On Burning: Pericles and Shakespeare’s Uncanny Fire

In Pericles, fire incinerates two pairs of villains: Antiochus and Daughter are struck by “fire from heaven” in scene 8, and Cleon and Dionyza are burned in their palace in scene 22.1 The shocking events are welcome news for the play’s hero, though he need not have traveled as often nor as far to encounter such fire. Shortly after the play’s probable date of composition, in late 1608, fire from heaven reportedly consumed the house in Flanders in which lived a woman who birthed three monsters.2 In 1613, fire from heaven burned John Hittchell of Southhampton, whose body smoldered for three days and nights before finally extinguishing itself.3 These startling combustions bear a striking resemblance to the deaths in Pericles, a play preoccupied by the elemental intersections of narrative and fire. This essay considers, first, the strange ease with which something as familiar and dangerous as fire moves between the playhouse stage and the newssheet catastrophes of everyday life; and, second, how fire’s uncanny habitation in Pericles and others of Shakespeare’s plays link those texts in a conspiracy of intertextual flame.