Fortune against Life-Force: The Pagan World of Pericles

Abstract

The difficulty of dealing with Pericles in a study of this kind hardly needs pointing out. Its structure, which is very much that of a travelogue, admits of incessant arrivals and departures which break up the plot, its shifting focus on different places and persons leaves little room for development of character, and its use of narrative, dumb shows and occasionally highly stylised dialogue gives an impression of technical randomness which defies ordinary standards of consistency. There is also a remarkable unevenness both as to phrasing and versification in the various parts of the play.¹ Add to these internal qualities the uncertainty as to how much of the matter is Shakespeare’s, where his contributions begin and end and who else was behind the writing, and one may with good reason despair of any attempt to scrutinise the text systematically for unity and coherence. Pericles has attractions of its own for the theatre and perhaps particularly invites operatic treatment,² but it is not a drama governed by the flexible order and submitting to the methodic restraints that we usually find in Shakespeare.