Pericles is the name of a five-act play by the great English playwright William Shakespeare. Its full title is Pericles, Prince of Tyre. It is a romantic drama written and first performed between 1606 and 1608 and first published in 1609. This text was reprinted five times. The play was left out of the early collected editions of Shakespeare’s works and was not accepted as an authentic play by Shakespeare until 1664, nearly 50 years after the playwright’s death.
Shakespeare was probably not the sole author of the play. Scholars disagree over how much of it he actually wrote. According to one view, he seems to have worked with a coauthor on the first two acts. The coauthor may have been the English playwright George Wilkins, who in 1608 wrote a novel, The Painfull Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, which was based on a performance of the play. However, many critics believe that Shakespeare did indeed write all of the play himself.
The plot is based mainly on the story of Apollonius of Tyre, as retold by the English poet John Gower (1330-1408) in his collection of tales, Confessio Amantis (A Lover’s Confession). Shakespeare uses the character of Gower as a chorus in the play to set the scene and narrate the story. The action in Pericles covers many years and ranges over much of the ancient Mediterranean world. The plot deals with the adventures of Prince Pericles of Tyre. It tells of his marriage, the apparent loss of his wife and daughter, and his rediscovery of them. The play is notable for the characters of the virtuous Pericles and his equally virtuous daughter, Marina. The most moving scene in Pericles comes near the end of the play, when Pericles and Marina meet and recognize each other after years of separation. The play consists of many loosely related episodes and is uneven in quality.
