Pericles

Fortune or chance plays a huge role in the plot of Pericles, with bad luck and random occurrences hounding the eponymous hero at every turn. Through Pericles’s various misadventures and struggles to assert his own agency, the play examines the tensions between fortune and free will.  

Fortune’s cruelty with Pericles is so rampant that in the opening chorus of Act II, Gower notes that even fortune tires of playing with the prince, and after tossing him around in the sea, finally “[t]hrew him ashore, to give him glad” (II.Chor.38). Later, Pericles describes himself as a tennis ball whacked by fortune in the court of the sea. In these examples, Pericles is a plaything or toy for fortune, with the sea representing the randomness of life’s misfortunes. The sea also takes Thaisa, precipitating her labor and forcing her into separation from the family. In these ways, many of the family’s worst misfortunes seem to occur through fate.  

Pericles, however, learns to make the most of his own agency in spite of fortune’s fickleness. He chooses to participate in Simonides’s tournament with nothing but a rusty armor to his name. His action is rewarded with a stroke of good fortune—Pericles wins the tournament, and marries Thaisa.