Author : David Young
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
ISBN 13 : 146285205X
Total Pages : 99 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (628 download)
Book Synopsis Imagining Shakespeare's Pericles by : David Young
Download or read book Imagining Shakespeare's Pericles written by David Young and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2011-04-08 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pericles is widely understood to be the first of Shakespeare’s late romances, but it is also widely considered a problematic text with multiple authors. Its first two acts are frequently assigned to a man named George Wilkins. These conjectures about authorship, however, fail to take adequate account of Gower, the medieval poet who acts as chorus throughout and stages the old story of Apollonius of Tyre, here renamed Pericles. If Gower was not Shakespeare’s choice, then Wilkins (or whomever else is proposed as co-author) brilliantly anticipated many of the central themes of the late romances, an unlikely possibility. If Gower was Shakespeare’s idea, then the play must be re-examined in the light of Gower’s role as “co-author” and its bearing on the stagecraft and verse of Pericles. One way to do this is by narration, retracing what may have been Shakespeare’s creative process in conceiving and then writing the play. Told as a story, this argument for Shakespeare’s sole authorship can remain conjectural (and entertaining) at the same time that it puts forward serious scholarly arguments. This book, then, tells the story in twenty-one short chapters, which are followed by an Afterword that clarifies David Young’s scholarly position.