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Directed by Michael Ouellette
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Directed by Michael Ouellette
As it traces Pericles's progress through life, the play gives us many versions of fundamental human relationships - husband and wife, father and daughter, servant and master, etc. For this reason,doubling and tripling of roles in this play is a virtue, not a bow to the exigencies of performance. With the same actors in similar roles, patterns and comparisons emerge - good and bad fathers, for example. In our production, the actor of Pericles is the one actor who does not play another role; in the midst of this company of multi-cast actors, he is an image of the individual who makes sense of the world he finds himself in by discerning between patterns of behavior and morality.
-- Michael Ouellette
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When I first read Pericles in preparation for a production, I was struck by how much it reminded me of Homer's Odyssey, especially because sea journey (s) of the title character is clearly a metaphor for the journey through life. That in turn reminded me of a poem by the Greek poet Cavafy, whose meditation on the Odyssey, Ithaca, makes the point that it's not the goal, but the journey which matters. So much is that idea for me at the heart of Pericles, that Ithaca became an essential part of my thinking about the play. |
The story of Pericles is actually the story of Appolinus of Tyre. This is a tale dating back to Roman times. Latin manuscripts of the Historica Appollonii Regis Tyri from the 9th century have been found, and there is reference to the story going back centuries earlier. It was a popular tale in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance included in Vitebo's Pantheon (1186) and mentioned in Chaucer's Canterbury's Tales. John Gower, the English poet known as the Prince of Latin and English grammer and a paragon of morality, told the story in his most popular work, Confessio Amantis (1386). Lawrence Twine included the tale in the Gesta Romanorum which was enjoying new life in 1600. Goustnian wrote Pericles either in Jan 1606 or Nov 1608, the records are not very clear. On May 20 1608, Edward Blount registered The booke of PERICLES, Prynce of Tyre by William Shakespeare. It is thought that this was the prompt-book. However, it was never printed. Shortly thereafter, all the theaters were closed due to the plague and George Wilkins, a playwright and hackwriter, published a novel, without authority, entitled "The Painfull Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Being The true Hiftory of the Play of Pericles, as it was lately prefented by the worthy and ancient Poet John Gower". In 1609, again without authorization, a quatro edition of the play was published by Henry Gosson entitled, "THE LATE, and much admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. With the true Relation of the whole Historie, aduentures and fortunes of the said Prince: As also, The no lese strange an worthy accidents, in the Birth and Life, of his Daughter MARIANA [sic], As it hath been diuers and sundry times acted by his Maiesties Seruants, at the Globe on the Banck-side. By William Shakespeare." The Gosson edition is the fount from which our modern versions mostly spring.
There are obviously questions here. Why didn't Blount publish the prompt-book? How much of Wilkins work is from the performance he saw and how much is from earlier works. Who compiled the Gosson version and all editions after it? It is clear, from inconsistancies in the various texts and from the wholesale lifting of passages from Gower and Twine that many authors had a hand in what we know today as Pericles. In addition, not all of the stories of Pericles agree on simple facts. Gower does not name the wife of Pericles, but names the daughter Thiaise. There is no female Bawd and Helicanus is nothing more that a footnote. Gosson's Quatro has Thaisa speaking spanish phonetically, such that what is written is actually of no known language. Wilkins contains sections where the lords speak of Pericles going when he has just arrived and Pericleshas just arrived in Tarsus at the end of Chapter 2 while he is just approaching in the middle of Chapter 3. These are just a few examples of the inconsistances throughout the works.
So what can we say about Pericles? The text we have is flawed. Modern editors have tried to make sense of it by drawing on the Quatro and other sources. We really don't know who the other contributors are. However, the story itself truly is one which "old was sung". There are some facts tho' which are contained in the play: John Gower was a much loved poet whose writings served as a moral focus for the times and who retold the story of Appolinus. Appolinus (Pericles), when asked by his daughter Thaise (Marina) his name, calls himself Perillie (associating his name with peril). It may be from this that Shakespeare got the name Pericles. Antiochus the Great ruled Antioch form 223-187 BC and was responsible for enlarging the city. It was dwarfed only by Rome and Alexandria. Simonides of Ceos was an influential Grecian poet in 5 BC. Although in Greece in this play, Pentapolis was really the main Hellenic colony in Africa. Mytilene was a city on the Isle of Lesbos and had a ruler called Lysimachus. And, Tharsus, where Cleopatra met Mark Antony, was a wealthy city in the plain of Cilicia (now Turkey).
And now gentle readers, this note hath ended.