Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
His most underrated play, August 5, 2002
This least known of Shakespeare's romances was enormously popular during his day judging by handbills and other evidence--though not, of course, as much as his all time blockbuster; Romeo and Juliet.--And Pericles continued going strong for quite a while. Immediately after the Restoration, when the Puritans (bless their hearts) fell from power and the theaters opened for business again, guess which play was the first the court wanted to see? ----------------------------------------------------------------- So what happenned? Oscar Wilde once said there were two ways of disliking poetry. One was to simply dislike it and the other was to like Pope. Preicles did not do well with the 18th century pundits because it deviates from the 'Aristotalean unities'. Unlike The Tempest, for example, which takes place in one locale over a couple of days, Pericles takes place over 10 to 15 years all over the ancient Mediterranean. It has the form of an epic. What can I say? Homer would have dug it. It's the story of a prince who screws up. Partly from his fault, mostly not. It's got tyrants, incest, treason, murder, knights, wizards, teenagers, kings, pirates, brothels, young love, a great hero and The Goddess Diana. Oh yeah, the poetry's not too shabby either. The theme is what to do when everything goes horribly wrong. How to weather sorrow and get through your life. How to be honorable and not give in to despair. Someone once remarked that the romances are tragedies turned upside down e.g; The Winter's Tale begins as Othello and then has a happy ending. At least if it's performed by a good cast who commits to the miracle of the statue coming back to life. If they 'apologize' for an outlandish miracle, it's doomed. Likewise, Pericles also has a happy ending if it's produced by a company who loves the play rather than by a group who views it as a rare curiosity in the Shakespeare canon. It might interest some readers to know that the nonsense about Shakespeare only writing part of it is, God help us, a compromise position from a few scholars who don't want to get into an argument with unorthodox loons about who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. Pericles was left out of the first folio. For that matter so were 100 lines of King Lear and there's 300 lines that appear in the folio version of Lear that aren't in the quarto (having fun yet?) which, of course, is positive proof that de Vere or Queen Elizabeth or Bacon or Lope de Vega was really the true writer and never mind that while William Shakespeare lived and for 200 years later no one thought to question his authorship, what did those Elizabethans know , anyway? Besides he never went to college, so there. (sigh) As James Barrie, the author of Peter Pan once remarked: I do not know if Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare' plays, but if he didn't he missed the opportunity of a lifetime. In the hands of the right director, Pericles, Prince of Tyre is pure gold.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not for Shakespeare Snobs, September 6, 2004
This review is from: Pericles Prince of Tyre (The Pelican Shakespeare) (Mass Market Paperback)
Aside from people who just plain hate Shakespeare (and I don't get them at ALL), there are two types of Shakespeare Snobs. 1. The ones who think Shakespeare couldn't have written his plays because he wasn't born to nobility. These people are idiots. 2. The ones who idolize Shakespeare to the point where, if they don't like one of his plays, He Obviously Couldn't Have Written It -- he is incapable of writing something they don't like. Um... right. Let's apply this rationale to a latter day artist: since Charlie Chaplin made "The Gold Rush", he obviously had nothing to do with "A King in New York."
Geniuses grow and change with everything they do. The Beatles of "A Hard Day's Night" are not the Beatles of "A Day in the Life." Shakespeare spent his career shifting with the tides of what was Currently Popular. If he had lived in the mid 1970's, he would have followed a "Five Easy Pieces" with a "Star Wars". He rolled with the flow, but stamped his own creativity on every work. "Pericles" and the other later romances were written because that's what the current popular genre was. Box office dictated form; artistry dictated content.
Having recently read "Pericles", I have to say that it's one of the best, wackiest plays ever written. (I also think "Measure for Measure" is meant to be darkly funny, not brooding and angsty; but that's just me.) "Pericles" is what would happen if the writer of the Hee Haw "Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me" song had decided to make a Hope and Crosby Road picture. Unlike Shakespeare's tragic heroes and their Fatal Flaws, Pericles is just a poor schmuck (who happens to be a king) upon whom Murphy's Law comes down like a 50 pound hammer. EVERYTHING happens to this poor guy; your jaw drops at his second or third consecutive shipwreck.
The opening scene alone is worth the price of admission. Pericles has to guess the answer to the riddle of a very John Cleesian king. If he guesses right, he marries the princess. If he guesses wrong, he dies. Unfortunately, he guesses the right answer -- that the king is screwing his own daughter -- and he can't possibly say it out loud. He'll be killed if he answers and killed if he doesn't. It's a very Ralph Kramden hummena-hummena-hummena moment.
And the Act IV brothel scenes, where Pericles' daughter Marina has been sold into prostitution, are among the funniest scenes Shakespeare ever wrote. She doesn't just hold onto her virginity -- every male who tries to do her is coverted to the path of righteousness and the brothel is losing its shirt.
Nevertheless, you feel for the characters even while laughing at the outlandish sheer enormity of each new disaster; Bambi getting killed isn't funny. Bambi getting squashed by Godzilla is hysterical. The reconciliation scene is one of Shakespeare's most affecting.
If you like quirkiness, this is a wonderful play.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not for Shakespeare Snobs, September 3, 2004
Aside from people who just plain hate Shakespeare (and I don't get them at ALL), there are two types of Shakespeare Snobs. 1. The ones who think Shakespeare couldn't have written his plays because he wasn't born to nobility. These people are idiots. 2. The ones who idolize Shakespeare to the point where, if they don't like one of his plays, He Obviously Couldn't Have Written It -- he is incapable of writing something they don't like. Um... right. Let's apply this rationale to a latter day artist: since Charlie Chaplin made "The Gold Rush", he obviously had nothing to do with "A King in New York."
Geniuses grow and change with everything they do. The Beatles of "A Hard Day's Night" are not the Beatles of "A Day in the Life." Shakespeare spent his career shifting with the tides of what was Currently Popular. If he had lived in the mid 1970's, he would have followed a "Five Easy Pieces" with a "Star Wars". He rolled with the flow, but stamped his own creativity on every work. "Pericles" and the other later romances were written because that's what the current popular genre was. Box office dictated form; artistry dictated content.
Having recently read "Pericles", I have to say that it's one of the best, wackiest plays ever written. (I also think "Measure for Measure" is meant to be darkly funny, not brooding and angsty; but that's just me.) "Pericles" is what would happen if the writer of the Hee Haw "Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me" song had decided to make a Hope and Crosby Road picture. Unlike Shakespeare's tragic heroes and their Fatal Flaws, Pericles is just a poor schmuck (who happens to be a king) upon whom Murphy's Law comes down like a 50 pound hammer. EVERYTHING happens to this poor guy; your jaw drops at his second or third consecutive shipwreck.
The opening scene alone is worth the price of admission. Pericles has to guess the answer to the riddle of a very John Cleesian king. If he guesses right, he marries the princess. If he guesses wrong, he dies. Unfortunately, he guesses the right answer -- that the king is screwing his own daughter -- and he can't possibly say it out loud. He'll be killed if he answers and killed if he doesn't. It's a very Ralph Kramden hummena-hummena-hummena moment.
And the Act IV brothel scenes, where Pericles' daughter Marina has been sold into prostitution, are among the funniest scenes Shakespeare ever wrote. She doesn't just hold onto her virginity -- every male who tries to do her is coverted to the path of righteousness and the brothel is losing its shirt.
Nevertheless, you feel for the characters even while laughing at the outlandish sheer enormity of each new disaster; Bambi getting killed isn't funny. Bambi getting squashed by Godzilla is hysterical. The reconciliation scene is one of Shakespeare's most affecting.
If you like quirkiness, this is a wonderful play.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
