Egeon interrupts to say the man seeking redress is his son Antipholus. But it is Antipholus of Ephesus he indicates and that Antipholus at once denies any knowledge of Egeon. The Duke backs him up, saying he has known Antipholus of Ephesus all his life and that Antipholus has never been in Syracuse. (The Duke is as dull as the rest; he doesn't catch on either.)

It is only when the Abbess emerges with Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse, and the two Antipholuses and Dromios face each other, that all is clear at last. The Abbess turns out, of course, to be Egeon's wife.

All the conflicting events of the day are sorted out; Egeon is liberated; and the play ends in utter happiness. It is even clear that Antipholus of Syracuse will marry Luciana so that the two brothers will also be brothers-in-law.

The date of this play is usually given as 1608, and the last three acts are characteristically late Shakespearean in style. The first two acts are, however, considered much inferior, and many critics feel that, except for a touch here and there, they were not written by Shakespeare.

Whether that is so or not, the play, as it stands, is included in the collections of Shakespeare's plays and, for better or worse, will forever bear his name.

The play begins with an Introduction. An old man comes on stage and says:

—Act I, Introduction, lines 1-2

John Gower was a fourteenth-century English poet (c. 1330-1408) and a friend and contemporary of Chaucer's (see page I-54). Gower was considered by his contemporaries, though not by moderns, to have been almost Chaucer's equal, and though it might be thought they would have borne each other the ill will of competitors, they did not. They dedicated books to each other.

One of Gower's principal works is Confessio Amantis (Confession of a Lover), first published in 1383. In this work, a number of romances are told in English couplets. The tales are by no means original with Gower. What he does is retell stories from ancient and medieval sources, choosing the most popular ones.

In the eighth book of Confessio Amantis Gower tells a tale, taken from a Greek source, of which a version is presented in this play. A prose version of the same story, "The Pattern of Painful Adventures," was published in 1576 by Laurence Twine. Some scenes in Pericles are drawn from Twine, but Gower is the major influence.

It is only in this play and in The Two Noble Kinsmen (see page I-54) that Shakespeare so openly announces his source.

Gower lays the scene of the play:

—Act I, Introduction, lines 17-19

This alone tells us that the time in which the tale is supposed to take place is in the Hellenistic period; that is, in the couple of centuries that followed the death of Alexander the Great. In this period, Greek-language monarchies were established in Egypt and western Asia.

The largest of these was established south and east of Asia Minor in 321 b.c. by Seleucus I, who had been one of Alexander's generals. The realm is, in his honor, usually called the Seleucid Empire in the histories.

Seleucus had made his first capital in ancient Babylon, but quickly abandoned it as too alien and un-Greek. In its place, he constructed Seleucia on the Tigris, about twenty miles north of Babylon. It became a thoroughly Greek city.

Although the Empire covered vast tracts of what are now the nations of Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, the portion most under the influence of Greek culture and therefore most valued by the Greek-speaking and Greek-cultured descendants of Seleucus was the westernmost part, commonly called Syria by the Greeks.

In Syria Seleucus founded a city which served as his western capital and named it Antiocheia, after his father, Antiochus. In English, we know it as Antioch. It was located fifteen miles from the sea, near the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean, and is now located in southwestern Turkey.

About a century and three quarters after the founding of the Seleucid Empire, almost all the eastern provinces had fallen away and come under the rule of native princes. What was left of the Greek kingdom was concentrated in the westernmost provinces and what had been the Seleucid Empire came more and more to be called simply Syria.

Despite the vicissitudes of the Empire, however, Antioch continued to grow and became a great metropolis. In the days of the Roman Empire, when Rome had finally absorbed the last remnant of the Seleucid realm, Antioch was the third largest city of the Empire. Only Rome itself and Alexandria in Egypt were larger.

The question is, now, which monarch is referred to by Gower as "Antiochus the great"? It is no use to try to decide by the actual events of the play, since these are all fictitious.

There were thirteen monarchs of the Seleucid kingdom named Antiochus, but one of them, the third of the name, did call himself Antiochus the Great. This Antiochus III ruled from 223 to 187 b.c. In the first part of his reign, he brought back into the Seleucid fold (very temporarily) some of the large eastern provinces that were breaking away, marching through the east almost like another Alexander in doing so. It was this which gave him the idea of calling himself "the Great."

Once that was accomplished, he attempted to annex Egypt, which was governed by a boy king at the time, and also Asia Minor. Had he succeeded, he would have united almost all of Alexander's Empire under his rule.

Unfortunately for himself, Antiochus HI fell afoul of the rising power of Rome. Challenging that Western nation, he invaded Greece, but was defeated there in 191 b.c. The Romans followed him into Asia Minor and defeated him again in 190 B.C. Antiochus ended his reign in defeat and failure.

Considering that in Pericles Antiochus the Great is pictured as ruling in magnificence and glory (at least at the beginning), we might arbitrarily place the fictitious events of this play about 200 b.c. This is twenty years after the suggested time of A Comedy of Errors and so Pericles becomes the eighth and last of Shakespeare's Greek plays.

Gower goes on to explain that "Antiochus the great" was left a widower with a beautiful daughter:

—Act I, Introduction, lines 25-26

Incest is treated here as a horrible and unspeakable crime, and so it is considered in most societies; though, it must be admitted, not in all. The Egyptian Pharaohs routinely married their sisters, feeling perhaps that only their sisters had blood aristocratic enough to make a marriage suitable. (Or perhaps it was a relic of matrilineal descent; of the times when the nature of fatherhood was not understood and when property could only be inherited through the mother. By marrying his sister, the Pharaoh could make sure that the sister's son, who later was to inherit the throne, would also be his own.)