Pericles was one of the most popular plays of its time, and it has regained much of that popularity today. In a wide-ranging introduction, Roger Warren draws on his experience of the play in rehearsal and performance to explore the reasons for this enduring popularity. Unfortunately Pericles survives only in a corrupt text, the Quarto of 1609, in which many passages are nonsensical and others appear to be missing altogether. Earlier editions have merely cleaned-up the Quarto, but this edition offers a conjectural reconstruction of what the original play might have been like. It draws upon George Wilkin's The Painful Adventures of Pericles (1608) to emend some of the errors and missing material. It does so in the belief that the play is a collaboration between Shakespeare and Wilkins.

As the first of the group of romances that he wrote towards the end of his life, Pericles marks Shakespeare"s turning away from realism and the exploration of human tragedy towards mysticism and calmer, symbolic realms. Miracle, myth and symbol pervade the action where Pericles experi- ences evil and innocence, guilt and atonement, birth, death and regeneration, on the epic journey that he undertakes in his search for true happiness. Moral growth and the ulti- mate triumph of uncorrupted youth emerge from this play which has much to offer the modern audience.

The text of this edition is taken from the Cambridge University Press New Shakespeare, edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson.