Riddled Romance: Kingship and Kinship in "Pericles"

Abstract

Aplethora of romance conventions form the basic structure of Pericles, among them a wandering hero, a virtuous heroine, shipwrecks, storms, pirates, and persons of royal blood who will be reunited with families and reinstated within their royal class. There is no doubt that the play constructs a fantasy world of romance in which the good triumph and regeneration is realized. And yet, as satisfying as the ending of Pericles can be in performance, the events that have transpired between the time of Pericles’ strange encounter in Antioch at the play’s beginning and the happy reunions of the ending do not work on all levels toward a tidy romance closure; the emotion of father, daughter, and mother reunited—a strategy to effect that closure—does not eradicate the contradictions within the text which seem to resist romance. The issue of whether Pericles ought to be classified as a romance at all has occupied many critics, who rightfully find the generic label confining and prefer the term “late play.” 1 However, approaching Pericles with a full awareness of its romance conventions paradoxically reveals the play as much more than a romance: a play that uses generic conventions to challenge the basic assumptions—generic, political, and social assumptions—of romance. Shakespeare employs the dynamics and paradigms of romance to present a critique of naturalized representations of power and patriarchy and to place them under interrogation. He addresses familiar discourses and reverses their dynamics to emphasize that they are not as natural as we assume them to be—inside the romance world and perhaps outside it as well. My point of entry into romance convention is the polarization of good and evil—clear-cut in many romances, but interestingly muddied by ambiguity in Pericles—ambiguity that ultimately challenges romance assumptions about royalty and family relationships. For example, in the Epilogue to Pericles, Gower re