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= Pericles,_Prince_of_Tyre =
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Introduction
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'Pericles, Prince of Tyre' is a Jacobean play written at least in part
by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his
collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not
included in the First Folio. It was published in 1609 as a quarto, was
not included in Shakespeare's collections of works until the third
folio, and the main inspiration for the play was Gower's 'Confessio
Amantis'. Various arguments support the theory that Shakespeare was
the sole author of the play, notably in DelVecchio and Hammond's
Cambridge edition of the play, but modern editors generally agree that
Shakespeare was 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 suggest that the first two
acts, 835 lines detailing the many voyages of Pericles, were written
by a collaborator, who may well have been the victualler, panderer,
dramatist and pamphleteer George Wilkins. Wilkins published 'The
Painful Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre' which is the prose
version of the story, and drew from Lawrence Twines' 'The Pattern of
Painful Adventures'. 'Pericles' was one of the seventeen plays that
were in print during Shakespeare's life, and was reprinted 5 times
between 1609 and 1635.
Characters
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* 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
* Thaliard - a lord of Antioch
* Philemon - servant to Cerimon
* Leonine - servant to Dionyza
* Marshal
* A Pandar (male owner of a brothel)
* Boult - The Pandar's 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 (female owner of a brothel)
* Diana
* Gower as Chorus
* Lords, Knights, Gentlemen, Sailors, Pirates, Fisherman, and
Messengers
Synopsis
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John Gower introduces each act with a prologue. The play opens in the
court of Antiochus, king of Antioch, 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 Phoenicia (Lebanon),
hears the riddle, and instantly understands its meaning: Antiochus is
engaged in an incestuous relationship with his daughter. If he answers
incorrectly, he will be killed, but if he reveals the truth, he will
be killed anyway. 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 in
disgust.
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 regent and sails to
Tarsus, a city beset by famine. 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.
A storm wrecks Pericles' ship and washes him up on the shores of
Pentapolis. He is rescued by a group of poor fishermen who inform him
that Simonides, 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. Simonides initially expresses doubt about the union, but
soon comes to like Pericles and allows them to wed.
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 Ephesus near the residence
of Lord Cerimon, a physician who revives her. Thinking that Pericles
died in the storm, Thaisa becomes a priestess in the temple of Diana.
Pericles departs to rule Tyre, leaving Marina in the care of Cleon and
Dionyza.
Marina grows up more beautiful than Philoten 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 Mytilene.
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.
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.
Sources
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The play draws upon two sources for the plot. The first is 'Confessio
Amantis' (1393) of John Gower, an English poet and contemporary of
Geoffrey Chaucer. This provides the story of Apollonius of Tyre. The
second source is the Lawrence Twine prose version of Gower's tale,
'The Pattern of Painful Adventures', dating from c. 1576, reprinted in
1607.
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. Mountjoy 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, William Rowley, and Wilkins.
Date and text
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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 quarto" of 'Hamlet'). The play was printed in quarto 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 Folio in 1623; it was one of seven plays added
to the original Folio thirty-six in the second impression of the Third
Folio in 1664. [See: Folios and Quartos (Shakespeare).] William
Jaggard included 'Pericles' in his 1619 False Folio.
The editors of the Oxford and Arden editions of 'Pericles' accept
Wilkins as Shakespeare's collaborator, citing stylistic 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 Press 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,
if not earlier. In that year Nicholas Rowe wrote, "there is good
Reason to believe that the greatest part of that Play was not written
by him; tho' it is own'd, some part of it certainly was, particularly
the last Act." Rowe here seems to be summarising what he believes to
be a consensus view in his day, 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, Prof. Brian Vickers summarised the historical evidence
and took the Cambridge editors to task for ignoring more than a
century of scholarship.
Analysis and criticism
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Critical response to the play has traditionally been mixed. In 1629,
Ben Jonson 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)')
In 1660, at the start of the Restoration when the theatres had just
re-opened, Thomas Betterton played the title role in a new production
of 'Pericles' at the Cockpit Theatre, the first production of any of
Shakespeare's works in the new era. Gary Taylor credits Betterton's
performance in 'Pericles' for the addition of Shakespeare's play to
the theatrical repertoire in the mid-seventeenth century.
After Jonson and until the mid-twentieth century, critics found little
to like or praise in the play. For example,
nineteenth-century scholar Edward Dowden 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 problematised his idea of Shakespeare. Dowden also banished
'Titus Andronicus' from the canon because it belonged to "the
pre-Shakespearean school of bloody dramas".
T. S. Eliot 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, sc. 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.
Pollard, Walter Wilson Greg, and R. B. McKerrow
gave increased attention to the examination of quarto editions of
Shakespearean plays published before 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 Orgel ('Pelican
Shakespeare'), Suzanne Gossett ('Arden 3'), Roger Warren
('Reconstructed Oxford'), and Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond
('Cambridge')).
Harold Bloom said that the play works well on the stage despite its
problems, and even wrote, "Perhaps because he declined to compose the
first two acts, Shakespeare compensated by making the remaining three
acts into his most radical theatrical experiment since the mature
'Hamlet' of 1600-1601."
Performance history
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The Venetian ambassador to England Zorzi Giustinian and the French
diplomat Antoine Lefèvre de la Boderie saw a play titled 'Pericles'.
Giustinian was in London from 5 January 1606 to 23 November 1608. As
far as is known, there was no other play with the same title that was
acted in this era; the usual 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 Theatre, 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 Whitehall. The
play was also performed at the Globe Theatre 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 at
Goulthwaite Hall in Yorkshire in 1609; however, it is not clear if
they performed 'Pericles', or if theirs was Shakespeare's play.
John Rhodes staged 'Pericles' at the Cockpit Theatre soon after the
theatres re-opened in 1660; it was one of the earliest productions,
and the first Shakespearean revival, of the Restoration period. Thomas
Betterton made his stage debut in the title role. Yet the play's
pseudo-naive structure placed it at odds with the neoclassical tastes
of the Restoration era. It vanished from the stage for nearly two
centuries, until Samuel Phelps staged a production at Sadler's Wells
Theatre in Clerkenwell in 1854. Phelps cut Gower entirely, satisfying
his narrative role with new scenes, conversations between unnamed
gentlemen like those in 'The Winter's Tale', 5.2. In accordance with
Victorian notions of decorum, the play's frank treatment of incest and
prostitution was muted or removed.
Walter Nugent Monck revived the play in 1929 at his Maddermarket
Theatre in Norwich, cutting the first act. This production was revived
at Stratford after the war, with Paul Scofield in the title role.
Modern revivals
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The play has risen somewhat in popularity since Monck, though it
remains extraordinarily difficult to stage effectively, an aspect
played with in 'Paris Belongs to Us' (filmed 1957-1960).
* In 1958, Tony Richardson 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 McEwan played
Marina; Richard Johnson was Pericles; and Mark Dignam was Simonides.
Angela Baddeley 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 Hands at Stratford also received
favourable reviews. The set was almost bare, with a hanging replica of
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man above a bare stage. Hands also
introduced extensive doubling, which has since become a staple of
productions of this play. Emrys James played Gower (as a Welsh bard)
and Helicanus. Susan Fleetwood doubled Thaisa and Marina (with Susan
Sheers playing Marina when the two characters appear together in the
final scene). Ian Richardson played the title role. For the
performances on the nights of the Apollo landing, Hands added a
special acknowledgment of the event to Gower's lines.
* Ron Daniels directed the play in 1979 at The Other Place, 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 McEnery played Pericles; Julie Peasgood was Marina.
Griffith Jones was Gower.
* The play was among those adapted for the 'BBC Television
Shakespeare' series and was first transmitted on 8 December 1984. The
play was opened out so as to deal with the various locations and time
intervals and was given a thoughtful and moving interpretation. Mike
Gwilym played Pericles, Amanda Redman was Marina and Juliet Stevenson
was Thaisa. It was directed by David Jones.
* In 1989, David Thacker directed the play at the Swan. 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 Walker was Gower, dressed as a
bureaucrat; Nigel Terry 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 Sellars directed a production in Boston that
featured extras dressed as contemporary American homeless people;
devices such as these dominated English main stages in the nineties.
Phyllida Lloyd directed the play at the Royal National Theatre in
1994. The production used extensive doubling. Kathryn Hunter 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 Noble's 2002 production at the Roundhouse (his last before
leaving the RSC) stressed diversity in another way. Responding to
critical interest in Orientalism, Noble accentuated the multicultural
aspects of the play's setting. Ray Fearon took the title role to
Lauren Ward's Thaisa; Kananu Kirimi played Marina. Brian Protheroe 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.
* Mary Zimmerman directed Pericles at Washington, D.C.'s Shakespeare
Theatre Company for their 2004-05 Season. The production transferred
to Chicago's Goodman Theatre in 2006.
* The Hudson Shakespeare Company of New Jersey mounted the play in two
separate productions in their annual Shakespeare in the Parks series,
directed by Jon Ciccarelli (2006) and Noelle Fair (2014) respectively.
Both directors noted the 2002 Adrian Noble production as a direct
influence on their productions utilizing diversely ethnic casts and
set in Mediterranean locales. Ciccarelli's production took a more
historical and literary slant on the story using Gower as a direct
story teller of the action in medieval costume vs. the Greek/Turkish
garb of the main cast. Fair's production took a more dream like
approach using a variety of international music and devised movement
pieces to convey the Gower dialogue.
* Joseph Haj directed several productions of 'Pericles' from 2008 to
2016: at the PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North
Carolina, in 2008; at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015; and at
the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2016--his inaugural
production as artistic director of that institution.
* The 2015 Shakespeare's Globe production directed by Dominic
Dromgoole used a minimal set within the tiny, candlelit Sam Wanamaker
Playhouse. Sheila Reid played Gower and James Garnon played Pericles.
The production was noted for its humor.
* Cesear's Forum, Cleveland's minimalist theatre company at Playhouse
Square, deconstructed the play in an adaptation entitled 'Perhaps,
Pericles.' Four actors in search of Shakespeare was the nub of this
2013 production.
* There have been four important productions of "Pericles" mounted at
The Stratford Festival in Stratford, Canada. In 1973 there was a
production directed by Jean Gascon that was repeated in 1974; there
were later productions, respectively in 1986, 2003, and the latest in
2015. Both the 1973 and 1974 productions had the same cast, headed by
Stratford stars, Nicholas Pennel and Martha Henry; the 1986 production
was directed by Richard Ouzounian and starred Geraint Wyn Davies and
Goldie Semple; the 2003 production was directed by Leon Rubin and
starred Jonathan Goad; and in 2015 the director was Scott Wentworth
and starred Evan Buliung. The 2015 production was filmed by CBC
Television for the Shakespearean film series 'CBC Presents the
Stratford Festival'.
* The Theatre for a New Audience in New York City staged a production
in early 2016 directed by Trevor Nunn with Christian Camargo as
Pericles. Nunn utilized a generally bare stage but with more
elaborate and ornate costuming from different eras and cultures. Nunn
shifted some scenes around and brought in prose text from George
Wilkins' Pericles story (thought to be the co-author of this play with
Shakespeare) in order to improve the pace and clarity of the story.
The production included folk songs and dances interwoven throughout
the play as was often done in the original Shakespeare productions.
* The 2016 Guthrie Theater production directed by Joseph Haj was a
collaboration with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Unlike most
scholars, Haj believes that the play was written entirely by
Shakespeare, calling it "deep" and "mature". Rather than an elaborate
set, the play uses visual projections on a large screen; this is
particularly effective for the shipwreck scene and the "literal wall
of water... coming right at you.". Musicians effectively set the mood,
create tension, and underscore the theme.
* The BBC has broadcast two radio adaptations of the play: one in 2005
starring Tom Mannion as Pericles and one in 2017 with Willard White as
Gower, Paapa Essiedu as Pericles and Adjoa Andoh as Dionyza/Lychorida.
* In August 2019, Dan Dawes directed a stripped back, multi-roling
production of the play for the company Idle Discourse, which focused
heavily on bold storytelling and physical comedy. The production
initially ran at London's Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate before
transferring to the Baroque Palace Theatre in the Palace of Valtice,
Czech Republic, the following month. Tom Grace starred as Pericles,
Adam Elms as Gower, and Lauren Cornelius as Marina.
* In 2020, members of Mary Baldwin University's MFA company model
performed the show as part of Fireside Shakespeare Company's 2020-2021
season. Directed by Millie Koncelik, the show was a small-scale
production in which five actors portrayed all the characters. Due to
the restraints of the pandemic, the production was masked and socially
distanced. As part of the show's concept, each of the five actors in
turn performed one of Gower's choruses throughout the show.
* The Royal Shakespeare Company have completed a July-September 2024
run of 'Pericles' at Stratford-upon-Avon, and this production has gone
on tour to Chicago Shakespeare Theater from 20 October to 8 December
2024. The production is directed by Tamara Harvey with Alfred Enoch as
Pericles.
Further reading
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*
*
*Skeele, David. 'Thwarting the Wayward Seas: A critical and Theatrical
History of Shakespeare's' Pericles 'in the 19th and 20th Centuries'.
Newark: University of Delaware Press 1998.
External links
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*
* [
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1537 'Pericles'] - Ebook at Project
Gutenberg
*
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20110728022234/http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=show&title=Pericles
'Pericles'] and
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20110728022230/http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=show&title=Pericles%2C%20Prince%20of%20Tyre
'Pericles, Prince of Tyre'] at the Internet off-Broadway Database
*
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=========
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pericles,_Prince_of_Tyre
