ABSTRACT
Pericles has long posed a critical dilemma, from Ben Jonson’s famous ridiculing of it as a “mouldy tale” drawn from stale “scraps out of every dish” to Norton Shakespeare editor who concedes “messiness of the play’s materials” make it seem “preposterous,” “like the play from hell.” Crisscrossing past and present, Pericles hybridizes romance traditions, grafting ancient pagan Greek plots and medieval Catholic motifs to a “latter times” post-Reformation consciousness. The tenacity and the power of Gower’s old song gets rehearsed, albeit in a less self-conscious way, in the play’s next resurrection: Cerimon’s “great miracle” of raising Thaisa in Ephesus. The “lying wonders” that Perkins condemns as Romish heresy descend from the false healers of Ephesus. The discovery of Thaisa’s coffin plays upon both sorcerous and providential connotations, emphasizing the pun of Cerimon’s name with “ceremony.” As Cerimon confers with the two gentlemen, some servants enter bearing a chest.
