By the time Shakespeare and Wilkins’s Pericles (1608) was written, English trading into the Levant had grown to significant volumes, and a permanent English consul had been based for nearly 20 years in Aleppo, with a remit that included Tripoli, Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Amman, and all other port cities in Syria and Palestine, among them Tharsus, Antioch and Tyre. This essay explores the ways in which the contemporary aspirations of English merchants and diplomats in the Levant are subtly registered in a play that has its main character voyaging across the sea, dealing in grain, and acquiring kingdoms by diplomacy or marriage. The main focus is on the meaning of the sea as a geopolitical space and itself a dramatic agent in the play. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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