Although Marina is a political figure primarily in the indirect sense that she is Pericles' heir and Lysimachus' betrothed, she still provides a model of initiative and principled resourcefulness that contrasts with the purposelessness and drift (and, on occasion, the misdirected energy) that characterize her father throughout the play.⁶² Refusing to succumb to the debased life of the brothel, Marina displays an astonishing ability to act affirmatively and make the best of her situation.

Marina's influence on the characters around her is profound. She transforms not only Lysimachus, who leaves the brothel cursing the "damned door-keeper" Boult and "saying his prayers" (IV.vi. 118, 140), but also the common denizens of the brothel, including Boult as he is about to rape her to remove the impediment of her virginity (IV.vi. 152-99). She escapes the brothel and sets up a school with noble pupils, "Who pour their bounty on her" (V.Chor.1-11).⁶³ And, of course, Marina breaks through her father's despair and restores Pericles to himself, herself becoming, as he tells her, "Thou that beget'st him that did thee beget" (V.i.195). Moreover, she leads the revitalized Pericles, finally, to act purposefully, in ways appropriate to his station: first to call for "fresh garments," his "robes" of office (V.i.213, 221); and then to take arms against "savage Cleon" (V.i.215). Even though Pericles' plan "to strike/ The inhospitable Cleon" is prevented by the vision of Diana commanding him to Ephesus, where he will be reunited with Thaisa (V.i.238-51), thanks to Marina we begin to glimpse a new Pericles.

Thus in Marina we see a positive model to counterbalance the Pericles we have seen throughout the course of the play. The contrast between Pericles' virtual abdication of rule and Marina's ability and willingness to act affirmatively may be the key to the relevance of the "mouldy tale" of Apollonius of Tyre for a Jacobean audience. Throughout the early years of James I' s reign in England, his restless travels from one rural haunt to another and his obvious unwillingness to remain in London at the seat of government drew comments from those who expected a king to reign and rule. Unlike Pericles, James could be an intensely active and personal ruler, but the popular impression that he was inattentive to state affairs was exacerbated by his devotion to the hunt and the difficulties inherent in the resulting government by correspondence. Especially as the reign wore on, the initial enthusiasm that greeted James' accession was increasingly tempered with a wistful regard for the resolute and engaged Elizabeth.

In Pericles, the responsibilities of kingship are a recurring motif. Dutiful surrogates continually fill the vacuum left by a prince who is either literally missing or missing in spirit, so preoccupied is he with his personal travails. Fortune, which is responsible for Pericles' travails and travels in the romance world of the play, eventually restores what has been lost, including Pericles' interest in the world outside himself and, by implication, in rule: he and Thaisa will "spend our following days" in Pentapolis, succeeding the dead Simonides, while Marina and Lysimachus will rule in Tyre (V.iii.77-82). It is hard to imagine Pericles dedicating himself wholeheartedly to earning the sobriquet "the good Pericles," for instance by painstakingly redressing the grievances of subjects like the three fishermen who rescued him from the sea. It is much easier to imagine Marina applying herself to the government of Tyre with the same dedication she showed in reforming the brothel in Mytilene. For the first audiences of Pericles, aware of King James' apparent unwillingness to place the demands of government before his personal desires, the example of Marina might have offered a more compelling model of rule.

Notes

¹ F. D. Hoeniger, ed., Pericles, New Arden Edition (London: Methuen, 1963), p. xxiv; all quotations from the play in my text are from this edition. I would like to thank Duquesne University for a Presidential Scholarship to work on this project in Summer 1994. I am also grateful for the support, tangible and intangible, of my wife Donna. In revising the essay for publication, I have benefited from the suggestions of more than one anonymous reader.

² Following the fortunes of Marina in Act IV, in Tharsus and then Mytilene, the scene continues to shift. It is in Tharsus that Cleon and Dionyza plan their deception and Pericles later learns of Marina's supposed death (IV.iii-iv).

³ The storm specified in earlier versions of the Apollonius of Tyre story is less explicit in the immediate source for this passage, Gower's Confessio Amantis; in the play, Gower as Chorus says in a close paraphrase that Pericles was "driven before the winds" to Mytilene (V.Cho.14); see also Hoeniger's note to this line and Elizabeth Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre: Medieval and Renaissance Themes and Variations (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1991), p. 11.

⁴ Recent considerations of geography and Renaissance texts have been offered by Richard Helgerson, who treats English chorography in Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992), and Steven Mullaney, who discusses the social and political topography of London in The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988). The latter considers Pericles briefly in chap. 6. See Constance C. Relihan, "Liminal Geography: Pericles and the Politics of Place," Philological Quarterly, 71 (1992), 281-99, for an interesting discussion of Pericles and its use of remote "geographic settings" (p. 282).

⁵ Two places called Pentapolis may be relevant here, both of which have the advantage of being relatively distant from Antioch and danger. One—apparently the Pentapolis specified in the earliest surviving Apollonius of Tyre text but not in Pericles ' immediate sources, Gower and Twine—lies in North Africa; the other—a more probable site, geographically, for the shipwreck—is in southwest Asia Minor, on the Aegean Sea, not far from Ephesus and Mytilene, significant sites in the story. The earliest surviving text of Apollonius identifies Pentapolis with Cyrene in North Africa—Apollonius "ad Pentapolitanas Cyrenaeorum terras adfirmabatur navigare" ("decided to sail to Pentapolis in Cyrene"); quoted by Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre, pp. 122-23). This is an identification not made in the play's immediate sources, Gower and Twine (see Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, ed. Geoffrey Bullough, VI [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1966], 384-86, 394, 434, 439). Still, it seems geographically improbable (see Webster's Geographical Dictionary, rev. ed. [Springfield, Mass.: Merriam, 1969],passim). Classical texts generally did not treat geographical matters with great precision, according to my colleague Jerry Clack, Professor of Classics at Duquesne University.

Although Ephesus is relatively near the Pentapolis in Asia Minor, Gower's account is unhelpful in determining the issue, since he says that the storm comes up when "half the flood/ Hath their keel cut" (III.Cho.45-46). This general statement might be more or less accurate in describing the distance from the African Pentapolis to Tyre if Pericles had been blown very far off course to the north, skirting Crete and heading into the Aegean, by a storm that Gower says came out of "the grisled north" (III.Cho.47-50). The storm must occur near Ephesus, since that is where the chest containing Thaisa washes up after Cerimon and the others have weathered a "turbulent and stormy night" (III.ii.4). The play's time cues are quite specific: the chest washed up in the early morning "even now" (1. 49), and since, in Cerimon's judgment, "She hath not been entranc'd above five hours," she could not have drifted far (1. 96).

⁶ In earlier versions of Apollonius of Tyre, though not in Gower or Twine, the hero and his bride learn of the destruction of Antiochus and set sail for Antioch to assume the vacant throne. The nature of Apollonius' claim to the crown of Antioch is unexplained, which poses obvious problems, as Archibald notes (Apollonius of Tyre, pp. 67-68). "There are many gaps and inconsistencies in the plot," according to Archibald, "but in the course of a thousand years of popularity, very few attempts at improvement were made. Medieval and Renaissance writers and readers were far less sensitive to illogicalities which strike modern critics so forcibly" (ibid., p. 63).

⁷ Pericles' comments about the newborn's welfare seem to ignore the presence of the nurse, Lychorida, who will remain with her. Pericles' failure to visit his growing daughter in Tharsus, or have her visit in Tyre, cannot be accounted for by the distances involved. This problematic feature of the play can be traced to the earliest versions of the Apollonius story (see ibid., p. 68).

⁸ According to Archibald, "On the whole the play is remarkably faithful to the traditional plot" (ibid., p. 215).

⁹ I was myself reminded of this by G. Foster Provost, Emeritus Professor of English at Duquesne University.

¹⁰ Here I follow Hoeniger's dating (Pericles, pp. lxiii-lxv).

¹¹ D. H. Willson, King James VI and I (London: Jonathan Cape, 1956), p. 179.

¹²Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable The Marquess of Salisbury, ed. M. S. Giuseppi et al, Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports, 9, 24 vols. (London: HMSO, 1883-1976), XVIII, v; hereafter cited as HMC Salisbury.

¹³ Ibid., XVIII, v.

¹⁴ Ibid., XIX, viii. Sir Thomas Lake, who was accompanying James at Royston in 1604, wrote Cecil that an important dispatch the King was expecting "was not so soon come, which arrived about six in the morning or a little before, but the King had before sent to me to know if any letters were come. It seemed strange to me that your own being dated at 6 last night should not come hither till six in the morning. The messenger lays the fault upon the posts. Immediately I delivered it to his Majesty in his bed, who called for pen and ink, and has written this answer enclosed with his own hand."

Lake goes on to report an incident demonstrating "what disorder I find here." The King "was resolved to have gone on and gave out warrant for post horses. . . . [However,] there was no man about the King of authority to command horses to be ready or to give warrant for them, so as the King was fain to sign warrants of his own hand." The King's warrants were then disobeyed—a fact that Lake says he "concealed" from James. "Whether this contempt grows for lack of the ordinary officers, or of any other cause I know not. . . . " The letter is endorsed, by Lake, "For his Majesty's special affairs. . . . Haste, haste, Post Haste, for Life, Life, Life" (Lake to Cecil, 2 April 1604, in HMC Salisbury, XVI, 50).

For instances of efforts in 1604 by Lake and others to facilitate government correspondence while the King was hunting, see HMC Salisbury XVI, 209, 219, 263.

¹⁵ Willson, King James VI and I, pp. 178-79, 183, 185.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 185.

¹⁷ Maurice Lee, Jr., Great Britain 's Solomon: James VI and I in His Three Kingdoms (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 1ll, citing Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, ed. H. F. Braun and A. B. Hind (London, 1900-12), X, 70-71.

¹⁸ Lee, Great Britain's Solomon, p. 111.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 111.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 147.

²¹ For a brief survey of the traditional negative view of James by English historians and recent challenges to those views, see ibid., pp. xi-xv.

²² Thomas Wilson to Sir Thomas Parry, 22 June 1603, in The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities, of King James the First, ed. John Nichols (London, 1828), I, 188.

²³ "The Earl of Worcester to The Earl of Shrewsbury," 4 December 1604, in Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, Biography, and Manners, 2nd ed. (1838; rpt. Westmead: Gregg, 1969), III, 110 (Letter 43).

²⁴ John Chamberlain to Ralph Winwood, 26 January 1605, in The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman Egbert McClure, American Philosophical Society Memoirs, 12 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), I, 201 (Letter 69). In the King's letter to the Privy Council, summarized by Chamberlain, "James formalizes the arrangements for the government of England during his absences in pursuit of the stag and the hare" (9 January 1605, in Letters of King James VI & I, ed. G. P. V. Akrigg [Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1984], p. 246 [Letter 114]). James assures the Council that if needed he would return willingly: "we will sooner undergo the peril (or rather the overthrow) of our own health than suffer this state .. . to feel any inconvenience in the constitution thereof by our long absence or by omissions of those cares which any of our progenitors have taken either for the safety, the justice, or honour of the same in general or particular. . . . " Thus he has "resolved (as our business and the season of the year may permit us) to remove sometimes to places distant from this city and our houses nearest to it, with some small company to attend us in our sports and private journeys, only used for preservation of our health" (ibid., pp. 246-47).

²⁵ "To Lord Cranborne," 25 February 1604 [1605], in Lodge, Illustrations, HI, 131 (Letter 49); see Letters of King James VI and I, p. 256, n. 2). The Archbishop of York's letter reads, in part, "as I confess I am not to deal in state matters, yet, as one that honoureth and loveth his most excellent Majesty with all my heart, I wish less wastening of the treasure of the realm, and more moderation in the lawful exercise of hunting, both that poor men's corn may be less spoiled, and other his Majesty's subjects more spared" ("To Lord Cranborne," 18 December 1604, in Lodge, Illustrations, III, 116 [Letter 45]). Salisbury responds, after commenting wryly on the wide circulation of the Archbishop's letter ("seeing you have so uncivil clerks as they are like to make my letter as common as they have made your own . . ."), concerning hunting, "That as it was a praise in the good Emperor Trajan to be disposed to such manlike and active recreations, so ought it be a joy to us to behold our King of so able a constitution . . ." ("To the Archbishop of York," February 1604, in ibid., III, 129-30 [Letter 48]).

²⁶ "Edmund Lascelles to the Earl of Shrewsbury," 4 December 1604, in Lodge, Illustrations, III, 108 (Letter 42).

²⁷ 'To Robert Cecil, Viscount Cranborne," [February 1605], in Letters of King James VI and I, p. 255 (Letter 118).

²⁸ "To the Council," [1604?], in Letters of King James VI and I, p. 223 (Letter 102).

²⁹ "The Earl of Worcester to Lord Cranborne," 3 May 1604 [sic; 3 Mar. 1605], in Lodge, Illustrations, III, 138 (Letter 53).

³⁰ John Chamberlain to Ralph Winwood, 12 October 1605, in The Letters of John Chamberlain, I, 209 (Letter 73).

³¹The Progresses, ed. Nichols, I, 531n.

³² John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 24 October 1605, in The Letters of John Chamberlain, I, 212 (Letter 74).

³³ In a stimulating essay, ("'Eating the Mother': Property and Propriety in Pericles," in Creative Imitation: New Essays on Renaissance Literature in Honor of Thomas M Greene, ed. David Quint et ai, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 95 [Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992], pp. 331-53), Constance Jordan has examined Pericles and its politics in terms of early modern political theory, notably "the contemporary debate on the proper form of government and specifically of the monarchy" (p. 331). Jordan focuses on the rich implications of the incest metaphor embodied in the tyrant Antiochus: "When the image of incest is understood by reference to the language describing the nature of political rule, both domestic and civil—specifically one in which the monarch is to behave as a father to his children, the subjects, and as a husband to his wife, the commonwealth—it provides a basis for understanding the play's continuous appeal to ideas of legitimate government" (p. 332).

Jordan's sensitivity to the subtlety with which political metaphor and topicality can be interwoven stands in contrast with the more mechanical topical reading offered by an earlier writer, T. S. Graves, who suggested that the Tharsus episode should be read in the light of a contemporary effort to procure English grain to relieve a dearth in Italy ("On the Date and Significance of Pericles," Modern Philology, 13 [1916], 177-88).

³⁴ See Stephen Dickey, "Language and Role in Pericles;" English Literary Renaissance, 16 [1986], 550-66, for the observation that "[o]ne of the things Pericles constantly retreats from is the task of governing. Like ancestor Lear and descendent Prospero, Pericles, if not actually incompetent as a ruler, does relinquish political power for psychological leverage over other characters" (p. 556).

³⁵Pericles, ed. Hoeniger, pp. xxiii-xxiv.

³⁶ Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre, pp. 68-69. When Pericles returns to Tharsus to see his daughter, according to Gower, he is "Attended on by many a lord and knight" (IV.iv.9-12), which suggests that he has resumed his rightful position in Tyre, though the play is silent about how he has governed or how Tyre has profited from his return.

³⁷ Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre, p. 16.

³⁸ See Hoeinger, ed., Pericles, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv; s.d. at beginning of Act I, Scene ii; Appendix C (pp. 180-83); and the note to I.ii.35-51 (p. 22).

³⁹ According to Dickey, Helicanus' denunciation of flattery "is itself flattery of the most persuasive sort." Finding Helicanus' motives "questionable," Dickey notes that he "endorse[s] Pericles' fears" and "enhances them"; he "introduces the idea of Pericles'-departure and hastily volunteers his services as replacement. . . . " Helicanus thus willingly participates in Pericles' "first abdication of responsibility" by conspiring with Pericles in a "charade" that "affords Pericles an excuse for quitting his rule while maintaining that it is done in the best interests of his subjects," a charade that involves "the two principals cuing each other toward a conclusion desirable to both" ("Language and Role," pp. 556-57).

⁴⁰ Hoeniger, ed., Pericles, p. xv; Narrative and Dramatic Sources, ed. Bullough, VI, 361; Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre, p. 214.

⁴¹ Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre, pp. 21-22.

⁴² Hoeinger, ed., Pericles, p. xv; Narrative and Dramatic Sources, ed. Bullough, VI, 360-61. Bullough maintains that "The responsibility for the Prince's long absence from his city is . . . not his alone, and proper arrangements are made for its government during his absence. Unlike Apollonius Pericles is not governed only by selfish fear, but is a 'true prince' with a sense of duty. Some attempt is thus made to transfer the fairy tale into terms of Renaissance political interests" (VI, 361).

⁴³ Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre, p. 101.

⁴⁴ Dickey, "Language and Role," pp. 553-56; cf. Maurice Hunt, Shakespeare 's Romance of the Word (Lewisburg: Bucknell Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 21-26.

⁴⁵Narrative and Dramatic Sources, ed. Bullough, VI, 361.

⁴⁶ On the play's minor departures from the Apollonius tradition in this episode, see Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre, pp. 10, 66-67, 214-15. For his part, Pericles associates Simonides sitting in state with his own father at the height of his power (II.iii.37-42). Seen in this light, Pericles' courtship of Thaisa complicates easy generalizations about the incest motif in the play.

⁴⁷ Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre, p. 10.

⁴⁸Narrative and Dramatic Sources, ed. Bullough, VI, 373.

⁴⁹ See Dickey, "Language and Role," p. 559.

⁵⁰ Politically or financially advantageous marriages are important in a number of Shakespeare's other plays, in various genres; one may think of such objects of marital desire as Portia in Merchant of Venice, Elizabeth of York in Richard III, Gertrude in Hamlet, Octavia in Antony and Cleopatra, or, in romance, Imogen in Cymbeline.

⁵¹ Hoeniger, ed., Pericles, pp. lxxx-lxxxi.

⁵² Dickey, "Language and Role," p. 556.

⁵³ Ibid. Pericles' confidence that things will work out with his exile seems unduly optimistic. Contemplating the threat to Tyre he perceives from Antiochus, and wishing to assure himself that his proposed flight will not worsen the situation, Pericles asks Helicanus, "But should he wrong my liberties in my absence?" and receives the assurance, "We'll mingle our bloods together in the earth,/ From whence we had our being and our birth" (I.ii.1 12-14). Despite this declaration of resolve, worthy of the English lords whom Henry V leaves behind when he sets off to conquer France (Henry F I.ii.136-220), these are presumably the same defenders whose ability to withstand Antiochus had been troubling Pericles:

With hostile forces he'll o'erspread the land,
And with th'ostent of war will look so huge,
Amazement shall drive courage from the state,
Our men be vanquish'd ere they do resist. . . .

(I.ii.25-28)

On Pericles' physical and metaphorical absences from Tyre, it is worth noting that we get few glimpses of him in his own kingdom among his own subjects. He appears in Tyre after fleeing Antioch, at the start of the play, and remains briefly, consumed by worry about the threat he perceives from Antiochus. Later, in the long interval between Marina's birth and Dionyza's plot on her life, we see nothing of Pericles or his restored rule in Tyre. After Cleon and Dionyza build a monument to Marina, Gower reports Pericles' return to Tharsus with a large retinue, a detail that does more to set up his exchange with them than illuminate his rule (IV.iv.9-12).

⁵⁴ On Jacobean attitudes towards the acceptance of gifts by courtiers and government officials, see Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (1990; rpt. New York: Routledge, 1993), passim. On Renaissance attitudes towards the reciprocity of benefits, see John M. Wallace, "The Senecan Context of Coriolanus," Modern Philology, 90 (1993), 465-78.

⁵⁵ Hoeinger, ed., Pericles, p. xv.

⁵⁶ Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre, p. 215.

⁵⁷ See Hoeinger, ed., Pericles, p. 162 (n. to Epi. 12).

⁵⁸ The plot requires that Pericles remain wholly ignorant of Lord Cerimon, who revived Thaisa after she had washed ashore and then facilitated her new life at Diana's temple, though the audience sees him as a model of private benevolence and wisdom as well as, apparently, the dominant figure in Ephesus.

⁵⁹Narrative and Dramatic Sources, ed. Bullough, VI, 366.

⁶⁰ Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre, p. 70.

⁶¹ Ibid., pp. 21, 215.

⁶² Thaisa is also a figure of some resolution, or at least constancy, in that she dedicates herself wholeheartedly to a new life as a nun at Diana's temple. A certain passivity reminiscent of Pericles is also evident, however: after awakening in Ephesus she assumes she will never see Pericles again (III.iv.7-9), even though the evidence for concluding her spouse has perished is less compelling than it was for Pericles, and she chooses to remain in Ephesus to take on her "vestal livery" rather than continue on to Tyre (or return to her father in Pentapolis). Like Pericles, Thaisa assumes she will "never more have joy" (1. 10).

⁶³ On Marina's accomplishments, contrasted with the greater emphasis on her counterpart's intellect and learning in Apollonius of Tyre, see Elizabeth Archibald, "'Deep clerks she dumbs': The Learned Heroine in Apollonius of Tyre and Pericles," Comparative Drama, 22 (1988), 289-303.

Source: "'The care...of subjects' good': Pericles, James I, and the Neglect of Government," in Comparative Drama, Vol. 30, No. 2, Summer, 1996, pp. 220-44.