SOURCE: Thorne, W. B. “Pericles and the ‘Incest-Fertility’ Opposition.” Shakespeare Quarterly 22, no. 1 (winter 1971): 43-56.

In the following essay, Thorne offers an analysis of Pericles as representative of Shakespeare's “late plays of reconciliation,” arguing that the drama's central principle of fertility is structurally counterpointed by the incest motif.

Though a comprehensive analysis of Pericles must be advanced only tentatively, because of the critical doubt about Shakespeare's share in its creation, its thematic structure seems not unlike that of the bulk of Shakespearian comedies. In fact, it presents a sophistication of the fertility and spring themes which supply the dramatic impulse in The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The basic difference between Pericles (indeed all the late plays of reconciliation) and the earlier comedies is that the dramatic moment of Pericles deals not only with individuals and the...