Customer Reviews

Pericles Prince of Tyre (The Pelican Shakespeare)

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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?

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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.

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.

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.

I've just come in from sitting on the grass in the evening fog in San Francisco, watching the Shakespeare in the Park Production of Pericles Prince of Tyre, shivering some but laughing enough to keep bearably warm. The production isn't "professional" by any means, but the key acting is adequate and the concept is unexpected, implausible, outrageous... and totally successful. The action of Pericles's travels and mishaps is set in the riverboat South, with Shakespeare's sacred poetry uttered in a broad Southern drawl and with 'bluegrass' music and interludes of old-time country singing by the cast on stage. It's reminiscent, perhaps not accidentally, of the Coen Brothers film "Oh Brother Where Art Thou," and not a whit inferior!

This is as good an edition of Pericles as any available. The play is worth reading... again if you didn't like it in college, for the first time if you're in a state of blessed ignorance. The thing to realize about it is that it's a genre, a kind of stage-show that would have been familiar and easily accepted by Shakespeare's audience, something like one of the "Corpus Christi" pageant plays staged on wagons at country fairs, with plenty of openings for juggling, acrobats, improvised humor, and simple actors' goofiness. Or you could frame it as a commedia dell'arte, though it seems more essentially English countryside than Italian. Too much respect for the script will not be productive. Staged with an ear to amusing an audience rather than to paying homage to literature, it's an effective comedy, even without the drawl.

My impression is that Pericles was indeed written by William Shakespeare, late of Stratford-upon-Avon, precisely because it so obviously reflects the rustic "faire" and Corpus Christi dramatic traditions of Medieval England. The Italian comedies are a different matter; no Englishman who hadn't visited Tuscany or the Veneto could have written such perfect genre pieces. I'm amazed that no previous scholar has recognized the obvious; those plays were written by the Italian emissary from Venice to the court of Elizabeth I - her favored partner for dancing La Volta, by the way - Signore Guglielmo Tremolancia.

I don't feel "Pericles" represents Shakespeare's best efforts. It lacks the profound aspects and suspense of his better (4-5 star) works. In my opinion, some characters like Cleon are handled less than fairly. The play seems to delight in his death, when he had nothing to do with the wickedness of his wife. Nor did he approve of it. Nevertheless, it is easy to see why this play has always been very popular. Pericles is a well developed character. First we see him as a youth jousting for the love of his life. Although not much time passes, we are somehow given the impression that he has aged. He becomes a father and he 'believes' he has become a widower. It is interesting how he changes from a typical teenage lovestruck youth to an adult concerned over his 'motherless' daughter. When he thinks his daughter is dead, he is reduced to an old man's solitary state. When he is reunited with his wife and daughter, it is almost as if he is young again. Marina is memorable as Pericles' virtuous daughter. Helicanus is striking as Pericles' loyal servant who is no flatterer. Cleon is sympathetic as the decent man who is destroyed by his wife Dionyza's wickedness. So, we have some interesting characters, a man's growth, good images, comical touches, a sudden dilemna, and a happy ending. In my opinion, this was Shakespeare's attempt at a fairy tale. If you read this (knowing not to expect his best efforts) you may be pleasantly surprised.

A very minor dramatist, George Wilkins, wrote the wildly inconsistent Acts 1 and 2 of "Pericles"; the only reason anyone cares about the play today is because Shakespeare wrote Acts 3-5. The text was published in a highly corrupt and erratic "Bad Quarto" in 1609; Wilkins also published a book based on the play, which editors have since carefully culled to help smooth out some of the play's many inconsistencies. Because of its co-authorship, it was excluded from the First Folio, but finally included in the Third. Two hundred years of intense scholarship has been devoted to this play in order to both establish who wrote what, and how best to edit the corrupted text. Yet the editors of this edition (published in 1998), reflecting a minority opinion within scholarship, want to throw all of that out by insisting against all available evidence that Shakespeare was the sole author, and that the text is sound. True, the editors didn't have the chance to review Brian Vickers' extensive chapter devoted to "Pericles" in "Shakespeare, Co-Author" (2002), or MacDonald Jackson's "Defining Shakespeare: Pericles as a Test Case" (2003), but they did have Jonathan Hope's "The Authorship of Shakespeare's Plays" (1993), and a great deal of earlier scholarship before that, to draw upon -- had they chose to. The co-authorship of Wilkins is as firmly and soundly established as anything in Shakespeare's canon; to dismiss all the stylometric evidence (as the editors do here) is almost breathtakingly irresponsible, especially coming as it does under the supposedly scholarly banner of Cambridge. Buy the Oxford version instead, edited by the far more capable Gary Taylor.

An excellent addition to all the ourstanding Arkangel Shakespeare audio dramatizations

In fact, it's been said that likely didn't write most of it. The production of this play performed at my university is generally considered to be the worst play performed on our stake in the last five years. Plot threads are left untouched, dialogue is uninteresting for the most part, etc. People in the audience either slept, left during the intermission, or pretended they were enjoying themselves. When you are in a play, usually people you run into on campus have something polite to say about the play. The best comment I got was, "You were OK, but I didn't understand what the play was trying to do with your character." Pericles does have some good scenes, but they are so scattered that the play isn't worth sitting through to get to them. Only for those who feel a compelling need to read all of Shakespeare's works. Even those may want to avoid it, because it isn't wholly the work of the bard.