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The Sea
The sea has a powerfully symbolic presence throughout Pericles, which takes place in several locations around the Aegean Sea. The sea is an oppositional symbol: it represents both life and death, adventure and danger. Pericles first takes to the sea out of a need to leave Tyre seek safety from Antiochus’s assassin. But even as the sea provides an avenue for escape, it immediately presents him with near-fatal danger as he encounters a tempest that sinks his ship. Miraculously, Pericles survives the shipwreck. He then washes up on the shore near Pentapolis, a place where no one knows him and his name means nothing. Thus, when he walks up the beach, dripping wet, he is symbolically reborn—and the sea, which had nearly been his tomb, is now the womb from which he reenters the world. In this way, the sea possesses the power to give life and to take it away. We see a similar phenomenon later, when Thaisa, apparently dead, is thrown overboard in a chest that ends up on the shores of Ephesus, where she is discovered and revived. Likewise, just as the sea is what separates Pericles from his wife and daughter, it’s also what enables their eventual reunion.
Rusted Armor
When Pericles emerges from the sea on the shore near Pentapolis, he encounters a group of fishermen. As they pull one of their nets out the ocean, they discover that they’ve captured not a big fish, but a set of old armor that has been rusted by the seawater. Pericles immediately recognizes the armor as having belonged to his father. He goes on to explain that his father had given him this armor, insisting that it had saved his life and that it would do the same for his son. Being the only other object to survive the shipwreck, rusted armor is symbolically linked to Pericles’s survival and endurance. However, this moment is also significant in the way it represents the symbolic reunion of a father and his child, which foreshadows Pericles’s later reunion with his long-lost Marina. In the scenes that follow, the rusted armor takes on an additional symbolic valence as Pericles takes part in a jousting tournament in Pentapolis. In contrast to the other knights in their shining armor, Pericles looks ridiculous in his rusty old suit. But as King Simonides reminds his chuckling lords, they mustn’t be deceived by appearances. And indeed, Pericles goes on to win the tournament.
Pericles’s Uncut Hair
When Pericles leaves his newborn daughter to be fostered in Tarsus, he makes the following vow: “Till she be married, . . . all / Unscissored shall this hair of mine remain” (3.3.32–34). Fourteen years later, Pericles finally returns to Tarsus to reclaim Marina, only to learn that she has died at sea. Devastated by this news, Pericles “swears / Never to wash his face nor cut his hairs” (4.4.28–29). Additionally, he exchanges his rich royal garb for rough sackcloth and refuses to speak. Pericles’s increasingly disheveled appearance, ascetic dress, and vow of silence all indicate his state of mourning. Perhaps more importantly, though, they also symbolize his humility. Instead of raging against his fate and cursing the gods, he humbly accepts his suffering and allows it to register in his appearance. Thus, when he later comes face to face with his long-lost daughter, they are thoroughly unrecognizable to each other. The mutual nonrecognition is, of course, inevitable, since they parted ways when she was born. But it’s also symbolic, as revealed by the fact that when they finally do recognize each other, Pericles promises to restore his earlier appearance: “And what this fourteen years no razor touched, / To grace thy marriage day I’ll beautify” (5.3.89–90).
