Scene Ideas

I think that the most interesting way to fix the fourteen year gap is to have Pericles embark on an epic journey. In general, something very significant must have occurred in those fourteen years for Pericles to have been stranded from his daughter who he knew was in Tarsus. What could Pericles possibly been doing? We are given no clues in the text either as to where he could have gone or what purposes he had, so it is complete fantasy as to what he did. All forms of fantasy on this matter are equally valid basically as there is no compelling argument either way.

I think most people, however, do not pick up on a subtle clue. This clue came inspired to me through an economic idea called "opportunity cost." An opportunity cost is the cost of giving up the next best thing. So the opportunity cost of going to see a movie would be working, for example. We know that the opportunity cost of Pericles doing whatever he did for those 14 years was giving up being able to see his daughter. So whatever Pericles did for fourteen years, he must have had quite a compelling reason.

This now leaves us with 2 kinda of decisions: involuntary and voluntary. An involuntary decision to fill the 14 year gap would be perhaps that Pericles got shipwrecked again!!! However, I think the shipwreck theme would make me weary and I would want something Pericles deliberately does; in other words, embark on an epic journey.