Avoiding "the Common Shore": Pericles , Shakespeare, and Wilkins

Abstract: This new reading of Pericles takes account of the probable division of the writing of the play between William Shakespeare and George Wilkins. Using this play as an example, it argues therefore for the nonpurity of a Shakespearean text. Drawing on Thomas Nashe and Thomas Middleton for support, and noting the carnivalesque aspects of the play's language that associate with the emphasis on the degraded and the discarded, I explore the play's insistence upon the "common shore"—a liminal space which gathers filth, discarded waste material, and other instances of the abject. Such waste material must be voided, or avoided, and this emphasis forms part of the play's refusal of celebration, in favor of dispersion and withdrawal.