William Shakespeare’s Pericles: Prince of Tyre is highly concerned with the thematic concept of fate. The role of fate is strikingly introduced by virtue of incidents that are remarkable for their utter disconnect from reality. While it is certainly tempting to apply modern conventions of realism and the expectations of realistic conventions regarding plot and incident and character to Shakespearean drama, ultimately it is a path destined to disappoint when one begins to move past the more familiarly realistic histories and tragedies of the Bard. Any attempt to implicate the narrative that unfolds in Pericles within any recognizable sense of the real world can only result in an utter rejection of William Shakespeare’s legacy as the world’s greatest playwright. This rejection occurs mainly as a result of the infamous arrival of pirates that suddenly intrude upon the narrative seemingly from out of nowhere, make their presence known in an astonishingly short amount of dialogue and proceed to disappear in physical form while their presence remains firmly established as agents in service of the plot. Any attempt to treat the arrival of those pirates who kidnap Marina as realistic characters in the same sense that Hamlet or Juliet are real characters would make it impossible to accept anything that follows. Clearly, the pirates are intended to represent the supernatural and metaphorical figures of fates capable of controlling the destiny of humans and, more to the point, their aggressively anti-realistic realization of piracy indicates their existence as warning to humans that attempting to know the ways of god is as fruitless an endeavor as trying to fit Pericles into a contemporary image of realistic drama.
The scene in which pirates show up to kidnap Marina is utterly ridiculous for a number of reasons. One, the plot is forever altered on account of their appearance. Two, their appearance is never foreshadowed; they just show up in the ultimate act of random dramatic convenience. The most ridiculous aspect of the characters of the pirates, however, is that they do not seem to exemplify anything even remotely familiar about piracy on the high seas. The pirates serve the convenience of plot in keeping Marina from being murdered, thus bringing the play to a surprisingly unexpected climax, but only to turn around and sell her into prostitution where—against every precedent in the history of the known world—she remains the virgin also called for by the plot. Even more bizarre, of course, is that Marina fails to lose her virginity before being sold into prostitution. Apparently, her luck extended beyond avoiding murder at the hands of pirates from nowhere to being captured by the only pirates not interested in raping and pillaging. Well, perhaps the pirates did engage in some pillaging; they come and go from the plot so quickly that the audience is given precious little information about them. Taken on a purely literal level, every single aspect about the pirates in Pericles is the very definition of ludicrous. Perhaps that lack of any literal quality being attached to the pirates is the very point of their arrival.
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"Agents of Fate in Pericles: The Pirates of Penance".
Trying to accept the pirates on the same literal and realistic level as even the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet’s father threatens to undo the more intellectual examination of the play’s themes by reducing it to the level of a soap. Pirates showing up to kidnap Marina without raping her only to sell her into prostitution where she fails even to lose her virginity is on roughly the same creative level as the multitudes of amnesiacs showing up in town after being thought dead only to turn out to be long-lost identical twins who have never once been mentioned prior to their arrival on any number of soap operas. Treating the influence of the pirates as an example of realism may be useful for approaching a staging of the play as a satire or farce, but treating the intervention of the pirates as a literary device intended to deepen the play’s thematic concerns with free will or the lack thereof takes the play to the completely opposite end of the spectrum. Rather than becoming plot contrivances suitable for a soap opera, those pirate who seem to skirt the edge of farce or satire instead become profound specters of the mysteries of fate.
From one perspective, then, the pirates in Pericles almost become figures that would seem more at home in a postmodernist meta-textual commentary on an ancient Greek tragedy. Taken as agents of fate instead of as real flesh and blood humans, the pirates can be transformed into thematic devices that undo their ridiculous aspect. The idea that pirates uninterested in raving marina show up is beyond ridiculous; describe them as oracles out of Oedipus and the entire aspect changes. And why should the pirates be viewed in this way rather than simply as realistic rogues on the high seas? Mainly due to the fact they appear in the same narrative as the one in which Pericles declares that:
“You gods that made me man, and sway in love,
That have inflam’d desire in my breast
To taste the fruit of yon celestial tree,
Or die in the adventure, be my helps,
As I am son and servant to your will” (I.i.19-23).
Pericles is a play and Pericles a character that is positively obsessed with themes related to the role that the gods play in the unraveling the mysteries of destiny. On numerous occasions, Pericles (among other others) question how the gods can be so cavalier and mysterious in their control of fate and the future. When Pericles wonders inquires of the gods “Why do you make us love your goodly gifts / And snatch them straight away” (III.i.23-24) he is expanding the play’s thematic obsession with fates in more ways than one. He is admitting that not only does he recognize he is not in control of his own destiny, but that he cannot get into the mind of the gods. Which, of course, is exactly what he and every other human who believes in a greater power spend their entire lives trying to do. The arrival of the pirates thus becomes one of single greatest examples of why people should never try to base the quality of the intervention of fate based on mere incident.
The pirates’ arrival cannot be explained through realistic convention and that has to be accepted. What appears at first to be really bad news for Marina turns out to be good news in that she is saved from certain death. Then the hands of fate turn again as she sold into sex slavery. Then that expectation is undone and she returns home with her innocence still intact. What this bizarre intrusion into the narrative serves to suggest with its pirates that do not act like any actual pirates who ever existed and its brothel that buys women for prostitution but lets them maintain their virginity is that it is truly a fool’s errand to attempt to penetrate into the mysteries of fate. Destiny can never be known and Pericles confirms a modern aphorism: when one door closes another opens. The turn that the plot of Pericles takes with the inexplicable appearance of these pirates reflects the many millions of times in the real world that what has on the surface appeared to be the worst possible circumstances to befall someone turns out to be what is often described as a “blessing in disguise.” How many countless times has “blessing in disguise” been characterized as beyond all realistic expectations?
Few stage directions in the entirety of William Shakespeare’s canon can be accurately escribed as being beyond realistic expectations more than two simple words found near the end of the first scene of the fourth act of Pericles: Prince of Tyre. With the directive “Enter Pirates” (IV.ii) the play’s meditation on themes related to free will, self-determination and the role of fate that is beyond control become concrete. The pirates of penance in Pericles serve to remind those who dare think they can read “signs” of their future that they are committing one of the most costly sins of which humans are capable.
- Shakespeare, William. Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.
