Claire Preston

The emblematic structure of Pericles

Abstract Pericles is an odd play, and the corrupt state of the text may be partly to blame. But the textual ‘badness’ of Pericles has infected critical judgements, so that the theories of its misfortunes at the hands of collaborators, pirates, plagiarists, and memorial maulers are often used simply to confirm its apparently poor literary quality. That it was excluded from the First Folio may only acknowledge its doubtful textual condition; yet this earliest editorial judgement does not, any more than the assessments of modern critics, contradict the fact of its great success on stage during Shakespeares lifetime.1 The disparity between audiences and editors is an index of the fundamental debate which vexes all discussions of the play: Is Pericles authentically Shakespearian, and must it be certified as such before critical studies of it are warranted? It has, unfortunately, been all too easy to be distracted by its questionable status and so neglect its literary merits.

Robert Boyle’s ‘Accidents of an Ague’ and Its Precursors

In 1623–4 John Donne suffered a life-threatening illness characterised by ‘pyrexia’ (fever), spots, rheum, and various sequelae such as insomnia and general weakness. Either typhus or relapsing fever, or possibly both in sequence, the acute phase of the illness continued for about a fortnight, followed by a period of convalescence. The entire episode lasted 23 days.1 In the meditation that commences each of the 23 chronological sections of Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624) he narrates the progress of this illness and recovery, collecting from his observed symptoms, from their diagnosis and treatment by physicians, and from his contingent reflections upon them a spiritual self-assessment that makes an analogy of the work of the physician and of the meditating intellect. Medical narrative, reflectional meditation, spiritual autobiography, and mundane life-writing meet in this devotional fusion.