Учебное пособие 4 unit I. The renaissance 1485-1649

UNIT XII.
THE LATE PLAYS
Toward the end of his career, Shakespeare created several experimental
plays that have become known as tragicomedies or romances. These plays
differ considerably from Shakespeare’s earlier comedies, being more radical
in their dramatic art and showing greater concern with reconciliation among
generations. Ye t like the earlier comedies the tragicomedies end happily
with reunions or renewal. Typically, virtue is sorely tested in the
tragicomedies, but almost miraculously succeeds. Through the intervention
of magic and art—or their emotional equivalent, compassion, or their
theological equivalent, grace—the spectacular triumph of virtue that marks
the ends of these plays suggests redemptive hope for the human condition. In
these late plays, the necessity of death and sadness in human existence is
recognized but located within larger patterns of harmony that suggest we are
“led on by heaven, and crowned with joy at last,” as the epilogue of Pericles
proposes.
PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE
Pericles
exists only in a somewhat corrupted text, an unauthorized
version probably “pirated” by Shakespeare’s contemporaries—created from
notes taken during performances and published in order to capitalize on its
great popularity. The play is also thought by critics to have originally been a
collaborative effort between Shakespeare and another author. Its central
themes, however, are characteristic of the tragicomic romances of
Shakespeare’s late period. As in
The Winter’s Tale
and
The Tempest, th
e play
focuses particularly on the relationship between father and daughter. Its
backdrop of the sea further recalling the exotic atmosphere of
The Tempest,
while its concern with separation and reunion is reminiscent of Leontes’
estrangement from and reconciliation with his wife and daughter in
The
Winter’s Tale—a
lthough, unlike Leontes, Pericles is innocent of any blame
for the separation. Here, in Act 5, Scene i, after a series of adventures, King
Pericles, believing his wife and daughter to be dead, has fallen into a deep
depression and has not spoken for three months. His ship comes to rest near
Mytilene. There, he is welcomed by the governor, Lysimachus, who, hearing
of the King’s plight, introduces him to a girl whose beauty and virtue he
believes may help to effect a cure. The cure is indeed successful, as the girl is
discovered to be Pericles’ long-lost daughter Marina.
T
he romantic tragicomedy
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
was written in 1607
and 1608 and first published in 1609. It concerns the trials and tribulations of

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the title character, including the painful loss of his wife and the persecution
of his daughter. After many exotic adventures,
Pericles i
s reunited with his
loved ones; even his supposedly dead wife is discovered to have been
magically preserved. The play’s central themes are characteristic of the late
plays.
Pericles
focuses particularly on the relationship between father and
daughter, as do
The Winter’s Tale
and The Tempest. Its backdrop of the sea
also recalls the setting of The Tempest, while its concern with separation and
reunion is reminiscent of
The Winter’s Tale.
However, Pericles is innocent of
any blame for the disruption of his family, unlike Leontes’s estrangement
from his wife and daughter in The Winter’s Tale.
Although
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
was a great success in its own time, the
play exists only in a somewhat corrupted text. It did not appear in the First
Folio, and critics have long debated how much of it Shakespeare actually
wrote. Some believe the play was a collaborative effort between Shakespeare
and another author, usually thought to be George Wilkins. Pericles is based
on a medieval legend, Apollonius, Prince of Tyre, which had many English
retellings, from Confessio Amantis (Confessions of a Poet) by John Gower in
the late 14th century to a prose novella by Laurence Twine written in the
1570s.