By: psi2u2

psi2u2 — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 19:06:28 +0000

The statement “the play was based on that story” is at best incomplete and at worst misleading. There is sufficient intertextuality between the Shakespeare play and Wilkins’ account to assure some connection between the two, but it is unlikely that that connection consisted of a simple scenario like “Shakespeare used Wilkins” or even “Shakespeare collaborated with Wilkins to copy Wilkins.” Pericles stories go back to Apollonius of Tyre, a famous classic of the middle ages, and eventually found their way into the Gesta Romanorum. The two obvious sources for the Shakespearean play are Gower’s Book 8 in his *Confessio Amantis* and Lawrence Twine’s *The Pattern of Painefull Adventures.*

All in all, it seems most probable that the inter-textual connection between the Wilkins and Shakespeare texts is best explained on the hypothesis that Wilkins, perhaps sometime in 1608, saw a performance of the play and retained in his memory and notes some language from it. As the play seemed a theatrical success (it always has been, despite the immaturity of its construction and relatively simplistic characterizations), and had not yet been published, Wilkins saw a good chance to cash in by writing up a novelistic account of the story, under the influence of the play. As for extensive collaboration with anyone to produce this play, such theories will in the long run almost certainly be adjudged erroneous extrapolations based on the undeniable fact of the play’s relatively “primitive” or early nature. It is certainly not Jacobean in its origins, any more than Cymbeline is.

Dr. Roger Stritmatter

Comments on: George Wilkins 1576-1618

By: psi2u2