- description
- # George Wilkins the chief author.
## Overview
This section, titled "George Wilkins the chief author," is an analytical text extracted from the larger [PERICLES chapter](arke:01KG6S4D9MD59KJ70ZSS7J97J8). It discusses the authorship of the play *Pericles*, specifically arguing for George Wilkins as the primary author, with William Shakespeare later revising his draft. The section spans lines 13778 to 13785 of its source file, [pdf-01KG6Q7Q25RHMFT3SJXPV18VFF.txt](arke:01KG6S2X2EBB305ENM00G16GWA).
## Context
This section is part of the [PERICLES chapter](arke:01KG6S4D9MD59KJ70ZSS7J97J8), which is itself contained within the [PDF Workflow Main Test 2026-01-30T00:26:53 collection](arke:01KG6NWQ2H2K4PGG7H4ZHYCZ3Y). It follows the section [Shakespeare’s share in Pericles.](arke:01KG6S5QA71HCF3MQQFB49APZT), which examines Shakespeare's contributions to the play, and precedes [Wilkins' novel of Pericles.](arke:01KG6S5QAASGCSMH2444DA5GAC), likely discussing Wilkins's prose work related to the play.
## Contents
The section posits that George Wilkins initially penned *Pericles*, and Shakespeare subsequently revised it. It identifies Wilkins as a dramatist of "humble attainments" who had previously written plays for the King's Company at the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare was a member and *Pericles* was first produced. The text references Wilkins's 1607 publication *The Miseries of Inforst Mariage* and *A Yorkshire Tragedy* (1608), noting that both were performed by Shakespeare's company. It draws a stylistic comparison between passages in the non-Shakespearean parts of *Pericles* and Wilkins's *Miseries*, highlighting "rhetorical vehemence and syntactical incoherence" as evidence of shared authorship. A footnote briefly mentions the "shadowy ground" for suggesting a third co-author for the brothel scenes' prose.
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- George Wilkins the chief author.
There seems good ground for assuming that the play of Pericles was originally penned by George Wilkins, and that it was over his draft that Shakespeare worked. Wilkins was a dramatist of humble attainments who had already produced, either alone or in collaboration with others, plays for the King's Company at the Globe Theatre, which included Shakespeare among its members and first produced Pericles. In 1607 Wilkins had published under his own name a piece called *The Miseries of Inforst Mariage*—a popular domestic tragi-comedy, of which the plot was treated anew in the following year in *A Yorkshire Tragedy*, one of the pieces fraudulently assigned by publishers to Shakespeare. Both *The Miseries* and *A Yorkshire Tragedy* were performed by Shakespeare's company of actors at the Globe. Although the characters and plot are very different from those of Pericles, there is sufficient resemblance between the rhetorical vehemence and syntactical incoherence of passages in the non-Shakespearean part of Pericles and in Wilkins' *Miseries* to render it possible that both came from the same pen.¹
¹ The suggestion that the prose portions of the brothel scenes were from the pen of a third coadjutor rests on more shadowy ground. Some critics
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- George Wilkins the chief author.