'Pericles' by William Shakespeare

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes Shakespeare's play "Pericles".The paper discusses the way that Shakespeare utilizes fantasy elements, such as a fairy tale format and characters from extreme ends of the spectrum, to illustrate a kind of reality. The paper further discusses how by grabbing the reader, and allowing them to explore this make-believe world, Shakespeare also allows us to explore our inner self, the real source of truth.

From the Paper:

"Near the end of his life, Shakespeare began experimenting with the seemingly artificial elements of the Romances. With its extraordinary plot riddled with random occurrences, and its ridiculously apparent fairy tale format, Pericles is the most obviously contrived of all of these later plays. Once one looks beyond the bland rhyme schemes of the first two acts and the underdeveloped characters throughout, however, one can begin to understand that the blatant artificiality of the play is deliberate. The question is why? Why would Shakespeare choose to create such an unrealistic play? The answer being that Pericles delineates the ideas and concepts that are fundamental parts of the real world through the use of these artificial conventions. For instance, the archetypal characters and the episodic sequences of events place Pericles in the company of stories such as Snow White and Cinderella. Yet the reason why these kinds of characters appeal to people so much is because they reflect the very ideals and emotions that people see in themselves. Likewise, the episodic events parallel reality, in that life seldom follows the traditional narrative arch found in many of Shakespeare's earlier plays."

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