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Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies Volume 1 Issue 1 2011 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies Volume 1 Issue 1 2011 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies Editor Dipti Ranjan Pattanaik Coeditors Susmita Pani Mrutyunjaya Mohanty Editorial Assistants Sambit Panigrahi Viraj Shukla Editorial Board Paul St-Pierre Former Professor, Montreal University Ellen Handler Spitz Honors College Professor of Visual Art, The University of Maryland (UMBC) John Cussen Associate Professor, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania Thomas Kemple Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia Himanshu Mohapatra Professor of English, Utkal University Editorial Correspondence Susmita Pani, Department of English, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack-753003, Orissa, India. E-mail: [email protected] Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies will be published twice a year, in summer and winter by the Department of English, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Orissa, India. Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies Volume 1 Issue 1 2011 5 Dharanidhar Sahu Shakespeare’s Management of the Marina-Lysimachus Episode in Pericles, Prince of Tyre 17 Bijay K Danta Imagined Identities: J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians 35 Ashok K Mohapatra Appropriation, Coloniality and Ethics of Translation: Madhusudan Rao’s Nirbasitara Bilapa and William Cowper’s The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk 49 Khagendra Sethi The Concept of Eternity: Emerson and the East 67 Himansu S. Mohapatra The Real within the Hyper-real: Identity and Social Location in Vernon God Little 79 Sujit Mohapatra Mowgli’s Hybridity: Both Imperialist and Ideal Native Subject 99 Priyadarshi Patnaik Koili Poetry: An Exploration of the Transformation of Poetic Form 115 Bibhash Choudhury Clarissa and Feminine Subjectivity: Situating the Poetics of Experience in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway 137 Susmita Pani Verbal Reports as Data in Learner Strategy Research Shakespeare’s Management of the Marina-Lysimachus Episode in Pericles, Prince Of Tyre Dharanidhar Sahu The last four plays of William Shakespeare such as Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and Tempest known variously as Dramatic Romances or The Last Plays or simply Ro- mances, while sharing certain tendencies as a category, are distinct from one another in their own way. The whole corpus of this author’s plays, numbering 37, have been subsumed under different catego- ries based on chronology, genre and content by different editors be- ginning with John Heminge and Henry Condell, who had jointly and most assiduously edited The First Folio in 1623, seven years after the author’s demise. While giving due regard to the grouping of the plays such as Comedies, Tragicomedies, Histories, Tragedies and Romances, it may be said that each play wears its own distinct dy- namics insofar as its theme, characterization, dramatic situation and plot structure are concerned. But in the case of the play titled PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE, this distinctness is carried to such lengths as to encourage a good number of Shakespeare scholars to call it apocryphal, that is to say, un-Shakespearean. Famous editors of the 18th century such as Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson did not include this play in their editions of Shakespeare not simply be- cause it was not included in the First Folio considered to be most authentic. It actually contains some passages that are obviously faulty and certain scenes that cannot be written by Shakespeare at the peak of his ability. The reasons for such discrepancy have already been sorted out, [1] but a number of scholars refuse to admit this play into the Shakespeare canon. Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies Volume 1 Issue 1 2011 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 6 Pericles, Prince of Tyre is an example of how bibliographical reasons contribute to the textual interpretation of a play and which, in its turn, becomes a determining factor of its authorship. By bibli- ography, it is meant the study of the history of this play and its pro- duction in the printed form as well as in its theatrical form. This play is considered special for some valid reasons that are stated as fol- lows. It is the last play to be admitted, that too grudgingly, into the Shakespeare canon. Critics and scholars are still divided on the ques- tion of its single authorship. It, however, stretches one’s credulity to the limit to accept the fact that Shakespeare decided to collaborate with a lesser playwright for the first time in his career to write this play. This is the only play attributed to Shakespeare which is pre- sented to the audience by a medieval English poet (John Gower) who happens to be one of the source-authors of the play’s plot and story. It is the only play in which choral songs are written in imitation of the archaic medieval style typical of the said source-author John Gower. These choral songs have been presented in the forms of advance information, commentaries, apologia and moral judgments rolled into one and they are frequently followed by the dumb-shows. Both the choral songs and dumb-shows are intended to inform the audience about the events about to take place on the stage. These choral songs and dumb-shows also fulfill the dramatic function of glossing over the passages of time and sudden change of localities with an apologetic familiarity of tone. This is, perhaps, the only play of Shakespeare in which pagan gods are accommodated in a deeply Christian tradition and the pagan sufferers are indistinguishable from Christian martyrs. Finally, there is no other play of Shakespeare where some mediocre and clumsy passages that are unworthy of Shakespeare even in his apprentice years share the scenes with the passages whose supreme poetic quality is universally acknowledged. In spite of, as well as because of, so many special qualities, this play, as a whole, fails to convince some astute Shakespeare scholars that it is entirely written by Shakespeare. This essay is an attempt to foreground and critically discuss one particular episode involving Ma- rina, the daughter of Pericles and Lysimachus, the young Governor of Mytilene. While admitting that the playwright has borrowed the broad, even gross, outline of the plot from other sources, it is at- Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 7 tempted here to show how he altered it in a manner suggestive of superlative dramatic resourcefulness and subtlety. The Marina-Lysimachus episode in Act IV Scene 6 of Pericles, Prince of Tyre is undoubtedly as unique as it is intriguing. It is also emblematic of how Shakespeare fine-tunes some of his borrowed material to suit his creative concern for verisimilitude. The scene is intriguing because it bends both ways and sends out different signals to different scholars. Some scholars find the hand of an inept col- laborator in the making of this scene, because Shakespeare cannot possibly pair Marine off with Lysimachus, a man so utterly unwor- thy of her. Though the Governor of a country, he visits a brothel and claims he had come there with some other motive, adding falsehood to his lecherous nature. Marina is an accomplished and virtuous young woman, royally born and aristocratically brought up. Shakespeare takes great care to portray the princess. Her angelic innocence, her beauty, her artistic accomplishments, her precocious resourceful- ness in the brothel scenes and above all her extreme misfortunes, they all combine to endear her to the audience and readers. Many of the Shakespearean heroines pass through adversities, but none of them have been so grossly treated by circumstances. She survives by the skin of her teeth from the hired assassin Leonine; the pirates who saved her from death treat her as a commodity and auction her as a slave in the market place at Mytilene; the brothel keeper Bawd who buys her, his assistants Boult and Pander use violently bawdy language to her. Realizing that her fortune and her parents have deserted her, she summons up her own inner resources and invokes goddess Diana to save her chastity and honour. She succeeds in changing the heart of her customers and her keepers by the sheer power of her eloquence on, and her adherence to, virtue. Her life of woe is a tear-jerker; and she is a fully realized character. Gower calls her “absolute Marina” (Act IV Chorus 31). [2] This play, as the contemporary records show, had always been a great crowd- puller whenever it was staged and it still continues to be a favourite among Shakespearean plays because of the presence of Marina. Some scholars go to the extent of saying that the play should have been named after her, not after her father Pericles. Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 8 And yet such a paragon is made to marry Lysimachus who is bereft of any matching quality. He is punctilious about his position as the Governor of Mytilene. That is perhaps why he visits Bawd’s brothel disguised as a common man. His disguise is so careless that the brothel owner immediately recognizes him. “Here comes the Lord Lysimachus disguised,” says Bawd (Act IV, Scene 5, line 16). Neither he nor the brothel-keeper is surprised by that sudden dis- covery. That naturally means he is a regular visitor to the brothel. Unbothered by his exposure, he talks familiarly with Bawd and Boult. When they wish him good health, he asks them to provide him some healthy stuff (“How a dozen of virginities?”) so that he can continue in good health and also enrich them by his frequent visits. When Marina is presented to him, he comments: “Faith, she would serve after a long voyage at sea.” It means the young prostitute may be the right stuff for a sex-starved sailor, not for him.

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