The Gospel according to Shakespeare

Chapter 3: Music of the Spheres

41 C h a p t e r 3 Music of the Spheres This, this: no more, you gods! v Pericles opens under the dark shadow of incest, and with an escape.the prince of tyre’s misfortunes begin when he goes to antioch to try to win the hand of king antiochus’ daughter by solving a riddle. if he does not succeed, he will be condemned to death. however, realizing the dreadful secret of the incest between father and daughter, pericles finds himself being chased by a murderer sent by antiochus and returns to tyre, where he entrusts helicanus with the task of ruling tyre and then flees (like Jonah) to tarsus, which is ruled by Cleon and Dionyza and is currently devastated by a terrible famine. pericles helps tarsus with food from his ship. after receiving a letter from helicanus calling him back to his country, he sets sail for tyre. a fierce storm leaves him shipwrecked. reduced to rags, he is washed up on the shore of pentapolis , where the waves also throw up the armor left to him by his father on his deathbed. With this armor he takes part in a jousting tournament to win the hand of thaisa, daughter of king Simonides of pentapolis .thaisa falls in love with him,and the two marry.another message arrives from helicanus, calling pericles back to tyre once more. the 42 The Gospel according to Shakespeare pregnant thaisa insists on boarding the ship alongside her husband, but it is hit by a storm, during which thaisa gives birth to a daughter and then dies. Pericles is above all a tale of infinite mishaps at sea.t. S. eliot commented that when he read it, he had “a sense of a pervading smell of seaweed” from start to finish.1 Shakespeare, of course, did not invent the story but borrowed it from a medieval poet and, in the final analysis, from a late antiquity romance and from the legend of a saint, Mary Magdalene. Between pericles and Mary Magdalene there is a tenuous but fascinating connection. Pericles is the dramatic version of the story, passed on through a hundred different renditions and languages, of apollonius of tyre. (Shakespeare simply changes the names, but he refers explicitly to the tale about apollonius written by the fourteenthcentury poet John Gower in the Confessio Amantis, with Gower himself also appearing in the Chorus of the play.) But in the Middle ages there was a splendid contamination between the adventures of apollonius and those of Magdalene. in Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea, for example, Magdalene, now sister to Martha and Lazarus and a sinner par excellence, washes Jesus’feet with her tears, dries them with her hair and anoints them with precious oil, repents, witnesses the Crucifixion, anoints the body of Jesus after his death, and is the first to see the Lord resurrected. thirteen years after the ascension, Magdalene, Lazarus, Martha, and others are made to board a ship by the unfaithful and are cast into the waves. Divine will, however, enables them to reach Marseilles, where Magdalene preaches faith in Christ. Before converting, the head of the province and his wife want Magdalene to perform a miracle to make the lady fertile. When the wife finds herself pregnant, her husband decides to visit peter in rome to verify that the Christian truth corresponds exactly to what Magdalene preaches. Going against all attempts to dissuade her, the woman insists on accompanying her husband. Blessed by the saint, man and wife set off on their journey. on the second day, however, there is a dreadful storm, and the woman dies in childbirth on board the ship.the sailors want to throw her body into the sea to placate the waves, but the husband sees to it that his wife and child, covered by a cloak, are left on a “hill” that Music of the Spheres 43 arises from the sea. Cursing Magdalene for what has happened, he continues on to rome, where peter advises him to bear patiently his wife’s “sleep” and that of the child resting alongside her. he reassures the husband that just as the Lord gives, takes, and returns, so he will be able to transform his tears into joy. two years later, instructed in the faith by peter and having visited Jerusalem with him, the man sets sail for Marseilles. he stops at the...