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PERICLES
Pericles' wife has no name, and the daughter is called Thaise. In Twine the wife is called Lucina and the daughter Tarsia. In the Shakespearean play the wife is called Thaisa, and the daughter is christened Marina—a cognomen for which there is no suggestion in the old narratives. But the most notable change of all is in the name of the hero. Throughout the previous literature on the subject he is known solely as Apollonius of Tyre. The name of Pericles naturally suggests the Athenian statesman, who would be familiar to any reader of Plutarch. The Pericles of the drama seems, by way of justifying his Athenian designation, to emphasize his ‘education in arts and arms’ (ii. 3. 82). But the name is something more than an echo of Athenian history. It is a reminiscence of Pyrocles, one of the heroes of Sidney’s romance of *Arcadia*. In the early scenes of the play, too, many expressions reflect a recent study of Sidney’s romance.
Defects of the plot.
The play, whatever literary merit attaches to a small portion of it, proves, as a whole, that the old story of Apollonius’ travels is ill adapted to drama. The action is far too multifarious to present a homogeneous effect. The scene rambles confusedly by sea from Antioch to Tyre, Tarsus, Mytilene, Ephesus, and Pentapolis. The events cover too long a period of time to render them probable or indeed intelligible in representation. At least nine months separate the last scene of Act ii, where the hero’s marriage is celebrated, from the first scene of Act iii, where his first child is born; a year elapses between Scenes 2 and 3 of the latter Act, and as many as fourteen years pass between its close, where the child figures as an infant of one year, and the opening of
¹ Richard Flecknoe, writing of the play in 1650, called the hero Pyrocles. Musidorus, the other hero of Sidney’s romance, had already supplied the title of another romantic play, *Macedoras*, which appeared in 1595.
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