Adherence and Deviation: Pericles's Slow Progress toward Social Change.

Author/Editor
Velez, Megan.

Title
Adherence and Deviation: Pericles's Slow Progress toward Social Change.

Published
Velez, Megan. "Adherence and Deviation: Pericles's Slow Progress toward Social Change." The Journal of the Wooden O 20 (2020): 142-50.

Review
Compared to Shakespeare's other plays, "Pericles" displays "[an especially close] adherence to its sources," thus "making evaluation of tradition and innovation one of its central themes." Per Velez, the audience of "Pericles" is called upon "to reevaluate assumptions about their own world, especially regarding the distribution of prestige and power," and to favorably consider innovation (142). When Shakespeare does deviate from his source, he does so strategically, changing the name of the hero from Gower's Apollonius to Pericles as Plutarch's Pericles engaged with the lower classes of ancient Athens (143). Personifying literary "auctoritas," the character Gower sets an example by modernizing the style of his verse from the archaic diction of his opening Chorus to "the loose pentameter common to Shakespeare's other characters" in the Epilogue that closes the play (145). Social hierarchy is subtly interrogated throughout. Pericles owes his life to the fisher folk who provide him with the suit of armor that enables him to win his bride, even as the fishermen are heard to "complain about the rich" in terms that echo a Jacobean peasant uprising (146). Pericles promises to reward them for their service, but he never does, calling into question the "hegemonic ideologies" that support his high position (146). Deviating from his source in "Confessio Amantis," Shakespeare has Pericles stay home after his family is reunited, allowing "a mob of commoners" to mete out justice to his daughter's foster parents, thus indirectly supporting a popular check on the divine right of kings. Per Velez, "the theatre is a place where those silenced by convention are heard," albeit with a distancing designed to elude the Jacobean censors (148-49). Even the traditional figure of "moral Gower" "serves to . . . reexamine assumptions, let go of the past, and adopt new conventions to meet the future" (149). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1]

Date
2020

Gower Subjects
Influence and Later Allusion
Confessio Amantis