An Approach to the Problem of Pericles

Summary

The play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre bristles with problems, but the cardinal one, to which all others are subsidiary, is, of course, the puzzle of how far it is Shakespeare’s work. The style of the play is very unequal and there is the additional complication that, although three times printed in Shakespeare’s lifetime with his name on the title-page, it was excluded from the First Folio. Dryden thought to account for its unevenness by allotting the play to the earliest part of Shakespeare’s career, but since Rowe in 1709 found (unspecified) “good Reason” for believing that “the greatest part” of the play was not Shakespeare’s, the hypothesis of divided authorship has in general ruled. Many different theories have been advanced. We are told that Shakespeare collaborated with one or more named or unnamed fellow-dramatists, that he revised an old play, or that an old play of his was revised by another; his hand has been seen in one act only, or in two, three, four or even all five acts. But it is not too much to say that the weight of opinion regards the earlier part of the play as largely non-Shakespearian and the later largely Shakespeare’s.