SOURCE: Wood, James O. “Shakespeare, Pericles, and the Genevan Bible.” Pacific Coast Philology 12 (October 1977): 82-9.

In the following essay, Wood uses the theme of flattery as it appears in the second act of Pericles to support an argument for Shakespeare as the play's sole author, and as the basis for the assertion that the surviving text is an amalgam of an early draft by Shakespeare and his later revisions.

The singular play Pericles, Prince of Tyre, published in quarto as Shakespeare's in 1609, somehow failed to appear in the Folio of 1623. Though it is universally agreed that much of the latter half could have been written only by Shakespeare, his total authorship has found only sporadic acceptance. Full attribution would significantly affect our view of the poet, for it would enable us to know him as the only begetter of his closing quaternion of magnificent romances, not a mere...