PERICLES

play in five acts by William Shakespeare, first performed in 1608-09 and published in a quarto edition in 1609, a poor text containing both auditory and graphic errors. The play was based on the classical tale of Apollonius of Tyre as told in book eight of Confessio amantis by John Gower. The spirit of Gower opens the play and sets the stage with the title character in Antioch seeking to marry the princess. Pericles, however, discovers the truth about King Antiochus' incestuous love for his own daughter and flees, leaving the loyal Helicanus to rule Tyre in his absence. After aiding the starving people of Tarsus, Pericles is shipwrecked near Pentapolis, where he wins the hand of the beautiful Thaisa, daughter of King Simonides. As the couple sail back to Tyre, Thaisa gives birth to Marina during a violent storm. Pericles, believing his wife has died in childbirth, buries her at sea, but she is rescued and joins the temple of the goddess Diana at Ephesus. Pericles leaves his newborn daughter with Cleon, the governor of Tarsus, and his wife, Dionyza. Marina, grown to young womanhood, is hated by Dionyza, who orders her murder. Instead, she is kidnapped by pirates and sold to a brothel, where she earns her keep by singing and needlework. Marina is reunited with her father when he is brought to her, mute and sick from years of grief. Pericles then has a vision of Diana, who sends them to Ephesus to be reunited with Thaisa. The play is episodic, highly symbolic, and filled with imagery of the stormy seas. The most significant recurring theme is the proper relationship between parent and child, especially between father and daughter. Shakespeare returned to this theme often in his other late plays, but in Pericles he deliberately maintains the characters as two-dimensional emblems rather than showing them as fully developed people. The first scenes of Pericles are often feeble in expression, frequently ungrammatical, and sometimes scarcely intelligible, while the second half is well written, in Shakespeare's mature style. It is now generally supposed that the inadequate parts of the play are the result of its being a reconstruction of the text from the actors' imperfect memories. For the second half of the play, either the printer had a manuscript of good quality or the actors' memories were more accurate. prince of Tyre in Shakespeare's Pericles. Although he shows courage and generosity early in the play, Pericles must undergo great trials and suffering to prove he is worthy of his wife, Thaisa, and his daughter, Marina, whom he abandoned as a baby. born c. 495 BC, , Athens died 429, Athens Athenian statesman largely responsible for the full development, in the later 5th century BC, of both the Athenian democracy and the Athenian empire, making Athens the political and cultural focus of Greece. His achievements included the construction of the Acropolis, begun in 447. Additional reading Ancient sources. Thucydides, Histories, book 1-2; Plutarch, Life of Pericles (both available in several translations). Modern works. A.R. Burn, Pericles and Athens (1949), brief but good historical treatment with a critical bibliography; V. Ehrenberg, Sophocles and Pericles (1954), detailed discussion of aspects of the intellectual background; C.M. Bowra, Periclean Athens (1971), a full picture of the period and its culture; J.K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, pp. 455-460 (1971), only on family and property, but with scholarly bibliography; R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (1972), a detailed, scholarly survey.