Shakespeare's Pericles: a study in the influence of the Greek novel, chivalric romance, and medieval religious drama.

Abstract

Recently, the habit of prefacing any study of Shakespeare with an apology for entering a field already so adequately handled by eminent scholars has been the vogue. However, there is no need to employ this rhetorical device in a preface to a study of Pericles, which has been sorely neglected as a part of Shakespeare's canon since the closing of the theatres in 1642. The reasons for this lack of critical attention are many and varied, but, thankfully, the twentieth century has generated a wave of scholarly monographs on Pericles. However, the overridding concern of these essays is the question of authorship; and, while interesting, they are hardly conclusive. Moreover, in terms of immediate and positive results, they are fruitless. I became convinced that study of Pericles must include an investigation of the nature of its romance material after reading an essay which attempts to deal with the play formalistically. By treating Pericles in an historical vacuum, the author makes several serious errors in interpretation. To understand Shakespeare's play, it must be put into some kind of historical context. The play is a product of a Renaissance mind, which, in turn, is the product of a curious mixture of the medieval scholastic world view and the humanist world view based on the revival of classical learning. In the present study, I have tried to place Pericles into the historical perspective of three traditions of romance, i.e., the Greek novel of the third century A. D., medieval chivalric romance, and medieval religious drama.