201cthey who bide their time\u201d). <a href=\"#_edn9\" id=\"_ednref9\">[9]<\/a> There is also the scandalous truth in Plato\u2019s Republic<\/em> that it is acceptable for rulers to lie to their subjects so long as the purpose is governance itself, the maintenance of order. <a href=\"#_edn10\" id=\"_ednref10\">[10]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles, upon solving the riddle, is immediately put off at the thought of romance with the King\u2019s daughter. He sees her as a \u201cglorious casket stored with ill\u201d (153, 1.1.78). Antiochus demands an answer, forbidding Pericles to touch his daughter at this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles addresses the King directly, and seems to say enough to anger him. Pericles shrinks back in fear from doing more than hinting that he knows the true secret the King hides. Essentially, he declares that he knows the truth, but will not make it manifest. It is bold enough that he should say, \u201cAnd, if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill?\u201d (154, 1.1.105) but he will not speak the word \u201cincest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe will not reveal the scandal itself, but his boldness consists in a species of counter-bullying whereby he makes the King understand that he knows the secret. Pericles himself is a ruler, and is at least in that the equal of Antiochus.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAntiochus doesn\u2019t quite know what to do with this bold foreigner, and offers him forty days of delay, time in which he might yet reveal the secret. But we know that he will not do that, and Antiochus surely has no intention of keeping his word. The King decides to temporize and dissemble by means of decorous entertainment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles sees through this false politeness, and decides to flee from Antioch. He characterizes what the daughter is doing as being like the action of a serpent, \u201can eater of her mother\u2019s flesh\u201d (155, 1.1.131), with the daughter cannibalizing and replacing the mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt may be, too, that in \u201creplacing\u201d the mother in this destructive way, the daughter thus abused destroys the mother-principle itself, and since this principle must function together with the patrilineal principal that guarantees the male sovereign\u2019s futurity and royal line, Antiochus\u2019s corruption of his daughter turns her into the means whereby his own political dynasty, his futurity, is destroyed. It is a justly humiliating way for an exalted man to prove that he is not immortal after all. <a href=\"#_edn11\" id=\"_ednref11\">[11]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nHow right Pericles is about Antiochus\u2019s devious intentions we see immediately when the King, like the stage-villain he is, tells us he plans to kill Pericles as soon as possible, and summons his chamberlain Thaliart. This man is so obedient to the King that he even plans to use a pistol to do the job\u2014an invention still far in the future. Evidently, George Wilkins, who seems to have written the first couple of the play\u2019s acts, shares Shakespeare\u2019s penchant for anachronisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs Thomas Love Peacock writes in his satirical essay \u201cThe Four Ages of Poetry,\u201d the Elizabethans \u201cmade no scruple of deposing a Roman Emperor by an Italian Count, and sending him off in the disguise of a French pilgrim to be shot with a blunderbuss by an English archer.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn12\" id=\"_ednref12\">[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 2 (156-158, Pericles is distressed over the threat to Tyre from his solving the riddle, showing political realism and compassion for his subjects; Pericles tells Helicanus what happened at Antioch, and receives earnest counsel: travel; the prince will sail for Tarsus, and Helicanus will rule in his stead.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom lines 1.2.1-33, Pericles explains how his anxiety about the threat posed by Antiochus grew upon him until at last it now seems he must do something to relieve it. Pericles understands the logic and realities of power: princes who fail to pass \u201cMachiavelli 101\u201d seldom last long in Shakespeare\u2019s works. Antiochus is quite capable of making good on his need to eliminate the one man who could reveal his guilty secret.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe prince also reveals to us that his seeming near-paranoia about the punitive reach of Antiochus is really about the welfare of his subjects, not a dread selfishly felt for his own safety alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles demands honesty from Helicanus, who disclaims all pretense of flattery. He tells Pericles that flattery is the last thing he needs, and implies that his disturbed state threatens both his own welfare and that of the kingdom. (157, 1.2.52) Pericles is impressed, and agrees with the sentiment expressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is an interesting contrast from the court of Antiochus, where Pericles offered himself counsel of a more Machiavellian nature, advice rendered entirely appropriate due to the quality of Antiochus\u2019s court, which was unhealthy, even deranged. Pericles\u2019s realm, by contrast, is ordered properly, with Pericles a true prince and Helicanus a loyal, capable subject who treats his prince with reverence and honesty.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHelicanus shifts his counsel from patience to travel. He will go to Tarsus, which we might observe with our editors is St. Paul\u2019s city of birth. While the play is set in pre-Christian times, the place probably still indicates to Shakespeare\u2019s audience that Pericles the traveler is about to undergo a spiritual transformation under the pressure of harsh experience. At this point, the reference works at a general level of significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 3 (158-159, Thaliart arrives at Tyre to kill Pericles, and reflects on his situation as a servant; Helicanus tells him Pericles has penitently gone traveling, thanks to Antiochus\u2019s disapproval of him; Helicanus and the lords offer to entertain Thaliart before he supposedly returns home.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis scene is very brief, but it introduces us to Thaliart, who seems like a capable rascal, even if this play offers him no hope of developing into an irrepressible Iago. Thaliart seems like a standard Machiavellian operator: he keeps his eyes and ears open, and rolls with the punches. At Tyre, he at least gets enough information to spin a narrative for Antiochus that might keep an enterprising servant out of trouble. Helicanus easily discerns why this chamberlain has really traveled to Tyre, but he keeps up the appearance of civility.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 4 (159-162, Governor Cleon vents his grief to Dionyza over the plight of once-opulent Tarsus; he greets Pericles\u2019s approach with fear, but his arrival with joy when the Prince explains that he has come to relieve Tarsus\u2019s hunger.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s worth noting with a look forward that Pericles, when met with such terrible misfortunes, falls silent, but here in the fourth scene, Cleon expresses to his wife Dionyza a strong faith in the therapeutic power of lamentation. Tarsus, it seems, was once a wealthy, prideful city that disdained the very thought of ever needing assistance. Its citizens, suggests Cleon, were more concerned with fashion and the competitive delights of what today we might call \u201cconspicuous consumption\u201d than with anything like mere utility and sufficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut those days are gone, and all he can do is hope the advancing fleet means the city no harm. Famine has made even him, Tarsus\u2019s governor, altogether desperate: \u201cbring they what they will, and what they can, \/ What need we fear?\u201d (161, 1.4.75-76).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles sets Cleon\u2019s mind at ease, telling him that Tarsus\u2019s suffering has been known for a while even as far as Tyre. This is no Greek assault on Troy, says Pericles, but a mission of mercy: he has brought grain to fortify the starving people of Tarsus, and asks only \u201cfor love, \/ And harborage\u201d (161, 1.4.98-99). Cleon offers both in effusively grateful terms, even calling down a curse on himself and his city if Pericles should ever find they\u2019ve broken their bond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act2\">ACT 2<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 2.0, Prologue (162-163, Gower relates that Pericles, called home to Tyre by Helicanus, has suffered a shipwreck, washing up on Pentapolis, where fishermen find him.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nGower promises a full-on morality tale, with Pericles sure to gain from the series of adversities he is about to undergo. On comes the shipwreck, and Pericles drifts until, says Gower, \u201cFortune, tired with doing bad, \/ Threw him ashore to give him glad\u201d (162, 2.0.37-38).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIndeed, this should remind us that Pericles\u2019s misfortunes throughout the play are not brought on by error or flaw\u2014they\u2019re due to bad luck, or chance, or perhaps Providence. The play is not suffused with the sensibility or ambience of classical tragedy: Pericles has done nothing wrong, has not made a mistake: what in Poetics <\/em>Aristotle calls hamart\u00eda <\/em><a href=\"#_edn13\" id=\"_ednref13\">[13]<\/a> is not in play in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.<\/em> The protagonist has simply run up against the chaotic powers of elemental humanity (Antiochus) and the natural world (the rough ocean with its pulverizing storms).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 1 (163-166, Pericles washes ashore, and accepts his mortality; he meets some fishermen as they describe their country, and they soon tell him of the upcoming tournament honoring the birthday of King Simonides\u2019s daughter, Thaisa; The fishermen have discovered Pericles\u2019 rusty armor, and he gets them to give it to him for the tournament.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nShipwrecks are metaphoric of the travails of life in the time between the ultimate passage from birth to death. The sea and its storms are an alien realm that threatens to cast all that\u2019s dear to humanity into the void. Until modern times, any kind of prolonged travel was apt to be treacherous and uncertain, with sea voyages probably inspiring the greatest fear of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Homer\u2019s Odyssey, <\/em>the narrator describes the coming on of night with the wonderful line, \u201cThe sun went down, and all the world\u2019s paths turned dark.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn14\" id=\"_ednref14\">[14]<\/a> In ancient times, even on land the dark reduces humanity to the level of raw nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHere in an Elizabethan-Jacobean play, the ocean takes on something like that leveling power, along with a sense of profound uncertainty and violence. The sea is a roadway for the realization of desire, but it is also a place of peril, a resetting track for past woes and felicities alike. It\u2019s the great equalizer in the play in that even princes are subject to its vicissitudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles humbly wishes for little but a dry death after his ordeal at sea, saying to the elements, \u201cI, as fits my nature, do obey you\u201d (163, 2.1.4). But soon, he\u2019s in the company of some comic fishermen as they serve one another a prose-helping of their views on relations between the realm\u2019s social classes, the sum of it being that, like the fishes, \u201cthe great ones eat up the little ones\u201d (163, 2.1.28-29).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles reveals himself to these rustics, and reduces himself to a key of begging suitable to his plight. He is received kindly, and the fishermen inform him of the upcoming tournament whereby a skillful and fortunate knight at arms will win the hand of Thaisa, daughter of the virtuous King Simonides, whose \u201cpeaceable reign and good government\u201d (165, 2.1.100) the First Fisherman praises.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen a rusty suit of armor is spied in the nets, Pericles hails its appearance since, he informs the fishermen, it was given to him by his father, and it is such a precious artifact to him that it all but banishes the shipwreck and other losses from his mind. The fishermen gladly turn the armor over to Pericles, and even agree to make him a garment to wear underneath it. They hope to be gainers along with him should he win, but their deed is generous in any case.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 2 (166-168, Pericles reaches the court of King Simonides of Pentapolis and his daughter Thaisa, the antidotes to Antiochus and his ruined daughter; the five knights present their shield-mottos in chivalric sequence, and Pericles, lowly attired and professing only his dependence on Thaisa, wins the joust.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn this scene, Simonides and his daughter Thaisa are introduced to us, while Pericles is introduced as the last of a series of knights seeking the hand of Thaisa. What we begin to see is an appropriate courtly spectacle, and what seems to be a healthy relationship between a father and his daughter. This is not a court dominated by secrecy and intrigue. Whatever dark Freudian jealousy may lie within King Simonides is kept firmly where it belongs: beneath the level of consciousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEach seeker marches forth on his horse to display his emblem in hopes of success. The King and his daughter will judge the contest partly on the basis of each man\u2019s ingenuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe first knight, a Spartan, presents as his Latin motto, \u201cYour light is life to me.\u201d The second knight is a Macedonian prince, and his motto translated from the Italian is \u201cMore by sweetness than by force.\u201d The third knight comes from Antioch, and his device is \u201cThe summit of glory has led me on.\u201d Then comes a knight from Athens, whose device is, \u201cWho nourishes me extinguishes me.\u201d The fifth knight hails from Corinth, and his motto is \u201cThus is faith to be regarded.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles is the final contestant, and his appearance is hardly promising, what with his rusty suit of armor and lack of assistants in proffering his device. All he has is \u201cA withered branch that\u2019s only green at top,\u201d and his motto is \u201cIn hac spe vivo<\/em>,\u201d or in English, \u201cIn this hope I live\u201d (167, 2.2.43).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere is nothing inappropriate about the display and motto of the first five gentlemen, but Pericles is the only one among them whose situation really matches his motto and self-presentation. All he has going for him is hope. He lacks resources at present, and is dependent for his future upon the outcome of the contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWith regard to the other five men, the mottos they present are standard and conventional. None of these men are impoverished and desperate, but rather each is wealthy and privileged. The stakes are not the same for them as they are for Pericles. There is in Pericles\u2019s case, that is, a perfect adequation between symbol and reality, between situation and display.<\/p>\n\n\n\nKing Simonides picks up on this fact, and gently rebukes the three fashionable lords with whom he is holding converse, saying, \u201cOpinion\u2019s but a fool that makes us scan \/ The outward habit for the inward man\u201d (168, 2.2.54-55). They were looking for a precise match between the knight\u2019s attire and his personal worth, but the King sees the more important \u201cmatch\u201d that lies beyond such facile observation. Pericles goes on to win the contest, thus ending the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 3 (168-171, King Simonides and Thaisa host a banquet for the knights, above all for the champion Pericles; a courtly dance ensues, with asides carrying much of the dialogue.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nTogether, Simonides and Thaisa constitute a guest-host antidote to Antiochus and his ruined daughter. Leaving Freudian readings aside for the time being, we see that everything they do is gracious and appropriately decorous rather than garish, narcissistic, or lewd. The knights are equally gracious in their appreciation of the seemingly lowly Pericles.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles himself shows a great deal of humility in this scene, and a certain amount of melancholy as well. It\u2019s as if he can\u2019t help being a bit overshadowed by his previous experience with a kingly father and daughter back in Antioch. In beholding Simonides, he is prompted to thoughts of his own departed father, whom he describes in terms almost reminiscent of Hamlet\u2019s high praise of his father.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat kind of protagonist succeeds in a romance of any sort? We might expect that the protagonist would need a combination of energy, boldness, and openness to experience (an ancient value found in heroes such as Odysseus). There are times when something like this might be true. But Pericles, who has already shown himself capable of audacity as when he pursued the daughter of Antiochus, shows a Christian-like degree of humility and patience: \u201cI see that Time\u2019s the king of men: \/ He\u2019s both their parent and he is their grave, \/ And gives them what he will, not what they crave\u201d (169, 2.3.44-46).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Shakespeare\u2019s romance plays, this quality of admitting one\u2019s limitations seems to be as important as any other we could name.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBoth Simonides and Thaisa show themselves to be honest characters, but the conversation between them reveals a certain complexity in their decorous relationship. As the asides indicate, the main characters in this scene are capable of keeping their own counsel even as they engage in fit conversation with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSimonides seems to be already trying to temper what he must suppose is the passion beginning to stir in Thaisa for Pericles, while Thaisa herself shows a maiden\u2019s regard for her chaste reputation. When the King tells Thaisa to bring Pericles a bowl of wine, she responds hesitantly: \u201cit befits not me \/ Unto a stranger knight to be so bold\u201d (169, 2.3.64-65). Yet to herself, she admits that she is very pleased with Pericles.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThese asides are by no means dishonest; they are instead signs of a need to shape appropriate social and romantic outcomes, and to avoid some of the pitfalls of courtship. This is part of the work of society, of civilization itself: honesty does not always require full disclosure of one\u2019s entire intent. Characters who show themselves to be too blunt with their words (think Cordelia and Kent in King Lear<\/em>) often run into trouble, even though their moral character may be spotless and their intentions good.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHaving been asked in classical fashion his birth and purpose here in Pentapolis, Pericles casts himself as quite the knight errant, a man \u201clooking for adventures in the world\u201d (170, 2.3.80), even though that description doesn\u2019t fit his present circumstances well\u2014it wasn\u2019t pure wanderlust that drove him from Tyre to Tarsus and thence to Pentapolis. He was fleeing a political enemy, bringing aid to Tarsus, and then, as he admits to the King, barely surviving a disaster at sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe King significantly offers gifts and personal friendship to Pericles, then orders up a dance for the still-armored knights. He teases Pericles and Thaisa into pairing off on the dance floor, thereby continuing the decorous pursuit of Thaisa that the now-completed joust began. At last the dancing is done and the hour is late, so it\u2019s time for everyone to take their rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 4 (171-172, back in Tyre, Helicanus reports to Aeschines that Antiochus and his daughter have been struck by lightning in their chariot; the lords of Pericles\u2019s kingdom are concerned about his absence, and Helicanus puts off for a year their request that he accept the top position; the lords agree to seek out the absent Prince.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe scandal of Antiochus and his daughter is \u201cilluminated\u201d in a terrible way, at least for those in the know already, brought to light by a bolt of lightning that strikes their carriage one day, out of the blue. The foulness of the bodies, says Helicanus, so offended the common people that no one would give the two burial.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere are usually Machiavellian concerns in any Shakespeare play with a political dimension. The lords in Pericles\u2019s realm are beginning to worry that the prince came to a bad end in his oceangoing travels\u2014hardly an unreasonable supposition. The lords know that power hates a vacuum, and an absent prince is bad for them and the whole realm, conducive as such absence is to instability and the threat of foreign invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHelicanus is able to put them off for twelve months, but he understands that their patience is not infinite: it\u2019s all he can do to prevent them from anointing him ruler, which he swore to Pericles he would never allow to happen. But in the end, the lords agree to go in search of their absent leader. The voyage should keep their energies occupied for a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 5 (172-174, King Simonides tells the knights that Thaisa has declared she will remain a virgin for another year, so they depart; the King approves of her actual decision to wed Pericles, but he dissembles his approval of the match; just as quickly, however, he brings them together as partners.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nKing Simonides briefly dissembles his intention to allow the match between his daughter Thaisa and Pericles, putting on a stormy show for them and even threatening the life of Pericles, but with comical celerity he ends up revealing his true intentions that they should soon be wed.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe can connect this scene with Prospero\u2019s gruffness in The Tempest<\/em> towards young Prince Ferdinand of Naples when he takes an interest in the old duke\u2019s daughter, Miranda. <a href=\"#_edn15\" id=\"_ednref15\">[15]<\/a> For that matter, there was the comic menace of Egeus in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream <\/em>against his daughter, which Duke Theseus of Athens at first supported and then utterly disregarded.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere\u2019s probably some real paternal jealousy involved in the behavior of both Simonides and Prospero, but in truth, neither man is doing more than ensuring as best he can that his daughter doesn\u2019t wind up married to an unworthy suitor. There seems to be some idea that, as Lysander says in Midsummer,<\/em> true love should not run too<\/em> smoothly. <a href=\"#_edn16\" id=\"_ednref16\">[16]<\/a> Some obstacle, even if it be a contrived one, seems necessary. In the course of this manufactured trial, Pericles shows courage over and above his alarm, while Thaisa stands up admirably towards Simonides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act3\">ACT 3<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 3.0, Prologue (174-175, Gower says Pericles\u2019s bride is expecting; report comes to Pentapolis that Antiochus and his daughter are dead and that in Tyre, Helicanus is being pressured to accept the crown; Pericles sails for home with Thaisa, but at the halfway point, his ship runs into a storm.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nJohn Gower offers a dumb show and a bit of explanation. Thaisa is expecting a child, and Pericles receives from the King a message that Antiochus and his daughter are dead and that the lords back in Tyre are pressuring Helicanus to accept the crown. So the prince decides he must voyage back to Tyre and take care of business. Thaisa insists upon traveling with her husband, and brings along her nurse Lychorida. Pericles soon faces his second storm at sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 1 (176-177, Thaisa appears to die in childbirth during a storm when Pericles\u2019s ship is halfway to Tyre; the prince names his infant daughter Marina to mark the circumstances of her birth; Pericles grieves for Thaisa, but, at the sailors\u2019 insistence, commits her body to the sea in a pitch-coated coffin.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 1 reveals Shakespeare\u2019s authentic voice through the cry of storm-tossed Pericles: \u201cThou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges \/ Which wash both heaven and hell!\u201d (176, 3.1.1-2). This passage, along with Lychorida\u2019s heartrending utterance, \u201cTake in your arms this piece \/ Of your dead queen\u201d (176, 3.1.17-18) is unmistakably Shakespearean.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis whole scene is dramatically superb, and what\u2019s more, it may lead us to broaden Coleridge\u2019s claim that Shakespeare\u2019s characters are most universal when they are most fully individuated. Pericles is not the most sharply drawn or particularized of Shakespeare\u2019s protagonists, but at this point his grief and tenderness seem like the universal responses of anyone who has ever lost someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe even challenges the gods on a point of honor: they take back the good things they give, which is something even lowly humans usually scorn to do. The lines \u201cEven at the first, thy loss is more than can \/ Thy portage quit, with all thou canst find here\u201d (176, 3.1.35-36), offer an observation similar to King Lear\u2019s complaint that he is \u201ca man \/ More sinned against than sinning.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn17\" id=\"_ednref17\">[17]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles is constrained to deliver up the seemingly dead Thaisa to the stormy sea in a pitch-caulked coffin to satisfy the sailors\u2019 superstition, but his acquiescence is by no means a mark of weakness. He delivers striking elegiac remarks directly to his departed wife: \u201cthe belching whale, \/ And humming water must o\u2019erwhelm thy corpse, \/ Lying with simple shells\u201d (177, 3.1.61-63).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter Act 3, Scene 3, in which he speaks briefly to Cleon in handing over the infant Marina to that ruler\u2019s care, we will not hear from Pericles again until much later in the play.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 2 (178-180, Pericles sails for Tarsus because his newborn child won\u2019t make it to Tyre in such rough weather; Thaisa\u2019s still-sealed coffin washes ashore in Ephesus, where the physician Cerimon revives her.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe early-morning conversation between Cerimon and a couple of visiting gentlemen tells us a good deal about the physician: \u201cI held it ever, \/ Virtue and cunning were endowments greater \/ Than nobleness and riches\u201d (178, 3.2.24-26). Cerimon is a true scientist, adept in \u201cthe disturbances \/ That nature works\u201d (178-79, 3.2.35-36) and in the properties of the natural substances that can remedy them, and he doesn\u2019t much care for honor or suchlike baubles.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is in accord with the principles of the ancient Hippocratic Oath. <a href=\"#_edn18\" id=\"_ednref18\">[18]<\/a> While we are accustomed to more or less dismissing the assumptions and practices of ancient medicine, the profession was more respected then than we might suppose. Ephesus, where Cerimon practices, was a Greek city along the Ionian coast in what is now Turkey, and among the Greeks, medicine had mainly broken free from domination by ritual and religion. <a href=\"#_edn19\" id=\"_ednref19\">[19]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt seems reasonably clear that Thaisa is not actually brought back from death, but is rather brought back from a hypothermic state of unconsciousness. How else are we to take, for example, \u201cThey were too rough \/ That threw her in the sea\u201d (180, 3.2.77-78)? Or, \u201cShe hath not been entranced \/ Above five hours\u201d (180, 3.2.91-92)? <a href=\"#_edn20\" id=\"_ednref20\">[20]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe emphasis on how tightly caulked the coffin is with pitch lends itself to a naturalistic interpretation. Thaisa is alive by the end of Act 3, Scene 2: she has most likely had what we would call a near-death experience. When we consider how limited the ordinary ancient physician\u2019s means were to cure even conditions that pose few problems for modern doctors, Cerimon\u2019s wise restoration of Thaisa from severe difficulty in childbirth and exposure at sea seems all but miraculous, and the play\u2019s general fairy-tale ambience encourages a feeling of wonder in such cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 3 (181, Pericles reaches Tarsus and entrusts Cleon and Dionyza with the princely care and education of Marina; Pericles vows to the goddess Diana that he will not cut his hair until he knows Marina is married.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles gives Marina, named such, as he says, because of her birth at sea, to the Governor of Tarsus, Cleon, and his wife, Dionyza, asking that she be brought up in a manner befitting her true station as a princess. Cleon eagerly approves, and Dionyza promises that Marina will be as dear to her as her own daughter. Nurse Lychorida will stay behind to help raise the child. The pair see Pericles off to the harbor, where he will begin his journey back to Tyre, which threatens to break out into political discord in his absence.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 4 (182, Cerimon asks Thaisa if she remembers anything from her ordeal, but she can recall only being about to deliver a child; she now desires to join the nearest vestal order since she believes she will never see Pericles again; Cerimon says he knows the place.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn this short scene, Cerimon asks Thaisa what she remembers from her ordeal. She knows she was on board a ship and that she was about to deliver a child, but that is all. She recognizes her husband\u2019s handwriting on the note left within the coffin along with some jewels. Thaisa doesn\u2019t expect ever to see her husband again, so she immediately decides it will be best to sign on with the nearest vestal order. Conveniently, Cerimon has a niece at the Temple of Diana in Ephesus who can serve as her attendant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act4\">ACT 4<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 4.0, Prologue (182-183, after our passage through time with Gower, Marina is now a young woman of fourteen years; Gower says that Dionyza, envious of Marina for stealing praise from her daughter Philoten, plots to kill her, with the servant Leonine as the instrument.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nJohn Gower again sets the scene for us, this time at Ephesus, where Dionyza is about to betray Pericles by plotting to kill his daughter Marina. The deed takes shape out of Dionyza\u2019s \u201crare\u201d (i.e., intense) envy for the gifts that allow the girl to outshine her daughter Philoten.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 1 (183-185, Marina grieves at Lychorida\u2019s grave, and Dionyza urges her to take a seaside walk with the servant Leonine; just as he is about to kill her at Dionyza\u2019s prior bidding, pirates abduct her.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDionyza is envious, as Gower already told us in his prologue, because Marina wins all the praise that would otherwise go to daughter Philoten. Using the excuse that Marina is discomposed due to her grief over the death of Lychorida, Dionyza sets her servant Leonine the task of cutting the young woman down while they are walking along the shore. She pleads with him to no avail. But just then, pirates conveniently turn up and relieve Leonine of the need to kill Marina. Ironically saving her life, they abduct her.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for Leonine, he is as villainous as one can imagine, in spite of his seemingly soft manners: he lurks in the background, on the off chance that the pirates \u201cwill but please themselves\u201d (186, 4.1.98) by raping Marina rather than killing her, in which case he will still have to carry out his murderous commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 2 (186-189, The pirates who abducted Marina sell her to brothel-keepers Pander, Bawd, and Bolt in Mytilene on Lesbos; much banter ensues between the brothel-keepers, but Marina stands upon her virgin honor even as they prepare to talk up her chaste condition with prospective customers.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Norton editors point out that this scene has a distinctly \u201cEnglish feel,\u201d <a href=\"#_edn21\" id=\"_ednref21\">[21]<\/a> and critic Harold Bloom is probably right to suggest in Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human<\/em> that Pander, Bawd, and Bolt are the liveliest and most carefully individuated characters in Pericles, Prince of Tyre. <\/em><a href=\"#_edn22\" id=\"_ednref22\">[22]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nIndeed, they hardly come across as ancient denizens of Tarsus\u2014they seem like a quintessential London pimp, madam, and scout. Shakespeare\u2019s Mistress Quickly from the Henry IV<\/em> plays comes to mind, as does Mistress Overdone in Measure for Measure.<\/em> In any case, Pander and Bawd discuss their trade frankly, lamenting that venereal disease is continually damaging and diminishing their stable of prostitutes and their customers alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIronically, their business entails hawking and vending innocence or chastity itself because that\u2014and not simply sexual license\u2014is what sells. Young virgins appeal to the clientele, of course, in part because they\u2019re unlikely to cast the user straight into the maw of syphilis or some other dread STI, but also because so many men apparently fantasize about recovering their own youth and sexual potency by deflowering a young maiden.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn this regard, Bolt is quite important to Pander and Bawd\u2019s success\u2014he operates as a public relations professional, a Jacobean-style \u201cmad man\u201d (after the phrase coined by Madison Avenue advertising agents to describe themselves) <a href=\"#_edn23\" id=\"_ednref23\">[23]<\/a> whose task it is to sell an image of beauty combined with flawless virtue.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe can say \u201cimage\u201d because, as we can see, Bolt has no intention of allowing Marina to begin her duties in the chaste condition he\u2019s talking up. After receiving his advertising instructions from Bawd (187, 4.2.52-56), he insinuates that he wants to break in Marina as the newest member of team prostitute: since Bolt, as he puts it, has \u201cbargained for the joint\u201d (188, 4.2.119), Bawd offers first use to him: \u201cThou mayst cut a morsel off the spit\u201d (188, 4.2.120).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBawd has her own job to do in convincing the impossibly virtuous Marina that the attractions of her new role in life merit the inconveniences: she tries to sell the young woman on an image of cosmopolitanism and sexual variety. Bawd promises her, \u201cyou shall live in pleasure\u201d (187, 4.2.70) and \u201cyou shall have the difference of all \/ complexions\u201d (187, 4.2.73-74). That is, she will experience sex with men from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNone of this claptrap impresses Marina, who peppers the scene with verbal indications that she is more than a match for her disreputable keepers, so Bawd & Co. have their work cut out for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn truth, to judge from the early part of Pander and Bawd\u2019s conversation, the business has begun to lose its appeal for them; or at least it has for Pander, who worries about its disreputable standing with gods and men. Bawd pitches in that she has raised eleven illegitimate children born to customers, and Pander reminds her that she has recycled them into the trade as prostitutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is no \u201ccalling\u201d (186, 4.2.35), no proper religious mystery sect, nothing hale or holy, as was sometimes held to be the case with ancient temple prostitutes. It\u2019s just commerce, like almost everything else, only dirtier and (we can recognize, even if Pander, Bawd and Bolt may not) even dehumanizing. As Shakespeare, his probable collaborator George Wilkins, and his audience must have known, it wasn\u2019t as if humane care and consideration awaited women trapped in this terrible cycle of abuse and then cast out when disease stripped them of their ability to contribute. <a href=\"#_edn24\" id=\"_ednref24\">[24]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 3 (189-190, Cleon of Tarsus deplores what Dionyza believes\u2014thanks to Leonine\u2019s false report\u2014she has done to Marina; Dionyza defends her wicked plot; reluctantly, Cleon goes along with Dionyza\u2019s cover-up.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDionyza is a bit like a lesser Lady Macbeth, goading her husband into complicity with her depraved attempt to have Marina killed. As she says to him, \u201cI do shame \/ To think of what a noble strain you are, \/ And of how coward a spirit\u201d (189, 4.3.22-24). Just as Antiochus and his daughter\u2019s lives were shaped and cut short by a guilty secret, envious Dionyza and cowardly Cleon will have to live with the knowledge of what she has done.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCleon is what we might call an \u201caccessory after the fact\u201d in modern legal terms, but perhaps his biggest sin is how unheroic and ordinary, even petty, he seems when placed next to characters such as Pericles, Thaisa, Marina, Cerimon, and Simonides, or even the honest fishermen of Pentapolis.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 4.0, Prologue (190-191, Gower says Pericles has sailed to Tarsus to see what has become of Marina, whom he hasn\u2019t seen since her infancy; Pericles is devastated at Marina\u2019s supposed death; in Gower\u2019s telling, he seems to abandon his faith in the gods and yield his course to fate.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis scene consisting only of Gower\u2019s narration shows Shakespeare acknowledging the need to do psychological and emotional justice to his characters. The main characters in Pericles <\/em>have been described by some critics as overly universalized and insufficiently particularized, but consider a modern television series like Star Trek. <\/em>So many traumatic things happen to most of the characters in the space of one or two episodes that if one-tenth of it happened to real-life individuals, they would doubtless slip into a permanent catatonic stupor. But the interstellar show must go on, so they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy contrast, when Pericles thinks he\u2019s lost Marina on top of his loss of Thaisa, he goes numb and becomes listless, vacant. The prince (rather like King Lear at his nadir) really does slip into a profound depression. There\u2019s a great deal of psychological realism in Shakespeare: he isn\u2019t afraid to dramatize a character\u2019s emotional and spiritual breakdown. Pericles apparently becomes unreachable to everyone around him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 5 (191, Two gentlemen, amazed at their turn towards virtuous living after their encounters with Marina, head for church.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nTwo gentlemen, now former clients of Pander and Bawd, share their astonishment at the transformation wrought in them by the angelic Marina.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 6 (192-196, Pander and Bawd try to win Marina to the role of a prostitute, and Bolt tries to ravish her, but she overcomes them with her virtue and conquers Lysimachus, the Governor of Mytilene, too.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe three brothel-keepers are at their wits\u2019 end as to how they can overcome Marina\u2019s virtue and chastity. The Bawd says, \u201cshe would make a puritan of the \/ devil if he should cheapen a kiss of her\u201d (192, 4.6.8-9). By this point, that scarcely seems an exaggeration.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThings only get worse for them in this scene since Marina resists not only the brothel-keepers but the governor of Mytilene, Lysimachus. Well, she does more than simply resist\u2014she transforms them and gets them working on her side. Marina has the poise of a biblical figure such as Daniel in the lions\u2019 den, preserved from harm by his faith in God. <a href=\"#_edn25\" id=\"_ednref25\">[25]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat we are getting in the present play, then, seems like the comic version of Christian ordeal and captivity narratives. Marina easily fends off Bolt\u2019s attempt to rape her, and her magic works wonderfully on the rakish Lysimachus, who gives her plenty of gold and promises that if she hears from him again, \u201cit shall be for thy good\u201d (194, 4.6.105).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt the end of the scene, Bolt himself dutifully scampers off to find Marina an honest position of just the sort she wants: one where she can make herself useful by teaching various arts. She tells him that she can \u201csing, weave, sew, and dance\u201d (195, 4.6.168), among other honorable talents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act5\">ACT 5<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 5.0, Prologue (196, While Marina makes money for her keepers by honest means, says Gower, Pericles\u2019 black-trimmed ship has been driven by ocean winds to Mytilene\u2019s harbor during a holiday dedicated to Neptune; Lysimachus goes to meet Pericles on the latter\u2019s richly trimmed ship.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWe have heard nothing directly from Pericles for some time now, and Gower prepares us for our meeting with him again in the next scene simply by calling him \u201cheavy\u201d or sad (5.0.22), which, as we will soon find out, is quite an understatement. The restless ocean, the pontos atr\u00fagetos <\/em>or trackless sea of Homeric lore, <a href=\"#_edn26\" id=\"_ednref26\">[26]<\/a> has allowed one further twist in Pericles\u2019 strange odyssey.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOn the ocean, Pericles has already suffered one outright shipwreck and one costly near-shipwreck, along with a few smooth conveyances. Now he is swept into Mytilene\u2019s harbor at the mercy of the winds, a passive, worn-out traveler rather than a chivalric knight or lord of heroic cast.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 1 (196-203, Lysimachus goes to see Pericles aboard his ship, and orders that Marina be brought aboard to heal him with her music; Pericles miraculously recovers his lost Marina, who, in guiding him towards recognition of the truth, fully realizes her own identity; Pericles dreams of the goddess Diana, who tells him that he must go to her temple in Ephesus.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is perhaps the best time to remind ourselves that while the name Marina means \u201cof the sea\u201d (as Pericles said when he named his infant daughter during an ocean storm), as a common noun it also means \u201charbor\u201d: a safe place at which to moor one\u2019s ship. This second meaning is significant here in the play\u2019s longest and most important scene. Marina serves as an inspired guide for Pericles, leading him back from storm and lassitude to a firm grounding in his true nature and identity. She is the harbor for his life\u2019s voyage, as symbolized by many ocean crossings and hardships throughout the play.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the tragedies, the bedrock of human nature\u2014the \u201cthing itself\u201d in King Lear\u2019s phrase, or at least as close as we can get to it\u2014is someplace one doesn\u2019t want to be for long, if at all. Getting there only leads to disaster, along with any insight one may gain. In the present romance play, the Prince of Tyre has been exiled into the void, and it seems as if the experience leads to something very like madness, not of the howling kind but instead a period of silence and nearly complete loss of self. That is Pericles\u2019s condition as his ship enters Mytilene\u2019s harbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt this point, Shakespeare dramatizes a miraculous recovery that seems all the more powerful because of Gower\u2019s and Helicanus\u2019s narrations of the emotional devastation Pericles has suffered. This formulation differs from what we find in Shakespeare\u2019s comedies, in which extreme loss is seldom more than gestured at. In comic plays, the threat can even border on the cartoonish\u2014think of Egeus in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream, <\/em>stormily threatening to have his daughter banished or even executed if she fails to heed his will in marriage matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor the present romance play, Shakespeare crafts an exquisitely moving recognition scene that depends on, but does not overemphasize, our knowledge of Pericles\u2019s genuine trauma and loss. Pericles was convinced that both his wife and daughter were dead, Thaisa for many years and Marina by very strong circumstantial evidence. Pericles has felt these supposed losses deeply and over considerable time, and now at least his loss of Marina is about to be made whole. How, then, does Shakespeare manage the revelation?<\/p>\n\n\n\nLysimachus takes a barge to satisfy his curiosity as to who the traveler at harbor in Mytilene might be. Helicanus informs the governor that Pericles \u201cfor this three months hath not spoken \/ To anyone, nor taken sustenance \/ But to prorogue his grief\u201d (197, 5.1.20-22). Lysimachus has no luck in getting the silent sufferer to speak, but a lord reminds him that there\u2019s \u201ca maid in Mytilene\u201d (197, 5.1.35) who might be able to wring some words from Pericles.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJust when Lysimachus is about to hear Helicanus\u2019s tale about the prince\u2019s sorrows, the lord re-enters with Marina and her maids. The governor praises Marina, admitting that if only she were nobly born, she should be his choice for a wife. The young woman\u2019s one condition for her attempt is that only she and her maids should be in the room with the sufferer.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSong and instrumental music have no effect on Pericles, so Marina says, \u201cHail, sir! My lord, lend ear!\u201d (198, 5.1.74). The promise of discourse has some effect, and Pericles blurts out a startled \u201cHmm? Ha!\u201d and gives Marina a push backwards. Is there a premonition or a hint of recognition in these reactions? Soon, something more in the one-way conversation catches the Prince\u2019s attention, and he blurts out, \u201cMy fortunes, parentage\u2014good parentage, \/ To equal mine\u2026\u201d (199, 5.1.74, 88-89). Marina has dared to place her own sufferings, and possibly even her lineage, on a par with those of the princely stranger. That\u2019s mainly what appears to have sparked his attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles comes nearer to his vital recognition soon thereafter, when Marina (whose name he still does not know), responding to a question about her nationality, offers the strange response that she is not \u201cof any shores\u201d (199, 5.1.94). But so far, all he can prove to himself is a likeness to the lost Thaisa in stature, countenance, voice, and stride. Might not his daughter, had she survived, have been just like this maid in all ways? In any event, he tells her, \u201cthou lookest \/ Like one I loved indeed\u201d (199, 5.1.115-16).<\/p>\n\n\n\nMuch has been made of this passage as supposedly implying or reinvoking the possibility of incest between the stricken father and his daughter, but the main point seems to be that no such thing is in the offing: this father and this child are nothing like King Antiochus and his much-abused daughter. <a href=\"#_edn27\" id=\"_ednref27\">[27]<\/a> The selfish and destructive relation between the former pair will not be replicated here, but will instead be replaced by a relationship grounded in genuine, respectful, and chaste love: what in biblical times would be called charitas <\/em>or charity, not cupiditas <\/em>or covetousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNow Pericles is truly on fire to know this young maid\u2019s parentage, even if she fears she\u2019ll be branded a liar for her efforts in explaining it to him. He learns at 200, 5.1.133 that her name is Marina, and a little below that she is the daughter of a king, and so was her mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPericles\u2019s responses to all this seem uncomfortably close to the skepticism that Marina fears will be her reward for telling her tale, but Pericles\u2014daring to believe only that he must be experiencing \u201cthe rarest dream\u201d (200, 5.1.151)\u2014convinces her to continue with her astonishing relation, and it all comes to light: how she was left in Tarsus and narrowly escaped death by Dionyza\u2019s plot (though she doesn\u2019t know that Cleon was an accessory after the fact), and traveled from thence by express pirate delivery to Mytilene.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMarina leaves out the part of the story that involves a brothel, presumably so as not to distress Pericles still more. Her final pronouncement to him is, \u201cI am the daughter to King Pericles\u2026\u201d (201, 5.1.169).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is Pericles to do with all this information? He first asks Helicanus for counsel, but the wise counselor simply doesn\u2019t know, and neither does Lysimachus because Marina never revealed her parentage to him, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt this point, Pericles implores Helicanus to strike him physically into his senses: \u201cput me to present pain, \/ Lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me \/ O\u2019erbear the shores of my mortality \/ And drown me with their sweetness\u201d (201, 5.1.181-84).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThese are not only beautiful lines, but revealing ones, too: it seems fitting that the consummate expression of joy from a man who has suffered so much in and because of the sea should involve a metaphor involving the great movements of the ocean itself. Pericles is transformed by this strange knowledge, even reborn, as we can understand from his joyful address to Marina as \u201cThou that begett\u2019st him that did thee beget\u201d (201, 5.1.185).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe last jewel in the revelatory crown is the name of Marina\u2019s mother. At the sound of \u201cThaisa was my mother\u201d (201, 5.1.200), the truth for Pericles is undeniable and complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe end of the first scene in Act 5 is taken up with Pericles\u2019s rapt hearing of the Music of the Spheres, which flows from the celestial harmony ordinarily imperceptible to mortal humankind. <a href=\"#_edn28\" id=\"_ednref28\">[28]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAt last, an exhausted Pericles sleeps, only to receive a vision of the chaste goddess Diana. Her command is that Pericles should go to her temple at Ephesus and sacrifice, and when the priestesses are nearby, he is to give an accurate and moving recounting of his sorrowful experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe course is set for Ephesus, Lysimachus\u2019s inevitable suit for Marina\u2019s hand is granted even before he can get the words out of his mouth, and all that\u2019s left is the carrying-out of Diana\u2019s instructions for Pericles\u2019s happiness to be complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 2.0 Prologue (203, Gower asks his hearers to imagine the celebration at Mytilene and skip forward to the final scene at Ephesus.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nJohn Gower again exercises his magical ability to whisk us through time and space to where the characters, and we, need to be. More about Gower follows in my comments on the play\u2019s Epilogue. Lysimachus\u2019s wedding to Marina is still pending since the goddess Diana\u2019s commands must be carried out first.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 3 (203-205, Pericles obeys his dream vision of Diana and travels to the goddess\u2019s temple at Ephesus; here, Pericles recounts his losses as ordered, and Thaisa faints; full and mutual recognitions follow all around; Pericles and Thaisa will rule in Pentapolis, while Lysimachus and Marina will rule in Tyre.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile Pericles recounts his tale as ordered by the goddess Diana, Thaisa faints because she recognizes her husband by his voice and appearance. Cerimon steps up to tell Pericles that this priestess is the very Thaisa of whom he has just spoken. The pair embrace joyfully, and Marina, kneeling, is revealed to Thaisa as her now-grown daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe transfiguration of Pericles\u2019s attitude to pure joy is evident, and remarkably unalloyed for a romance play: he exclaims to the gods, \u201cyour present kindness \/ Makes my past miseries sports (204, 5.3.40-41), and tells Thaisa, \u201cOh, come, be buried \/ A second time within these arms\u201d (204, 5.3.43-44). This seems like a total, if temporary, overcoming of the dreaded power of death, not a bittersweet utterance of the sort we will see in Shakespeare\u2019s subsequent romance plays.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHelicanus is duly recognized as a loyal substitute for Pericles, too, and Cerimon is honored for the excellent role he played in reviving Thaisa. Since King Simonides has recently died, Pericles decides that he and Thaisa will be sovereigns in Pentapolis, while Lysimachus and Marina will travel to Tyre and establish themselves on the throne there.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWith this conclusion, we are as far as we can get from the selfish, wicked liaison of Antiochus and his daughter at the play\u2019s outset. The frame story of Gower\u2019s Confessio Amantis <\/em>entails a long recounting of the sins committed by the protagonist Amans (the lover) against Venus, or love itself. <a href=\"#_edn29\" id=\"_ednref29\">[29]<\/a> It makes sense, therefore, that Shakespeare and Wilkins should shape Pericles, Prince of Tyre <\/em>as a story that moves its protagonist from his initially showy, chivalric pursuit of a terribly flawed companion to the holy, divinely sanctified love of a good woman and his beloved daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Tyre and Pentapolis, two happy, generous, and public-spirited couples will serve at the helm of their respective governments. This is Shakespeare\u2019s basic comedic framework, and it lends the play\u2019s conclusion a sunnier disposition than we might have thought possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEpilogue (205-206, Gower caps off the play by reminding us of his own medieval moral framework, which has seen the wicked punished and the good richly rewarded.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nGower points to the distribution of rewards and punishments by the play\u2019s end: the two happy couples, Helicanus, and Cerimon are all recognized as embodiments or emblems of their virtues, with Helicanus praised as \u201cA figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty\u201d (Epilogue 8), and Cerimon for his \u201clearn\u00e8d charity\u201d (10). Antiochus and his daughter, of course, died horribly, and so did Cleon and Dionyza for her wicked attempt on Marina\u2019s life and his participation after the attempt.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGower\u2019s final prayer is that the joy that reigns supreme at the play\u2019s end should transfer itself to the audience. The last couplet runs \u201cSo, on your patience evermore attending, \/ New joy wait on you. Here our play has ending\u201d (Epilogue 17-18). There is at least a hint here that as the audience has indulged the theater company\u2019s need for its patience, part of the \u201cnew joy\u201d for the audience might consist in an opportunity for them to behold yet another such play as Pericles, Prince of Tyre.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nFinally, by his ghostly performance throughout Pericles, Prince of Tyre, <\/em>John Gower joins the company of Shakespeare\u2019s famous prologue- and epilogue-speakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAmong others, we may recall the Prologue of Henry the Fifth <\/em>with his stirring cry, \u201cO for a Muse of fire that would ascend \/ The brightest heaven of invention\u201d; <a href=\"#_edn30\" id=\"_ednref30\">[30]<\/a> the concluding song of Feste the wise clown in Twelfth Night<\/em>: \u201cWe\u2019ll strive to please you every day\u201d; <a href=\"#_edn31\" id=\"_ednref31\">[31]<\/a> Prospero in The Tempest <\/em>with his plea, \u201cGentle breath of yours my sails \/ Must fill or else my project fails, \/ Which was to please\u201d; <a href=\"#_edn32\" id=\"_ednref32\">[32]<\/a> and Rosalind of As You Like It,<\/em> with her admission, \u201cIt is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn33\" id=\"_ednref33\">[33]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe general request among such figures is that we, the audience, should do our best to repair the limitations or defects of Shakespeare\u2019s staged representations with our own imaginations and, perhaps just as important, with our charitable spirit, our \u201cpatience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, there is more to these first and last words in Shakespeare\u2019s plays, and all of them repay close attention for the insight they provide regarding the nature and purpose of the theater, the standing of the audience, and other matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFeste\u2019s song lyric as quoted above can serve as an instance of such insight. He implies something about the value an audience might find in its theater-going experiences. Yes, we must leave the theater when the play is done, but we can always come back another day as \u201cthe whirligig of time\u201d (to borrow the clown Feste\u2019s earlier expression) <a href=\"#_edn34\" id=\"_ednref34\">[34]<\/a> spins round and onward: the theater, then, serves as an inexhaustible wellspring of refreshing departures from the sordidness and tedium of the everyday world.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Pericles, Prince of Tyre, <\/em>there is not such a tragically permanent scission between \u201cmake-believe\u201d and the real as some dour critics suggest there is and ought to be. Perhaps John Gower\u2019s contribution as a speaker of first and last words has been to testify to the enduring power of poetry itself. He has returned to us in ghostly form to help tell what Shakespeare\u2019s friend and competitor Ben Jonson will call \u201ca moldy tale\u201d in a way that Shakespeare\u2019s modern audiences can still learn from and appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEdition.<\/strong> Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems + Digital Edition.<\/em> 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93862-3.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2012, revised 2025 Alfred J. Drake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDocument Timestamp: 8\/7\/2025 12:06 PM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"endnotes\">ENDNOTES<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref1\" id=\"_edn1\">[1]<\/a> Frye, Northrop. Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy. <\/em>Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1967, repr. 1985. 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref2\" id=\"_edn2\">[2]<\/a> Homer. <a href=\"http:\/\/data.perseus.org\/citations\/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.tlg001.perseus-grc1:24.22-24.63\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Iliad<\/em>. 24.49<\/a>; in Greek, \u03c4\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u039c\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c1\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b8\u03c5\u03bc\u1f78\u03bd \u03b8\u03ad\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd \u1f00\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03ce\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd, tl\u0113ton gar Moirai thumon thesan anthr\u014dpoisin<\/em>. My translation. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 2\/19\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref3\" id=\"_edn3\">[3]<\/a> For the main source text, see John Gower\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitale-sammlungen.de\/en\/view\/bsb10929634?page=292,293\">Confessio<\/em> Amantis,<\/em> Bk 8<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.umsl.edu\/~gradyf\/chaucer\/apollonius.htm\">\u201cApollonius\u201d Plot Summary<\/a> from Larry Scanlon\u2019s \u201cThe Riddle of Incest: John Gower and the Problem of Medieval Sexuality\u201d in R. F. Yeager (ed.), Re-Visioning Gower<\/em>. Asheville, N.C., 1998, 93-128. As for the term \u201cromance play,\u201d the Victorian critic Edward Dowden is usually credited with that coinage. See his <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=hwUCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=false\">Shakspere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art<\/a> (Google Books).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref4\" id=\"_edn4\">[4]<\/a> By comparison, King Lear <\/em>was performed first in December of 1606, and Antony and Cleopatra <\/em>around 1607.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref5\" id=\"_edn5\">[5]<\/a> See Walter Cohen\u2019s excellent introduction to Pericles, Prince of Tyre <\/em>in The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems,<\/em> 3rd ed. 150-206. Introduction, 139-45.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref6\" id=\"_edn6\">[6]<\/a> Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.<\/em> New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. See the chapter on Pericles, <\/em>603-13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref7\" id=\"_edn7\">[7]<\/a> See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theoi.com\/Titan\/Hesperides.html\">Theoi.com\u2019s account of the Hesperides<\/a>. Accessed 2\/19\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref8\" id=\"_edn8\">[8]<\/a> In John Gower\u2019s original of the story in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitale-sammlungen.de\/en\/view\/bsb10929634?page=292,293\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Confessio Amantis<\/em> Bk 8<\/a>, Pericles\u2019s wife isn\u2019t named, and the daughter called Marina in the present play is named by Gower \u201cThais,\u201d which of course in the play would be Pericles\u2019s wife.<\/em> That would seem to implicate Prince Pericles himself, at least indirectly or unconsciously, in the same taboo sin of which Antiochus is guilty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref9\" id=\"_edn9\">[9]<\/a> Aeschylus. The Oresteia. <\/em>Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1984.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref10\" id=\"_edn10\">[10]<\/a> Plato. Republic. <\/em>Trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1968. See Book 3, 389B-C, where Socrates says, \u201cThen, it\u2019s appropriate for the rulers, if for anyone at all, to lie for the benefit of the city in cases involving enemies or citizens\u2026.\u201d The rulers may deal in untruths somewhat, suggests Socrates, in the manner of a doctor prescribing remedies. Alternately, see this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D3\">translation by Paul Shorey online<\/a>. Accessed 8\/7\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref11\" id=\"_edn11\">[11]<\/a> The best example of how an ancient poet shows the self-destructive nature of men who mishandle and damage this principle may be Ovid\u2019s telling of the gruesome story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela. Tereus, King of Thrace, marries Procne and has a son by her, but then he is taken with lust for her lovely sister Philomela when (partly at his own devious request) the girl\u2019s father is convinced to allow her to sail back to Thrace with Tereus and visit Procne there.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOnce in Thrace, the vicious king imprisons and rapes Philomela, then cuts out her tongue so she can\u2019t reveal what he has done. But she embroiders the truth into a tapestry for Procne. The latter woman is enraged at this treatment of her sister, so she kills her own son, Itys, and together the sisters serve up the flesh of Itys cooked in a pot. They present King Tereus with the severed head of the son and heir he has just eaten, and he chases after them in fury. The chase ends with Philomela being transformed into a nightingale, Procne into a swallow, and Tereus into a hoopoe.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOvid\u2019s full tale is more complex than this outline: for example, Tereus\u2019s lust for Philomela is kindled partly by seeing her embrace her father fondly, so here, too, there is an \u201cincest theme\u201d by indirection. See Ovid, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/21765\/21765-h\/21765-h.htm#bookVI_fableV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Metamorphoses <\/em>Book 6, Fables 5-6. (Gutenberg)<\/a>. Accessed 2\/24\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref12\" id=\"_edn12\">[12]<\/a> Peacock, Thomas Love. \u201cThe Four Ages of Poetry,\u201d excerpts at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/articles\/69387\/from-the-four-ages-of-poetry#:~:text=Poetry%2C%20like%20the%20world%2C%20may,and%20the%20fourth%2C%20of%20brass.\">The Poetry Foundation<\/a>. Accessed 2\/19\/2024. To be sure, what the humorous friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley has to say about his romantic contemporaries isn\u2019t much more respectful: he accuses nearly all poets of \u201craking up the ashes of dead savages to find gewgaws and rattles for the grown babies of the age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref13\" id=\"_edn13\">[13]<\/a> The Greek term is \u1f01\u03bc\u03b1\u03c1\u03c4\u03af\u03b1, a mistake, error, or missing of the mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref14\" id=\"_edn14\">[14]<\/a> In Homer\u2019s Greek text, the stock phrase is \u03b4\u03cd\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03cc \u03c4\u2019 \u1f20\u03ad\u03bb\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c3\u03ba\u03b9\u03cc\u03c9\u03bd\u03c4\u03cc \u03c4\u03b5 \u03c0\u1fb6\u03c3\u03b1\u03b9 \u1f00\u03b3\u03c5\u03b9\u03b1\u03af, duset\u00f3 t\u2019\u0113\u00e9lio skiont\u00f3 te p\u0101sai aguia\u00ed. Odyssey <\/em>3.397 and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref15\" id=\"_edn15\">[15]<\/a> Shakespeare. The Tempest.<\/em> The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems,<\/em> 3rd ed. 397-448. The courtship between Ferdinand and Miranda begins as soon as the two meet. See 410, 1.2.420ff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref16\" id=\"_edn16\">[16]<\/a> Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream.<\/em> Quarto. (The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 406-53). 409, 1.1.134.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref17\" id=\"_edn17\">[17]<\/a> Shakespeare. King Lear.<\/em> Folio with additions from the Quarto. (The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840). See 801, 3.2.59-60.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref18\" id=\"_edn18\">[18]<\/a> For a translation of the Hippocratic oath, see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nlm.nih.gov\/hmd\/topics\/greek-medicine\/index.html\">https:\/\/www.nlm.nih.gov\/hmd\/topics\/greek-medicine\/index.html<\/a>. Accessed 2\/19\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref19\" id=\"_edn19\">[19]<\/a> See, for example, Paul Carrick\u2019s Medical Ethics in the Ancient World.<\/em> Washington, D.C.: Georgetown UP, 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref20\" id=\"_edn20\">[20]<\/a> Admittedly, the utterance, \u201cDeath may usurp on nature many hours\u201d (180, 3.2.80) may strike some hearers as moving in the opposite direction, but perhaps we should take it to mean instead that a person may appear <\/em>to be dead for some time and yet not actually be so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref21\" id=\"_edn21\">[21]<\/a> See the present edition of Pericles<\/em>, 188, footnote 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref22\" id=\"_edn22\">[22]<\/a> Bloom, ibid. <\/em>609-11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref23\" id=\"_edn23\">[23]<\/a> Some readers may recall the excellent Lionsgate-produced period drama series Mad Men <\/em>that ran on AMC from 2007-2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref24\" id=\"_edn24\">[24]<\/a> See the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_Wilkins#:~:text=The%20latter%20appears%20in%20other,was%20a%20procurer%2C%20or%20pimp\">Wikipedia entry on George Wilkins<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref25\" id=\"_edn25\">[25]<\/a> See the Bishop\u2019s Bible, Daniel<\/em> 6.1ff. Accessed 2\/19\/2024. <a href=\"https:\/\/textusreceptusbibles.com\/Bishops\/27\/6\">https:\/\/textusreceptusbibles.com\/Bishops\/27\/6<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref26\" id=\"_edn26\">[26]<\/a> In Homeric Greek, \u03c0\u03cc\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c4\u03c1\u03cd\u03b3\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 or \u1f05\u03bb\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c4\u03c1\u03c5\u03b3\u03ad\u03c4\u03b7 (hals atrug\u00e9t\u0113<\/em>). In Homer\u2019s oceanic references, there is often a suggestion of vastness, of a body of water that seems to absorb whatever passion one brings to it. For example, at Odyssey<\/em> 5.84, the despondent Odysseus, trapped with Calypso on her island, is said to be away from the cave he now calls home, staring disconsolately at the empty ocean: \u03c0\u03cc\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u1f10\u03c0\u2019 \u1f00\u03c4\u03c1\u03cd\u03b3\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03b4\u03b5\u03c1\u03ba\u03ad\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf \u03b4\u03ac\u03ba\u03c1\u03c5\u03b1 \u03bb\u03b5\u03af\u03b2\u03c9\u03bd (p\u00f3nton ep\u2019 atr\u00fageton derk\u00e9sketo d\u00e1krua le\u00edbon<\/em>); translated, \u201che gazed upon the trackless ocean, shedding tears.\u201d See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc1:5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Odyssey <\/em>5.84<\/a>. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 11\/22\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref27\" id=\"_edn27\">[27]<\/a> But see note 8 above, concerning Shakespeare\u2019s renaming of Thaisa from Gower\u2019s original. See also note 10, which affines the possibility of a proto-Freudian reading of the incest theme in this play with a taboo involving who is allowed to lie<\/em> that seems to structure some theories of governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref28\" id=\"_edn28\">[28]<\/a> See\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/guide_ren_tuning_of_the_world.pdf\" data-type=\"attachment\" data-id=\"374\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Renaissance Tuning of the World Guide<\/a>\u00a0and Sensory Studies\u2019\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sensorystudies.org\/picture-gallery\/spheres_image\/\">Music of the Spheres<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref29\" id=\"_edn29\">[29]<\/a> See Gower, John. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitale-sammlungen.de\/en\/view\/bsb10929634?page=292,293\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Confessio Amantis<\/em> Bk 8<\/a>. Accessed 8\/7\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref30\" id=\"_edn30\">[30]<\/a> Shakespeare. The Life of Henry the Fifth.<\/em> Folio. The Norton Shakespeare: Histories,<\/em> 3rd ed. 790-857. 791, Prologue 1-2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref31\" id=\"_edn31\">[31]<\/a> Shakespeare. Twelfth Night, or What You Will.<\/em> The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 743-97. 797, 797,5.1.375-94.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref32\" id=\"_edn32\">[32]<\/a> Shakespeare. The Tempest.<\/em> The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems,<\/em> 3rd ed. 397-448. 448, Epilogue 11-13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref33\" id=\"_edn33\">[33]<\/a> Shakespeare. As You Like It. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 673-731. 730, Epilogue 190.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref34\" id=\"_edn34\">[34]<\/a> Shakespeare. Twelfth Night, or What You Will.<\/em> The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 743-97. See 797, 5.1.363: \u201cAnd thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shakespeare\u2019s Pericles, Prince of Tyre Commentary A. Drake Shakespeare, William. The Play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. (The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"iawp_total_views":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[89,90,91,36,92,93,32,94,95],"wf_page_folders":[9],"class_list":["post-149","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-romance-plays","tag-ancient-tyre","tag-antiochus","tag-cleon","tag-elizabethan-drama","tag-female-villains-dionyza","tag-shakespean-heroines-marina-and-thaisa","tag-shakespeares-romance-plays","tag-shipwrecks-in-shakespeare","tag-tarsus"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"ajd_shxpr","author_link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/author\/ajd_shxpr\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Shakespeare\u2019s Pericles, Prince of Tyre Commentary A. Drake Shakespeare, William. The Play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. (The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9795,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/149\/revisions\/9795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":149,"date":"2024-04-13T17:34:50","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T00:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/?page_id=149"},"modified":"2025-08-12T21:05:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T04:05:16","slug":"pericles-prince-of-tyre-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/pericles-prince-of-tyre-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Pericles, Prince of Tyre"},"content":{"rendered":"