The Miracle of Pericles

Pericles' wife, Thaisa, dies in childbirth - as their daughter Marina is born.

The birth/death takes place on a ship at sea and the sailors know they must cast the mother's body overboard if they are to survive the storm, for their 'superstition' says that dead people can not be carried on the boat without bringing bad luck.

Pericles agrees.  Thaisa's body is cast overboard in a make-shift coffin.  And Pericles mourns her.

As the ship sails off towards Tharsus, we know that his wife is dead and that she has been buried at sea.  This birth/death has proven to be the next episode in Pericles' life-journey.

When, the next morning, the coffin is washed up on the shores of an island, it is discovered by natives.  There is no immediate interest from them, since they believe it is just debris from the storm.  Eventually they approach it, open it and discover the corpse.  It soon becomes clear that one of them - Cerimon, a student of physic - believes the woman in the coffin may still be alive.

Steps are taken to revive her and - astonishingly - she revives.

So... the question is...

Is this a case of a poor diagnosis on the boat?  Was a simple error made in proclaiming Thaisa dead?  Or is this something else?  A miracle?

Be in no doubt: this is a miracle.

Thaisa dies.  She is dead.  And then she is not.

'But she never actually dies,' says an actor, 'People just think she has'.

Wrong.

Thaisa dies because the audience, without the benefit of hindsight, knows she is dead.  And Shakespeare makes sure that we know this.  Indeed his whole play depends on us knowing this.  Arguably it is our own act of 'knowing' this which actually renders her dead: we lay her to rest in our minds as we anticipate Pericles' next adventure - and it does not involve Thaisa. We, like Pericles, leave her out of our expectations.  For she is dead - and Marina lives.

As a result, when the coffin is opened on the shore, we are more interested in what will be found in it than we are in any idea that Thaisa might be about to revive.

But then she wakes.

It is an astonishing moment.  It seems absurd.  Magical, but without magic.

Because Shakespeare is exploring the impossible: he is seeing if a playwright can overcome that final obstacle - death itself.  Yet, being a Shakespeare play, there is more to it even than this. 

For when Thaisa returns to life, the door is opened to a once-impossible reunion between her, the husband who buried her and the daughter who herself was once condemned to die.

Thus the miracle of Thaisa's awakening engenders the miracle of a family being reunited in life, after death.

It is a staggering concept and it could only be attempted and successfully achieved by a playwright at the peak of his powers.

How Shakespeare guides us to the most complex of human experiences through the strangest of tales is worthy of a lifetime's study.

Put simply, relatively unknown though it is, Pericles is Shakespeare's greatest play.