Chaps. 30-32 Summary and Analysis

IX. The Late Romances

Pericles

pp. 603-613

The author insists that the first two acts of Pericles were written by a hack named Wilkins, who was employed by Shakespeare. In the beginning, Pericles solves the riddle of the incestuous King of Antioch and is forced to flee. After a shipwreck, Pericles is rescued and marries Thaisa. Shakespeare takes over the writing in Act III, with the god Neptune causing a shipwreck while Thaisa seems to have died while giving birth to Pericles' daughter Marina. The author compares Pericles' speech to Neptune to the later writer Melville, and the character Ahab in Moby Dick. Thaisa survives somehow in a coffin that ends up onshore, and eventually is reunited with Pericles and Marina at Diana's Temple. There is comedy when Marina is forced into a brothel, but then persuades all the...