Pericles is one of those peculiar plays no one really knows what to do with. I’ve told people that American Bard is doing Pericles for its spring show and they have given me
varying responses of,
“Oh, Pericles…that’s a hard one…
what’s it about again?”
This Guy (Source)
Of course, like most Shakespeare plays that have some root in history, the actual historical facts are bent somewhat; but yes, it is about one of the greatest figures in Greek history, Pericles. It recounts his adventures to various cities at the edges of the known Greek world, the people he meets, the love he finds and loses and then finds again, and his growth as a human being throughout this life-spanning journey. It has all the juicy features we love in a good Jacobian drama: incest, attractive royalty, dance, dumb shows, music, exotic locations and people—actually, for how little produced it is in our time, it was one of the most popular plays in Shakespeare’s own era.
There are a few problems textually with Pericles, however, the first one being that Shakespeare didn’t actually write all of it. There’s a very clear demarcation between what one of my teachers at RADA called the “crap verse” of Shakespeare’s most likely co-writer George Wilkins and the Bard’s own handiwork (the supposed shift happens in Act III Sc. 1, read the scenes before and afterwards and respond back in the comment section, I’d love to hear opinions on this!).
Of course, like most Shakespeare plays that have some root in history, the actual historical facts are bent somewhat; but yes, it is about one of the greatest figures in Greek history, Pericles. It recounts his adventures to various cities at the edges of the known Greek world, the people he meets, the love he finds and loses and then finds again, and his growth as a human being throughout this life-spanning journey. It has all the juicy features we love in a good Jacobian drama: incest, attractive royalty, dance, dumb shows, music, exotic locations and people—actually, for how little produced it is in our time, it was one of the most popular plays in Shakespeare’s own era.
There are a few problems textually with Pericles, however, the first one being that Shakespeare didn’t actually write all of it. There’s a very clear demarcation between what one of my teachers at RADA called the “crap verse” of Shakespeare’s most likely co-writer George Wilkins and the Bard’s own handiwork (the supposed shift happens in Act III Sc. 1, read the scenes before and afterwards and respond back in the comment section, I’d love to hear opinions on this!).
In order to make it work today I’ve seen directors
paint it with every kind of concept one could think of,
from classic Greek…
Like My Production at RADA…
yes I’m wearing a turban, don’t ask. (Source)
To productions where Pericles
is making his voyage in a spaceship across
the vast regions of outer space.
That Thaisa is one hot space babe. (Source)
Now, to be clear, there is nothing terribly wrong with setting Shakespeare plays in different time periods per se…but in my mind plays like Pericles and other works by Shakespeare reside in their own particular niche in the present. They aren’t period pieces, fixed hard fast to a time, but constantly changing worlds based on the current epoch’s sensibility and understanding. I mean if you think about it, Shakespearean histories produced during Shakespeare’s own time weren’t actually portrayed in the era in which they were set—every play produced was done in the actors’ finest Elizabethan garb and maybe a toga if they were doing Julius Caesar or something.
You can slap a time period on any Shakespeare play to make a statement, or just to make it cheaper to produce by not spending hundreds of dollars on traditional Elizabethan hoop skirts and bum rolls,
but I think the most interesting productions I’ve seen don’t impose any specific era on the text, but rather create their own world, their own adventure by listening to how the story uniquely speaks to them.
Bum Rolls!
That’s the most important part of plays like Pericles! The adventure! The best productions take you on an adventure of some kind, whether it be an emotional journey or twists and turns of a plot, or simply the world in which the story resides. This is what makes pieces exciting to me, at least—because what’s the point of seeing a play, or any art for that matter, if it doesn’t transport you to a different facet of reality for awhile? Just like returning home after a long voyage, you always look at your life a bit differently. After our last company meeting, I’m super excited to begin American Bard’s journey into Pericles and I have no doubt that come spring we’ll be taking audiences on quite an interesting adventure…
So I guess the moral to be had from all this talk of eras, bum rolls, and crap verse is that there is much to be learned from other points in time, yes, and history does indeed have its place in theater…but as far as molding the world of a piece, there is something to be said for creating something not completely of a specific time, but rather letting it reside in the imagination.
To find out more about Pericles, Elizabethan Times, or anything else I mentioned in this article, I suggest reading Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt and checking out Wikipedia.org for other interesting reads.
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