The Genesis and Authorship of "Pericles."

Author/Editor
Pease, Ralph W., III.

Title
The Genesis and Authorship of "Pericles."

Published
Pease, Ralph W., III. "The Genesis and Authorship of 'Pericles.'" Dissertation Abstracts International 33 (1973): 4358A.

Review
"'Pericles,' a popular play based on the old legend of Apollonius of Tyre and produced in London sometime between 1605-08, has long been the subject of scholarly conjecture. Although all contemporary sources attribute the play wholly to William Shakespeare, most scholars believe the play to be a revision by Shakespeare of a play written by another author. Basing their arguments on internal evidence of changes in literary style between Acts I-II and Acts III-V and on the fact that 'Pericles' was excluded from both the First and Second Folios, scholars have attempted to name either George Wilkins, Thomas Heywood, or John Day as co-author of the play. The first evaluative section (Chapter II) is devoted to a comparative analysis between 'Pericles' and the known sources of the play. The resultant conclusion is that 'Pericles' is based primarily upon Book VIII of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' with additional detail from Laurence Twine's 'The Patterne of Painefull Adventures' and the Latin 'Historia Apollonii Regis Tyrii.' More importantly, this section reveals that the story was adapted for the stage and structured by only one author, a craftsman of considerable dramatic skill. Evidence examined in Chapter III demonstrates that the first printed quarto of 1609 (Q1), upon which all other copies are based, is corrupt, for it abounds in mislineations, lost phrases, and jumbled verse. While this corruption accounts for many of the stylistic inconsistencies between Acts I-II and Acts III-V, differences in style which indicate two levels of workmanship continue to exist. The concluding hypothesis of this study is that early in his career, Shakespeare began a play based on the Apollonius legend only to lay it aside in order to concentrate on the more popular comedies and chronicle histories. Sometime between 1605 and 1608, Shakespeare, tiring of the heavy psychological demands of the major tragedies and aware of increasing audience interest in the sensationalism of romantic drama, such as that done by Beaumont and Fletcher, revived the play he had earlier begun, transforming the long, rambling Apollonius narrative into a tightly compressed, highly imaginative morality tale which encompassed the values of patience and of reconciliation with life, later to be expressed more fully in 'The Tempest'." [eJGN 43.1]

Date
1973

Gower Subjects
Influence and Later Allusion
Confessio Amantis