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Shakespeare and Space pp 121–140Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Sea in Pericles

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Abstract

By the time Shakespeare and Wilkins’s Pericles (1608) was written, English trading into the Levant had grown to significant volumes, and a permanent English consul had been based for nearly 20 years in Aleppo, with a remit that included Tripoli, Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Amman, and all other port cities in Syria and Palestine, among them Tharsus, Antioch and Tyre. This essay explores the ways in which the contemporary aspirations of English merchants and diplomats in the Levant are subtly registered in a play that has its main character voyaging across the sea, dealing in grain, and acquiring kingdoms by diplomacy or marriage. The main focus is on the meaning of the sea as a geopolitical space and itself a dramatic agent in the play.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The identification of Pentapolis as Cyrene is longstanding among Shakespearean editors, though other locations have been suggested. For recent discussions, see McJannet (1998, 91–2) and Hanna (2002, 115–21).

  2. 2.

    Hanna considers the six locations specifically from the perspective of what Shakespeare may have known about them.

  3. 3.

    On Shakespeare’s engagement with Greece more generally, see Hanna (1998).

  4. 4.

    Hunt relates the play to the Acts of the Apostles, arguing that the voyage of St Paul, who was born in Tarsus, spent time in Ephesus and visited Antioch, ‘occupies part of the foreground of the play’ (Hunt 2002, 134).

  5. 5.

    On Biddulph and his response to the landscape of the Levant see MacLean (2004a).

  6. 6.

    Ortelius’s map of the peregrinations of St Paul (‘Peregrinationis Divi Pauli Typus Cartographicus’) is reprinted in McJannet (1998, 89); his map of the Roman empire (‘Romani Imperii Imago’) is reprinted by Gossett (2004, 130).

  7. 7.

    On the history of the Levant Company, see Epstein (1908) and Wood (1964).

  8. 8.

    On English trade in the Mediterranean, see Davis (1961).

  9. 9.

    For an overview of the Company’s factories in the Levant see Wood (1964, 59–79).

  10. 10.

    All Pericles citations are taken from W. Shakespeare and G. Wilkins, Pericles, ed. Suzanne Gossett, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004).

  11. 11.

    A rare exception is Relihan (1992).

  12. 12.

    On maritime (and many other) themes in The Tempest, see Hulme and Sherman (2000); on the sea in Antony and Cleopatra, see Klein (2004, 97–9) and Publicover (2014).

  13. 13.

    On shipwreck in Shakespeare, see Habermann (2012).

  14. 14.

    On the Jonah story and Pericles, see Dean (2000).

  15. 15.

    See, for example, the New Cambridge edition of Pericles, which devotes a whole section to ‘Journeys’ in the introduction (DelVecchio and Hammond 1998, 58–61). I do not share the editors’ impression that ‘characters find themselves in constant transit… between one location and another’ (59) since only a handful of characters out of a very large cast undertake any travelling at all.

  16. 16.

    These eight journeys are broken up into two periods of frequent voyaging. In the first three acts, Pericles sails from Antioch to Tyre (1), to Tarsus (2), to Pentapolis (3), back to Tarsus (4) and Tyre (5). He then sits tight in Tyre for 14 years, before undertaking his final journeys: Tyre to Tarsus (6), Mytilene (7) and Ephesus (8).

  17. 17.

    One nautical mile corresponds to 1852 m.

  18. 18.

    The trip between Tarsus and Tyre may indeed have taken around 24 h around 1600 (though not in antiquity) if we assume favourable winds and an average speed of c.6 knots. The estimate is confirmed by Biddulph who notes that the slightly longer trip from Cyprus to Jaffa is ‘not two daies sailing… with a good winde’ (Biddulph 1609, G.ii.r). By ‘two daies’, Biddulph presumably means under 36 h.

  19. 19.

    These circumstances are deliberately exaggerated in the play. In the source text by Twine it takes the coffin 2 days to reach Ephesus from a location much further west than Tarsus, and the narrator explains that it was dragged westward by the tide while the ship sailed on in the other direction (Twine 1594[?], G.iiij.v). In Gower’s Confessio Amantis, the decision to make for Tarsus is taken only after the coffin has been committed to the waves.

  20. 20.

    Hanna sees Pericles as an early modern revenant ‘of the intelligent, enduring Greek seafarer’ (Hanna 1998, 114).

  21. 21.

    On Mediterranean navigation in the sixteenth century, see Braudel (2000, 77–109); on the distinction between coasting and navigation in early modern times, see Waters (1978).

  22. 22.

    A Dutch mile is roughly equivalent to an English league, or 5 km.

  23. 23.

    The comment is often quoted (see, for example, Gossett 2004, 129; Roebuck and Maguire 2010, 39).

  24. 24.

    For an opposing view see Cormack (2001, 162) and his revised reading (Cormack 2008, 282). For a view of Pericles as a ‘colonizer’, see Mentz (2009, 71).

  25. 25.

    Steven Mullaney also notes the mercantile references in Pericles, especially in the brothel scenes, and draws an analogy with the commercial theatres in London (Mullaney 1988, 135–51).

  26. 26.

    The capitulation was printed by Richard Hakluyt in The Principal Navigations, both in the first edition (1589) and in the expanded second edition (1598–1600). For the full text of the capitulation, including translation and analysis, see Skilliter (1977, 86–104). For the historical context, see İnalcık (1994, 368).

  27. 27.

    For some thoughts on maritime labour in the play, see Vitkus (2010).

  28. 28.

    For an extended discussion of the significance of the armour, see Roebuck and Maguire (2010).

  29. 29.

    The remarks occur in a letter sent by the English factor John Sanderson to the Levant Company on 25 May 1600.

  30. 30.

    The entry is dated 3 June 1600. See also Wood (1964, 25–6).

  31. 31.

    The argument has been made persuasively by MacLean (2004b).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of English, University of Kent, Kent, UK

    Bernhard Klein

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  1. Bernhard Klein
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  1. University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Ina Habermann

  2. University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Michelle Witen

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Klein, B. (2016). The Sea in Pericles . In: Habermann, I., Witen, M. (eds) Shakespeare and Space. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51835-4_7

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