1: Introduction

Author's note. This blog is meant to be read from the top down, like a book. It was written March 2001, posted in another blog in 2007, and posted as a separate blog in May 2012.


My intent in discussing Shakespeare’s Pericles is to focus on the play in terms of ideas; thus I will be looking at the characters as embodiments of ideas rather than as flesh and blood human beings Specifically, I will be looking at the play in terms of modern psychological ideas, especially those of C.G. Jung, and in relation to the ideas and images of ancient Gnosticism. I will try to show that certain plot developments that make little sense when taken literally, seeing the play as a realistic portrayal of life, do yield important insights about life when seen on other levels, as a kind of moral tale or parable. One way of seeing such insights, as the basis for moral instruction, is expressed by the play itself in its opening lines, when the narrator says of the story he is going to unfold:

And lords and ladies in their lives
Have read it for restoratives,
The purchase is to make men glorious... (I.prologue.7ff)

The play, we will see, illustrates the treatment of various forms of melancholy, in the sense of sadness and of grief for what is lost, and how one can actually rise to greater heights through such an experience.

In the literature, Harold Bloom (1998) briefly mentions a similarity between the play and Gnostic myths, but the only extended analysis in such terms is by the English poet Ted Hughes (1992). The myths both writers have in mind are ones written in Alexandria, Egypt, in the first two centuries of the Christian era. Like some of Plato’s writings (the Timaeus, the myth of Er in the Republic), Gnostic myth-making was an attempt to describe in language things that could only be suggested in metaphor. While Gnostic writings borrowed much from Plato and other Greek philosophers, their explicit subject-matter was the Judeo-Christian tradition.

For the Gnostics, there were three worlds, each with its own gods. One is a timeless spiritual world of an incomprehensible Father/Mother. This Father/Mother has various “emanations,” essentially specific aspects of the indescribable deity. The second is intermediate, above our world but in time, the realm of the world-fashioner, or demiurge (Plato’s term), identified with the Greek Zeus and the Hebrew Jehovah. There are also various secondary gods and goddesses, offspring of the demiurge, whom the Gnostics called the Archons, Greek for “rulers.” Finally there is our material world, fashioned by the demiurge but ruled by Satan and his demons. The Gnostic is one whose spirit is of the first world, yet is trapped in the third world by the forces of the second and third world. Salvation is the return to one's spiritual home.

The play begins with its hero, Pericles, ruler of the city of Tyre, looking for a wife. He is attracted by the physical beauty of a king’s daughter. This corresponds to the material world we inhabit. As it happens, the king’s daughter has a sexual relationship with her father; grasping that secret is thus to see who rules this world, namely Satan. Later Pericles meets another king’s daughter, whom he marries. Here he is attracted as much by the nobility of the king as by the attractions of the daughter, which are as much of the spirit as of the body. This kingdom has intimations of the upper world of Gnosticism but various features suggest more an enlightened demiurge: Although the court is a haven of nobility, the kingdom is still one in which, its citizens tell us, “the big fish eat the little fish.” Pericles leads an idyllic life there, but then leaves because his own city needs him. At sea, his wife gives birth to a daughter and dies in childbirth—or so it seems, for after her body is cast adrift, she revives and lives a life dedicated to the goddess Diana. Pericles puts their child into the care of another king who, it happens, also has an infant daughter. As Pericles’ child nears adulthood, she becomes a prisoner in the world of greed and lust. Her position corresponds to the Gnostic soul thrown into the world of matter; she herself has the character of a Gnostic heroine. The resolution is then effected by the goddess Diana, functioning here as a kind of Gnostic Sophia-figure from the upper world. I will make specific textual comparisons at appropriate points, also noting those made by Hughes and Bloom. In addition I will contrast this Gnostic perspective with that of traditional Christianity, and also indicate points of contact with Sufism and alchemy. As we shall see, the play's primary theme is that of the Divine Feminine, and one rather unexpected image in particular, that of father/daughter incest.

Since most people are not familiar with Pericles, I recommend that the reader supplement the text with the video filmed by the BBC in 1983 (available in many libraries). This is one play in which one does not get the proper effect by reading. But let me also give a warning: the first two acts have dialogue that is boring and repetitive. Some scholars think that these acts were mostly written by a collaborator; either that, or the play is an amalgamation of two pirated reconstructions written down after viewing the play, the first one done by someone with a poor memory for Shakespeare's language (Edwards, 1976). However, these first two acts are essential to understanding the play as a whole. Here, I will mostly skip the poorly written bits.

As with many other plays, Shakespeare was redoing a story that had been told many times before. The basic outline, including the reference to explicit incest, was available in Latin prose, supposedly from Greek sources, back at least as far as the 5th Century. A verse version was written in the 11th century, by a Godfrey of Viterboy. Then in the 15th century an English poet named Gower wrote a version that remained well known to later generations. Shakespeare makes Gower the narrator of his play, who introduces the different scenes in deliberately archaic language. Until Shakespeare, the story was called “Appolonius of Tyre”; Shakespeare introducee the name-change to Pericles. No relation is implied to the famous Athenian statesman of that name. The setting is the Mediterranean world of the time between Alexander the Great and the triumph of Rome (Edwards, 1976).