Type of plot: Romance or tragicomedy
Time of plot: Hellenistic period
Locale: Eastern Mediterranean Sea and its littorals
First performed: ca. 1607–8; first published, 1609
THE STORY
In Syria, King Antiochus’s wife died in giving birth to a daughter. When the child grew to lovely womanhood, King Antiochus conceived an unnatural passion for her. Her beauty attracted suitors to Antioch from far and wide, but King Antiochus, reluctant to give up his daughter, posed a riddle to each suitor. If the riddle went unanswered, the suitor was executed. Many men, hoping to win the princess, lost their lives in this way. Prince Pericles of Tyre went to Antioch to seek the hand of the beautiful princess. Having declared that he would willingly risk his life for the hand of the king’s daughter, he read the riddle, the solution to which disclosed an incestuous relationship between King Antiochus and his daughter. Pericles understood but hesitated, prudently, to reveal his knowledge. Pressed by King Antiochus, he hinted that he had fathomed the riddle. King Antiochus, unnerved and determined to kill Pericles, invited the young prince to stay at the court for forty days, in which time he could decide whether he would forthrightly give the solution to the riddle. Pericles, convinced that his life was in great danger, fled. King Antiochus sent agents after him with orders to kill the prince on sight.
Pericles, back in Tyre, was fearful that King Antiochus would ravage Tyre in an attempt to take Pericles’s life. After consulting with his lords, he decided that he could save Tyre by going on a journey to last until King Antiochus died. Thaliard, a Syrian lord who had come to Tyre to take Pericles’s life, learned of Pericles’s departure and returned to Antioch to report the prince’s intention. Meanwhile, in the remote Greek province of Tarsus, Cleon, the governor, and his wife Dionyza grieved because there was famine in the land. As they despaired, it was reported that a fleet of ships stood off the coast. Cleon was sure that Tarsus was about to be invaded. Actually, the ships were those of Pericles, who had come to Tarsus with grain to succor the starving populace. Cleon welcomed the Tyrians, and his people invoked the Greek gods to protect their saviors from all harm.
Pericles received word from Tyre that King Antiochus’s agents were relentlessly pursuing him, so that he was no longer safe in Tarsus. He thereupon took leave of Cleon and set sail. On the high seas the Tyrians met disaster in a storm. The fleet was lost; Pericles was the only survivor. Washed ashore in Greece, he was helped by simple fishermen. Fortunately, too, the fishermen took Pericles’s suit of armor from the sea. With the help of the fishermen, Pericles went to Pentapolis, the court of King Simonides.
There a tournament was held to honor the birthday of Thaisa, the lovely daughter of King Simonides. Among the gallant knights he met, Pericles presented a wretched sight in his rusted armor. Even so, he defeated all antagonists and was crowned king of the tournament by Thaisa. At the banquet following the tourney Pericles, reminded of his own father’s splendid court, lapsed into melancholy. Seeing his dejection, King Simonides drank a toast to him and asked him who he was. He disclosed that he was Pericles of Tyre, a castaway. His modesty and courteous deportment made an excellent impression on King Simonides and Thaisa.
Meanwhile, in Antioch, King Antiochus and his daughter, riding together in a chariot, were struck dead by a bolt of lightning. In Tyre, Pericles had been given up for dead, and the lords proposed that Helicanus, Pericles’s deputy, take the crown. The old lord, confident that his prince was still alive, directed them to spend a year in search of Pericles. In Pentapolis, Thaisa, having lost her heart to Pericles, tricked her suitors into leaving by reporting that she would remain a maid for another year. Then she and Pericles were married.
A short time before Thaisa was to give birth to a child, Pericles was told that King Antiochus was dead and that Helicanus had been importuned to take the crown of Tyre. Free to go home, Pericles, with Thaisa and Lychorida, a nurse, took ship for Tyre. During the voyage the ship was overtaken by storms. Thaisa, seemingly dead after giving birth to a daughter, was placed in a watertight casket that was thrown into the raging sea. Pericles, fearful for the safety of his child, directed the seamen to take the ship into Tarsus, which was not far off.
The casket containing Thaisa having drifted ashore in Ephesus, the body was taken to Cerimon, a skilled physician. Cerimon, suspecting that Thaisa was not really dead, discovered by his skill that she was actually quite alive. Pericles, having reached Tarsus safely, remained there a year, at the end of which time he declared that Tyre had need of him. Placing little Marina, as he had named his daughter, in the care of Cleon and Dionyza, he set out for Tyre. In the meantime Thaisa, believing that her husband and child had been lost at sea, took the veil of a votaress to the goddess Diana. Years passed, while Pericles ruled in Tyre. As Marina grew, it was clear that she was superior in every respect to her companion, the daughter of Cleon and Dionyza. When Marina’s nurse Lychorida died, Dionyza, jealous of the daughter of Pericles, plotted to have Marina’s life, and she commissioned a servant to take Marina to a deserted place on the coast and kill her. As the servant threatened to take the girl’s life, pirates frightened away the servant and took Marina aboard their ship. Taking her to Mytilene, they sold her to a brothel owner.
In Tarsus, meanwhile, Dionyza persuaded the horrified Cleon that for their own safety against the rage of Pericles they must mourn the loss of Marina and erect a monument in her memory. When Pericles, accompanied by old Helicanus, went to Tarsus to reclaim his daughter, his grief on seeing the monument was so great that he exchanged his royal robes for rags, vowed never again to wash himself or to cut his hair, and left Tarsus.
In Mytilene, in the meantime, Marina confounded both the owners of the brothel and the customers by preaching the heavenly virtues instead of deporting herself wantonly. Lysimachus, the governor of Mytilene, went in disguise to the brothel. When Marina was brought to him, he quickly discerned her gentle birth, gave her gold, and assured her that she would soon be freed from her vile bondage. Alarmed, the bawd put Marina in the hands of the doorkeeper. Marina shamed him, gave him gold, and persuaded him to place her as a teacher of the gentle arts. The money she earned by teaching singing, dancing, and needlework she gave to her owner, the bawd.
When Pericles, now a distracted wanderer, came to Mytilene, Lysimachus took a barge out to the Tyrian ship, but he was told that Pericles, grieved by the loss of both wife and daughter, would not speak to anyone. A Mytilene lord suggested that Marina, famous for her graciousness and charm, be brought. Marina came and revealed to Pericles that she knew a grief similar to his, for she had lost her father and mother. It soon became apparent to bewildered Pericles that his daughter stood before him. Rejoicing, he put aside his rags and dressed in regal robes. The goddess Diana then put him into a deep sleep, in which she directed him in a dream to go to Ephesus and to tell in the temple of Diana the loss of his wife.
Pericles hastened to Ephesus, where, in the temple, he revealed his identity to the votaries in attendance. Thaisa, overhearing him, fainted. Cerimon, who was also present, disclosed to Pericles that the votaress who had fainted was his wife. Pericles and Thaisa were joyfully reunited. Since Thaisa’s father had died, Pericles proclaimed that he and Thaisa would reign in Pentapolis and that Lysimachus and Marina, as man and wife, would rule over Tyre. When the people of Tarsus learned of the evil done by Cleon and Dionyza, they burned the governor and his family alive in their palace.
CRITICAL EVALUATION
By scholarly consensus, it appears that in the case of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, William Shakespeare finished a play that someone else had been commissioned to write. Recent scholarship indicates that Shakespeare revised the entire play from an earlier version by another playwright, probably Thomas Heywood. The play was tremendously popular in its day and was the basis of a prose version by George Wilkins. Pericles is now considered to have been the first of the tragicomedies, or dark romances, that became so popular on the Jacobean stage. The play disregards consideration of time and place, delights in romantic improbabilities, and employs the obscure, compact style of Shakespeare’s late plays. Probably it paved the way not only for Cymbeline (ca. 1609–10), The Winter’s Tale (ca. 1610–11), and The Tempest (1611), but also for the plays of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher.
Although seldom performed, Pericles does possess an interesting, romantic story and a certain sentimental beauty. It abounds in situations and surprises, although parts of its theme might be considered unpleasant. The similarities between it and Shakespeare’s other late plays are striking. The likeness between Marina in Pericles and Perdita in The Winter’s Tale is clear. The meeting between father and daughter, long separated, is suggestive of Cymbeline, and the reunion of Pericles and Thaisa anticipates that of Leontes and Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. Pericles and Cerimon are wise and superior men in the manner of The Tempest’s Prospero. The themes of reunion after long division, reconciliation, and forgiveness seem to recur in all of these late plays, beginning with Pericles. Storms appear twice in the play, perhaps as a symbol of the storms of life; this resembles The Tempest. In Shakespeare’s last plays, there are children lost and found again, parents divided and reunited, a wife rejected and ill-used and restored again. The recurring myth of royalty lost and recovered apparently had some special significance for Shakespeare and his audience.
The play is heavy with symbols and is particularly concerned with the concept of lost authority or control, without which life cannot properly be conducted. It is possible that some allusion to the late Queen Elizabeth is intended, but the meaning may have been more personal to Shakespeare and may reflect a change or confusion in his life. The atmosphere, like that of The Tempest, is all sea and music. The brothel scenes are decidedly Shakespearean, with their joking references to disease. There is a hint of the attitudes of Timon of Athens (ca. 1607–8), namely, a certain anger and disgust with humanity in the midst of the poetry and music. Up to the third act, Shakespeare’s revisions apparently were mostly confined to style, but comparison to the prose story based on the earlier version of the play suggests that with the fourth act he began to make extensive revisions in the plot as well. Certainly, the later scenes are superior in quality to the earlier ones. There is a subtlety and delicacy in the handling of certain scenes—such as when Pericles strikes Marina when she reproves him for his stubborn grief—that mark them as clearly from the hand of Shakespeare. Pericles, because of its uncertain place in the canon, has long been underrated as a play. Its importance, however, as the beginning of a new style for Shakespeare and other Jacobean playwrights cannot be overestimated.
—Joseph Rosenblum
FILM ADAPTATIONS
1984 BBC Shakespeare Production
This adaptation was directed by David Jones and starred Edward Petherbridge as Gower; John Woodvine as King Antiochus; Pat Ryecart as Lysimachus; Trevor Peacock as Boult; Mike Gwilym as Pericles; Annette Crosbie as Dionyza; Juliet Stevenson as Thaisa; Robert Ashby as Thaliard; Patrick Godfrey as Helicanus; Toby Salaman as Escanes; and Norman Rodway as Cleon of Tarsus.
Henry Fenwick, in his essay on “The Production” for the BBC booklet published to coincide with the first broadcast of this version, reported that all the people he interviewed were surprised by how interesting the plot of this little-performed play seemed when they first rehearsed it; they found it intriguingly disturbing and full of fascinating events (17). Producer Shaun Sutton, director David Jones, and set designer Don Taylor all explained their approaches to the play, which emphasized scenic variety, a recurring stress on the sea, and a concern with fairy-tale influences. Colin Lavers, the costume designer, used differences in clothing to accentuate differences in location (such as different cities), with the costumes also implying different atmospheres and kinds of symbolism. Actors were heavily clothed; Greek and Roman clothing was avoided and a sort of “wonderland” atmosphere was evoked (17–21). Jones had to decide (a) how to deal with the likelihood that much of the text was not written by Shakespeare and (b) how to handle the brothel scene (21–23). Jones also explained how he improvised in presenting the song Marina sings to Pericles but noted that he changed little in the Gower speeches or elsewhere, wanting to present as much of the script as possible (23–24). Fenwick asserted that the characters in this play are less complex and consistent than in other works by Shakespeare, and Annette Crosbie, playing Dionyza, agreed, although she nonetheless commented on her character’s motivations (24). Trevor Peacock’s part also posed challenges, such as his initial amorality but almost magical transformation (24–25). Mike Gwilym, as Pericles, noted that his role differed from others he had recently played: it was less neurotic and more passive, with much character development happening off-screen. Pericles struck Gwilym as one of many rather uncomplicated characters in the drama (25–27). Jones suggested that the play’s episodic plot works better on television than on the stage, and he stressed the contrast between the dreamlike first half and the more realistic second, which deals with common human hopes and fears (27).
James C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen, in their fine brief overview and collection of very early commentary on this production, cited responses from a variety of critics. One of them praised the production’s “formal beauty,” called it “gripping and moving” and declared it “[o]ne of the strongest productions” of the series. Another admired the “detailed, naturalistic sets” and Pat Ryecart’s “very subtle performance” but thought that “Mike Gwilym … lacked the wide vocal range needed for Pericles, and … missed the sublime tenderness of Pericles’ reunion with Marina.” Still another commentator called this production a “fine version” in which various challenges had been “triumphantly met. Streamlined and sumptuous,” this writer continued, “the production profited from the ‘diversity of its settings,’” its “variegated score,” its “atmospheric sets,” and its “opening moments,” which he thought were “made tense and barbaric in this television version.” This commentator wrote that, “[r]epeatedly, the production steers Pericles as close as it can to high-coloured naturalism. Largely because of this, it is a haunting experience” (308).
Joan Hartwig, reviewing the production in 1985 for the Shakespeare on Film Newsletter, was of mixed minds. Noting the production’s “naturalistic mode” and “insistent realism,” she found these traits “often … at odds with the remoteness and fairy-tale world that Shakespeare created,” so “[s]hades of ambiguity fall to morality’s good versus evil” simplicity (1). Saying Shakespeare intended this “fairy tale [to be] taken seriously,” Hartwig suggested that the BBC production sometimes minimized the magic of the play. She also thought because Antiochus in this version seems so strong, “Mike Gwilym’s Pericles seems almost entirely a victim throughout” the play, although she did admire the ways that Marina “was sensitively and attractively played by Amanda Redman.” Ultimately Hartwig wrote that the “final effect of this production is that there is more tragedy and somberness here than comedy and a sense of hope,” although she added that occasionally “magic” is achieved and “works marvelously well” (2).
Peter Cochran, who seems to have watched and commented on just about every Shakespeare film ever made, wrote in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (340–41) that this play is not mainly by Shakespeare; extolled a scene in the final act; found Gower tedious; but praised the settings, lights, clothing, and actors (340) and found the recognition scene “moving” (341).
In an article from 2017 titled “Looking (at) Women in the BBC Pericles,” Edel Semple argued that although “the play may bear Pericles’ name, the BBC Pericles presents us with a series of women who propel the narrative. In different ways, each of the female characters is a linchpin of this winding, episodic tale.” Semple thought that “[w]hereas the language of looking in the play often presents women as spectacles and objects of visual pleasure, in the film the women are not simply recipients of the gaze; rather, they are in their own right agents of the look and are clearly framed as such. The women,” Semple continued, “refuse to look, refuse to look away, look longingly, look where they want, look for pleasure, look to criticise, look with and as authorities and look back at those who turn their gaze upon them. They spectate, ogle, glare, observe and scrutinise. In doing so,” Semple asserted, “they develop their different characters, roles and desires and, above all, open up both the play and the film to new readings. The women, in short, provide us with one good reason why the BBC Pericles is worth a second look” (52).
Bibliography
Bulman, James C., and H. R. Coursen, editors. Shakespeare on Television: An Anthology of Essays. UP of New England, 1988.
Cochran, Peter. Small-Screen Shakespeare. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.
Fenwick, Henry. “The Production.” The Shakespeare Plays: Pericles, edited by John Wilders, BBC, 1984, pp. 17–27.
Hartwig, Joan. “Pericles: An Unclaimed World.” Shakespeare on Film Newsletter, vol. 9, no. 2, 1985, pp. 1–2.
Semple, Edel. “Looking (at) Women in the BBC Pericles.” Shakespeare on Screen: The Tempest and Late Romances, edited by Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, Cambridge UP, 2017, pp. 40–55.