ABSTRACT
GENERAL RECEPTION AND THE QUESTION OF AUTHORSHIP In tenns of its reception throughout the ages, Pericles is perhaps the most paradoxical of Shakespeare's plays. Many have received more sustained praise, and one or two have been more consistently reviled, but never has a play swung so erratically, so violently, between the poles of opprobrium and adoration. From the play's earliest days, when Ben Jonson's bitter dismissal of it was belied by stirring testimonials to the play's power and popularity, to its recent description by a newspaper critic as "that unfashionable, academically despised play that always turns up trumps,"l Pericles has been the object of extremely divided critical opinion.
