Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a
JacobeanThe Jacobean era refers to the period in English and Scottish history that coincides with the reign of King James VI of Scotland, who also inherited the crown of England in 1603 as James I...
play written at least in part by
William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the
First FolioMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
. Modern editors generally agree that Shakespeare is responsible for almost exactly half the play—827 lines—the main portion after scene 9 that follows the story of Pericles and Marina. Modern textual studies indicate that the first two acts of 835 lines detailing the many voyages of Pericles were written by a mediocre collaborator, which strong evidence suggests to have been the victualler,
panderProcuring or pandering is the facilitation or provision of a prostitute in the arrangement of a sex act with a customer. Examples of procuring include:*trafficking a prostitute into a country for the purpose of soliciting sex...
, dramatist and
pamphletA pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...
eer
George WilkinsGeorge Wilkins was an English dramatist and pamphleteer best known for his probable collaboration with Shakespeare on the play Pericles, Prince of Tyre. By profession he was an inn-keeper, but he was also apparently involved in criminal activities.-Life:Wilkins was an inn-keeper in Cow-Cross,...
.
Origins
The play draws upon two sources for the plot. The first is
Confessio AmantisConfessio Amantis is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative poems. According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II...
(1393) of
John GowerJohn Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...
, an English poet and contemporary of
Geoffrey ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
. This provides the story of
Apollonius of TyreApollonius of Tyre is the subject of an ancient short novella, popular during medieval times. Existing in numerous forms in many languages, the text is thought to be translated from an ancient Greek manuscript, now lost.-Plot summary:...
. The second source is the Lawrence Twine prose version of Gower's tale,
The Pattern of Painful AdventuresThe Pattern of Painful Adventures was a 1576, prose novel. A later edition, printed in 1607 by Valentine Simmes and published by Nathaniel Butter, was drawn on by William Shakespeare for his play Pericles, Prince of Tyre...
, dating from ca. 1576, reprinted in 1607. Moreover, a third related work is
The Painful Adventures of Pericles by George Wilkins, published in 1608. But this seems to be a "novelization" of the play, stitched together with bits from Twine; Wilkins mentions the play in the Argument to his version of the story – so that Wilkins' novel derives from the play, not the play from the novel. Wilkins, who with Shakespeare was a witness in the
Bellott v. MountjoyThe case of Bellott v. Mountjoy was a lawsuit heard at the Court of Requests in Westminster on 11 May 1612 that involved William Shakespeare in a minor role....
lawsuit of 1612, has been an obvious candidate for the author of the non-Shakespearean matter in the play's first two acts; Wilkins wrote plays very similar in style, and no better candidate has been found.
The choruses spoken by Gower were influenced by Barnabe Barnes's
The Diuils Charter (1607) and by
The Trauailes of the Three English Brothers (1607), by
John Day-People:*John Day , English merchant, author of a letter to the "Lord Grand Admiral" referring to the existence of the lost book Inventio Fortunata*John Day , English Protestant printer, also known as John Daye...
,
William RowleyWilliam Rowley was an English Jacobean dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers. His date of birth is estimated to have been c. 1585; he was buried on 11 February 1626...
, and Wilkins.
Date and text
Most scholars support 1607 or early 1608 as most likely, which accords well with what is known about the play's likely co-author, George Wilkins, whose extant literary career seems to span only three years, 1606 to 1608. The only published text of
Pericles, the 1609 quarto (all subsequent quartos were reprints of the original), is manifestly corrupt; it is often clumsily-written and incomprehensible and has been interpreted as a pirated text reconstructed from memory by someone who witnessed the play (much like theories surrounding the 1603 "
bad quartoBad quarto is a term and concept developed by twentieth-century Shakespeare scholars to explain some problems in the early transmission of the texts of Shakespearean works...
" of
HamletThe Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
). The play was printed in
quartoThe size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...
twice in 1609 by the stationer Henry Gosson. Subsequent quarto printings appeared in 1611, 1619, 1630, and 1635; it was one of Shakespeare's most popular plays in his own historical era. The play was not included in the
First FolioMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
in 1623; it was one of seven plays added to the original Folio thirty-six in the second impression of the
Third FolioThe earliest texts of William Shakespeare's works were published during the 16th and 17th centuries in quarto or folio format. Folios are large, tall volumes; quartos are smaller, roughly half the size...
in 1664. [See:
Folios and Quartos (Shakespeare)The earliest texts of William Shakespeare's works were published during the 16th and 17th centuries in quarto or folio format. Folios are large, tall volumes; quartos are smaller, roughly half the size...
.]
William JaggardWilliam Jaggard was an Elizabethan and Jacobean printer and publisher, best known for his connection with the texts of William Shakespeare, most notably the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays...
included
Pericles in his 1619
False FolioFalse Folio is the term that Shakespeare scholars and bibliographers have applied to William Jaggard's printing of ten Shakespearean and pseudo-Shakespearean plays together in 1619, the first attempt to collect Shakespeare's work in a single volume....
.
The editors of the Oxford and Arden editions of
Pericles accept Wilkins as Shakespeare's collaborator, citing
stylisticStylometry is the application of the study of linguistic style, usually to written language, but it has successfully been applied to music and to fine-art paintings as well.Stylometry is often used to attribute authorship to anonymous or disputed documents...
links between the play and Wilkins's style that are found nowhere else in Shakespeare. The Cambridge editors reject this contention, arguing that the play is entirely by Shakespeare and that all the oddities can be defended as a deliberately old-fashioned style; however, they do not discuss the stylistic links with Wilkins's work or any of the scholarly papers demonstrating contrary opinions. If the play was co-written or revised by Wilkins, this would support a later date, as it is believed Wilkins' career as a writer spanned only the years 1606-8. The 1986
Oxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
edition of the
Complete Works and the subsequent individual edition include a "reconstructed text" of
Pericles, which adapts passages from Wilkins' novel on the assumption that they are based on the play and record the dialogue more accurately than the quarto.
The play has been recognised as a probable collaboration since 1709, although some critics thought it was either an early Shakespeare work or not written by him at all. Wilkins has been proposed as the co-author since 1868. In 1919, H. Dugdale Sykes published a detailed comparison of numerous parallels between the first half of Pericles and four of Wilkins's works, but he thought that Wilkins's novelisation of the play preceded its composition. Many other scholars followed Sykes in his identification of Wilkins, most notably Jonathan Hope in 1994 and MacDonald P. Jackson in 1993 and 2003. In 2002, Vickers summarised the historical evidence and took the Cambridge editors to task for ignoring more than a century of scholarship.
Characters
- Antiochus – king of Antioch
- Pericles – Prince of Tyre
- Helicanus and Escanes – two lords of Tyre
- Simonides – king of Pentapolis
- Cleon – governor of Tarsus
- Lysimachus – governor of Mytilene
- Cerimon – a lord of Ephesus
- Thaliart – a lord of Antioch
- Philmon – servant to Cerimon
- Leonine – servant to Dionyza
- Marshal
- A Pandar
- Boult – his servant
- The Daughter of Antiochus
- Dionyza – wife to Cleon
- Thaisa – daughter to Simonides, Pericles' wife
- Marina – daughter to Pericles and Thaisa
- Lychorida – nurse to Marina
- A Bawd
- Diana
- Gower as Chorus
- Lords, Knights, Gentlemen, Sailors, Pirates, Fisherman, and Messengers
Act I
John Gower introduces each act with a prologue. The play opens in the court of Antiochus, king of
AntiochAntioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the...
, who has offered the hand of his beautiful daughter to any man who answers his riddle; but those who fail shall die.
- I am no viper, yet I feed
- On mother's flesh which did me breed.
- I sought a husband, in which labour
- I found that kindness in a father:
- He's father, son, and husband mild;
- I mother, wife, and yet his child.
- How they may be, and yet in two,
- As you will live, resolve it you.
Pericles, the young Prince (ruler) of Tyre in
PhoeniciaPhoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
(
LebanonLebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
), hears the riddle, and instantly understands its meaning: Antiochus is engaged in an
incestIncest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
uous relationship with his daughter. If he reveals this truth, he will be killed, but if he answers incorrectly, he will also be killed. Pericles hints that he knows the answer, and asks for more time to think. Antiochus grants him forty days, and then sends an assassin after him. However, Pericles has fled the city.
Pericles returns to Tyre, where his trusted friend and counsellor Helicanus advises him to leave the city, for Antiochus surely will hunt him down. Pericles leaves Helicanus as
regentA regent, from the Latin regens "one who reigns", is a person selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu...
and sails to Tarsus, a city beset by
famineA famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
. The generous Pericles gives the governor of the city, Cleon, and his wife Dionyza, grain from his ship to save their people. The famine ends, and after being thanked profusely by Cleon and Dionyza, Pericles continues on.
Act II
A storm wrecks Pericles' ship and washes him up on the shores of
PentapolisCyrenaica is the eastern coastal region of Libya.Also known as Pentapolis in antiquity, it was part of the Creta et Cyrenaica province during the Roman period, later divided in Libia Pentapolis and Libia Sicca...
. He is rescued by a group of poor
fishermenFishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....
who inform him that Simonedes, King of Pentapolis, is holding a tournament the next day and that the winner will receive the hand of his daughter Thaisa in marriage. Fortunately, one of the fishermen drags Pericles' suit of armour on shore that very moment, and the prince decides to enter the tournament. Although his equipment is rusty, Pericles wins the tournament and the hand of Thaisa (who is deeply attracted to him) in marriage. Simonedes initially expresses doubt about the union, but soon comes to like Pericles and allows them to wed.
Act III
A letter sent by the noblemen reaches Pericles in Pentapolis, who decides to return to Tyre with the pregnant Thaisa. Again, a storm arises while at sea, and Thaisa appears to die giving birth to her child, Marina. The sailors insist that Thaisa's body be set overboard in order to calm the storm. Pericles grudgingly agrees, and decides to stop at Tarsus because he fears that Marina may not survive the storm.
Luckily, Thaisa's casket washes ashore at
EphesusEphesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era...
near the residence of Lord Cerimon, a physician who revives her. Thinking that Pericles died in the storm, Thaisa becomes a priestess in the
templeThe Temple of Artemis , also known less precisely as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to a goddess Greeks identified as Artemis and was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was situated at Ephesus , and was completely rebuilt three times before its eventual destruction...
of
DianaIn Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
.
Pericles departs to rule Tyre, leaving Marina in the care of Cleon and Dionyza.
Act IV
Marina grows up more beautiful than the daughter of Cleon and Dionyza, so Dionyza plans Marina's murder. The plan is thwarted when pirates kidnap Marina and then sell her to a brothel in
MytileneMytilene is a town and a former municipality on the island of Lesbos, North Aegean, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Lesbos, of which it is a municipal unit. It is the capital of the island of Lesbos. Mytilene, whose name is pre-Greek, is built on the...
. There, Marina manages to keep her virginity by convincing the men that they should seek virtue. Worried that she is ruining their market, the brothel rents her out as a tutor to respectable young ladies. She becomes famous for music and other decorous entertainments.
Meanwhile, Pericles returns to Tarsus for his daughter. The governor and his wife claim she has died; in grief, he takes to the sea.
Act V
Pericles' wanderings bring him to Mytilene where the governor Lysimachus, seeking to cheer him up, brings in Marina. They compare their sad stories and joyfully realise they are father and daughter. Next, the goddess Diana appears in a dream to Pericles, and tells him to come to the temple where he finds Thaisa. The wicked Cleon and Dionyza are killed when their people revolt against their crime. Lysimachus will marry Marina.
Productions
The Venetian ambassador to England, Zorzi Giustinian, saw a play titled
Pericles during his time in London, which ran from 5 Jan. 1606 to 23 Nov. 1608. As far as is known, there was no other play with the same title that was acted in this era; the logical assumption is that this must have been Shakespeare's play. The title page of the play's first printed edition states that the play was often acted at the
Globe TheatreThe Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613...
, which was most likely true.
The earliest performance of
Pericles known with certainty occurred in May 1619, at Court, "in the King's great chamber" at
WhitehallThe Palace of Whitehall was the main residence of the English monarchs in London from 1530 until 1698 when all except Inigo Jones's 1622 Banqueting House was destroyed by fire...
. The play was also performed at the
Globe TheatreThe Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613...
on 10 June 1631. A play called
Pericles was in the repertory of a recusant group of itinerant players arrested for performing a religious play in
YorkshireYorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
in 1609; however, it is not clear if they performed
Pericles, or if theirs was Shakespeare's play.
John RhodesJohn Rhodes was a theatrical figure of the early and middle seventeenth century. He rose to a brief prominence in 1660 when the London theatres re-opened at the start of the English Restoration era.-Beginning:...
staged
Pericles at the
Cockpit TheatreThe Cockpit was a theatre in London, operating from 1616 to around 1665. It was the first theatre to be located near Drury Lane. After damage in 1617, it was christened The Phoenix....
soon after the theatres re-opened in 1660; it was one of the earliest productions, and the first Shakespearean revival, of the
RestorationThe Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
period.
Thomas BettertonThomas Patrick Betterton , English actor, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.-Apprentice and actor:...
made his stage debut in the title role. Yet the play's pseudo-naive structure placed it at odds with the
neoclassicalNeoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
tastes of the Restoration era. It vanished from the stage for nearly two centuries, until
Samuel PhelpsSamuel Phelps was an English actor and theatre manager...
staged a production at
Sadler's Wells TheatreSadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue located in Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell in the London Borough of Islington. The present day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500 seat main auditorium and the Lilian Baylis Studio, with extensive...
in
ClerkenwellClerkenwell is an area of central London in the London Borough of Islington. From 1900 to 1965 it was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury. The well after which it was named was rediscovered in 1924. The watchmaking and watch repairing trades were once of great importance...
in 1854. Phelps cut Gower entirely, satisfying his narrative role with new scenes, conversations between unnamed gentlemen like those in
The Winter's TaleThe Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, some modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics, among them W. W...
, 5.2. In accordance with Victorian notions of decorum, the play's frank treatment of incest and prostitution was muted or removed.
Walter Nugent MonckWalter Nugent Monck was an English theatre director and founder of Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich.He was born in Welshampton, Shropshire in 1877. The child of the curate of Welshampton, he was educated in Liverpool and at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1895, he abandoned his study of the violin in...
revived the play in 1929 at his
Maddermarket TheatreThe Maddermarket Theatre is a British theatre located in St. John's Alley in Norwich, Norfolk, England. It was founded in 1921 by Nugent Monck.-Early history and conversion:...
in
NorwichNorwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...
, cutting the first act. This production was revived at Stratford after the war, with
Paul ScofieldDavid Paul Scofield, CH, CBE , better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen...
in the title role.
The play has risen somewhat in popularity since Monck, though it remains difficult to stage convincingly, an aspect played with in
Paris Belongs to UsParis Belongs to Us is a 1960 French mystery film directed by Jacques Rivette and starring Betty Schneider. Begun in 1957 and completed three years later, it was then-critic Rivette's first full-length film as a director and one of the first works of the French New Wave, though it was not released...
(filmed 1957–1960). In 1958,
Tony RichardsonCecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer.-Early life:Richardson was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist...
directed the play at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford. The scene design, by Loudon Sainthill, unified the play; the stage was dominated by a large ship in which Gower related the tale to a group of sailors.
Geraldine McEwanGeraldine McEwan is an English actor with a diverse history in theatre, film, and television. From 2004 to 2009 she appeared as Miss Marple, the Agatha Christie sleuth, for the series Marple.-Background:...
played Marina;
Richard JohnsonRichard Johnson is an English actor, writer and producer, who starred in several British films of the 1960s and has also had a distinguished stage career. He most recently appeared in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.-Life and career:...
was Pericles; and
Mark DignamMark Dignam was a prolific English actor.Born in London, the son of salesman in the steel industry, Dignam grew up in Sheffield and was educated at the Jesuit College where he appeared in numerous Shakespearean plays....
was Simonides.
Angela BaddeleyAngela Baddeley, CBE , born Madeline Angela Clinton-Baddeley, was an English actress best remembered for her role as Mrs Bridges in the period drama Upstairs, Downstairs...
was the Bawd. The production was a success; it was later viewed as a model for "coherent" or thematically unified approaches, in contrast to the postmodern or disintegrative approaches of the seventies and eighties.
The 1969 production by
Terry HandsTerence David Hands is an English theatre director. He ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for 20 years during one of its most successful periods.-Early years:...
at Stratford also received favourable reviews. The set was almost bare, with a hanging replica of
Leonardo da VinciLeonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
's
Vitruvian ManThe Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci circa 1487. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the famed architect, Vitruvius. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and...
above a bare stage. Hands also introduced extensive doubling, which has since become a staple of productions of this play.
Emrys JamesEmrys James , was a Welsh Shakespearean actor. He also performed in many theatre and TV parts between 1960 and 1989, and was an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company...
played Gower (as a Welsh bard) and Helicanus.
Susan FleetwoodSusan Maureen Fleetwood was a British stage, film and television actress, best known as a star of the classical theatre companies of England. She received popular acclaim in the television series Chandler & Co and The Buddha of Suburbia.-Personal life:Fleetwood was born in St...
doubled Thaisa and Marina (with Susan Sheers playing Marina when the two characters appear together in the final scene).
Ian RichardsonIan William Richardson CBE was a Scottish actor best known for his portrayal of the Machiavellian Tory politician Francis Urquhart in the BBC's House of Cards trilogy. He was also a leading Shakespearean stage actor....
played the title role. For the performances on the nights of the
Apollo landingA moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned missions. The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission on 13 September 1959. The United States's Apollo 11 was the first manned...
, Hands added a special acknowledgment of the event to Gower's lines.
Ron Daniels directed the play in 1979 at
The Other PlaceThe Other Place was a black box theatre on Southern Lane, near to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. It was owned and operated by the Royal Shakespeare Company....
, an unlikely venue for such an expansive play. Daniels compensated for the lack of space by canny use of lighting and offstage music and sound effects.
Peter McEneryPeter McEnery is an English stage and film actor. His daughter Kate, by his first marriage to British actress Julie Peasgood, is an actress....
played Pericles;
Julie PeasgoodJulie May Peasgood is an English actress, television presenter, author and voice over artist known for her distinctive voice. She attended Grimsby's Wintringham School as a student. She is best known for her role as Fran Pearson in the television soap Brookside...
was Marina.
Griffith JonesGriffith Jones was an English film, stage and television actor.Born in London, England, Jones was the son of a Welsh-speaking dairy owner. In 1932, he married Robin Isaac, and they had two children: the actors Gemma Jones and Nicholas Jones...
was Gower.
In 1989, David Thacker directed the play at the
SwanThe Swan Theatre is a theatre belonging to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. It is built on to the side of the larger Royal Shakespeare Theatre, occupying the Victorian Gothic structure that formerly housed the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre that preceded the RST but was...
. The production was centred on a grid-covered trap suspended in air; the brothel scenes were played below, as in a basement; the shipboard scenes were played on and around the grid.
Rudolph WalkerRudolph Walker, OBE is a British character actor. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Walker came to the United Kingdom in 1960....
was Gower, dressed as a bureaucrat;
Nigel TerryNigel Terry is an English stage and film actor probably best known by film audiences for his portrayal of King Arthur in John Boorman's Excalibur . However, he has had a long career in classical theatre....
played Pericles, and Suzan Sylvester and Sally Edwards were Marina and Thaisa, respectively.
Productions in the 1990s differed from earlier productions in that they generally stressed the dislocation and diversity inherent in the play's setting, rather than striving for thematic and tonal coherence. As early as 1983,
Peter SellarsPeter Sellars is an American theatre director, noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays...
directed a production in Boston that featured extras dressed as contemporary American
homeless peopleHomelessness describes the condition of people without a regular dwelling. People who are homeless are unable or unwilling to acquire and maintain regular, safe, and adequate housing, or lack "fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence." The legal definition of "homeless" varies from country...
; devices such as these dominated English main stages in the nineties. Phyllida Lloyd directed the play at the
Royal National TheatreThe Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
in 1994. The production used extensive doubling.
Kathryn HunterKathryn Hunter is an award-winning English actress and theatre director.Hunter was born in New York to Greek parents but brought up in the UK...
played Antiochus, Cerimon, and the Bawd. The production made extensive use of the mechanised wheel in the theatre to emphasise movement in time and space; however, the wheel's noise made some scenes difficult to hear, and some critics disparaged what they saw as pointless gimmickry in the staging.
Adrian NobleAdrian Keith Noble is a theatre director, and was also the artistic director and chief executive of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1990 to 2003.-Education and career:...
's 2002 production at the Roundhouse (his last before leaving the RSC) stressed diversity in another way. Responding to critical interest in
OrientalismOrientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
, Noble accentuated the multicultural aspects of the play's setting.
Ray FearonFitzroy Raymond "Ray" Fearon is a British actor who has worked extensively in theatre, and is known for playing garage mechanic Nathan Harding on ITV's long-running soap opera Coronation Street.-Early life:...
took the title role to Lauren Ward's Thaisa;
Kananu KirimiKananu Kirimi is a Scottish actor born in the Kyle of Lochalsh, Scotland of a Kenyan father and Scottish mother.Kirimi is currently appearing as locum Dr...
played Marina.
Brian ProtheroeBrian Protheroe , of a Welsh father and English mother, is a musician and actor.-Career:Protheroe joined a local church choir when he was twelve years old, and started piano lessons at about the same time. The music of Cliff Richard and The Shadows inspired him to start learning the guitar...
was Gower. In an echo of the music played during the interval of the 1619 Whitehall performance, Noble featured belly dancing and drumming during the intermission of his production.
Critical response
Harold BloomHarold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
said that the play works well on the stage despite its problems. In 2005, The New Globe in London and The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC presented two very different but, nonetheless, critically acclaimed productions of the play. In 1660, at the start of the
RestorationThe Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
when the theatres had just re-opened,
Thomas BettertonThomas Patrick Betterton , English actor, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.-Apprentice and actor:...
played the title role in a new production of
Pericles at the
Cockpit TheatreThe Cockpit was a theatre in London, operating from 1616 to around 1665. It was the first theatre to be located near Drury Lane. After damage in 1617, it was christened The Phoenix....
, the first production of any of Shakespeare's works in the new era.
Critical response to the play has not been warm, to say the least. In 1629,
Ben JonsonBenjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
lamented the audiences' enthusiastic responses to the play:
No doubt some mouldy tale,
Like Pericles; and stale
As the Shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish—
Scraps out of every dish
Throwne forth, and rak't into the common tub (Ben Jonson, Ode (to Himself))
By "mouldy," Jonson did not impugn the age of the play (20 years), but rather, impugned the episodic form of the play, which scrapped genre and narrative "out of every dish." This form combines with its content, the medieval Apollonius legend, to present a play that reeks of the utter medievalism that Jonson's
neoclassicismNeoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
eschewed.
After Jonson and until the mid-twentieth century, critics found little to like or praise in the play. For example,
nineteenth-century scholar
Edward DowdenEdward Dowden , was an Irish critic and poet.He was the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and was born at Cork, three years after his brother John, who became Bishop of Edinburgh in 1886. Edward's literary tastes emerged early, in a series of essays written at the age of twelve...
wrestled with the text and found that the play “as a whole is singularly undramatic” and “entirely lacks unity of action." The episodic nature of the play combined with the Act Four’s lewdness troubled Dowden because these traits problemetised his idea of Shakespeare. Dowden also banished
Titus AndronicusTitus Andronicus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, and possibly George Peele, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy, and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were...
from the canon because it belonged to “the pre-Shakespearean school of bloody dramas”.
T. S. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
found more to admire, saying of the moment of Pericles' reunion with his daughter: "To my mind the finest of all the 'recognition scenes' is Act V,i of that very great play
Pericles. It is a perfect example of the 'ultra-dramatic', a dramatic action of beings who are more than human... or rather, seen in a light more than that of day."
The New Bibliographers of the early twentieth century
Alfred W. PollardAlfred William Pollard was an English bibliographer, widely credited for bringing a higher level of scholarly rigor to the study of Shakespearean texts....
,
Walter Wilson GregSir Walter Wilson Greg was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century....
, and R. B. McKerrow
gave increased attention to the examination of quarto editions of Shakespearean plays published before the
First FolioMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
(1623).
Pericles was among the most notorious "bad quartos." In the second half of the twentieth century, critics began to warm to the play. After John Arthos' 1953 article "
Pericles, Prince of Tyre: A Study in the Dramatic Use of Romantic Narrative," scholars began to find merits and interesting facets within the play's dramaturgy, narrative and use of the marvelous. And ,while the play's textual critics have sharply disagreed about editorial methodology in the last half-century, almost all of them, beginning with F. D. Hoeniger with his 1963
Arden 2 edition, have been enthusiastic about
Pericles (Other, more recent, critics have been
Stephen OrgelStephen Orgel is Professor of English at Stanford University. Best known as a scholar of Shakespeare, Orgel writes primarily about the political and historical context of Renaissance literature....
(
Pelican Shakespeare), Suzanne Gossett (
Arden 3), Roger Warren (
Reconstructed Oxford), and Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond (
Cambridge)).
External links
- Pericles at the Internet off-Broadway Database
The Lortel Archives, or the Internet Off-Broadway Database is an online database that catalogues theatre productions shown off-Broadway.The archives are named in honor of actress and theatrical producer Lucille Lortel.-See also:...
- Pericles, Prince of Tyre at the Internet off-Broadway Database
The Lortel Archives, or the Internet Off-Broadway Database is an online database that catalogues theatre productions shown off-Broadway.The archives are named in honor of actress and theatrical producer Lucille Lortel.-See also:...