Inside Shakespeare's mind:

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Shakespeare started off shakily in putting together the Acts he separated, when he sat down to write Pericles. Raved, applauded yet humiliated in its own days, the play failed to appear in the First Folio possibly because the accepted text was known to be corrupt. It was believed that Shakespeare only wrote the last three Acts with the first two by another, possibly by George Wilkins. This belief is in the basis that the second credible view of ‘pirate’ report trying to recreate from memory a largely Shakespearean in text that the first had only a blurred recollection of someone who knew the last three Acts well. However, the great moment is when Shakespeare's unmistakable voice enters with these acts.

So, why did Shakespeare had to create this situation? What was going in his mind? What was the confusion about that left the scholar and reader puzzled?

Sited in various Mediterranean countries, Pericles, prince of tyre is a story John Gower, the mediaeval poet who retells the legend of Apoolonius of Tyre and acts as Chorus throughout in his Confessio amantis in 1385-93.

Pericles is able to solve the riddle propounded by Antiochus who is the King of Antioch, to his daughter's suitors. The answer to this which no one has yet found and which is the death penalty if one were to fail in finding the answer about the father and daughter having had an incestuous relationship. When Pericles reveals he knows the answer, Antiochus becomes suspiciously hospitable. The young Prince realises that he must escape and flee to Tyre and leaves Helicanus to govern in his absence and sets off for Tarsus where he relieves the famine-striken city.

Pericles, the Prince of Tyre: The Polish, Stanislaus Crostowski's woodcut, shows the tender union of Pericles with his daughter, Marina. Crostowski is believed to have died as a result of Hitler's invasion of Poland.

After a pause and realising that he is still persued by a minion of Antiochus, Pericles puts again to see. (An open place by the Sea-side, enter Pericles, wet)

Pericles – ‘Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven; Wind rain and thunder, remember eratly man is a but a substance that must yield to you.

And I, as fits my nature, do obey you. Alas; the sea hath cast me on the rocks, wash'd me from the shore to shore and left me breath, Nothing to think on, but ensuing death. Let it suffice the greatness of your powers. To have bereft a prince of all his fortunes.

- Act. II Sc. 1

So, Pericles finds himself on the shores of Pentapolis where the King is celebrating his daughter's birthday with a tournament. She is Thaisa. After taking part in the tournament, Pericles wins and is betrothed to Thaisa.

They plan to go to Tyre where Pericles will be safe. But a great sea-storm prevents Thaisa after giving birth to a daughter, Marina, is thought to be dead and thrown into the sea, wrapped in a waterproof chest, with a letter enclosed. When it reaches a land in Ephesus, the noble Cerimon revives Thaisa who believes she is the only survivor, becomes a priestess of Diana's Temple. In the meantime, Pericles returns to Tyre after entrusting the infant Marina to the care of Cleon, Governor of Tarsus and his wife, Dionyza.

Fourteen Summers pass and while Pericles is in Tyre, Marina has grown up to be a beautiful girl and Dionyza becomes jealous as she overshadows her own daughter and plans to get her murdered but pirates kidnap her and take her to a brothel in Mytilene. (Enter Lysimachus and still later, Marina in her innocence)

Lysimachus – Have you done? (to the Bawd) Go thy way.

Now, pretty one, how long have you been at this trade

Marina – What trade Sir?
L. - Why, I cannot name it but I shall offend.
M. - I cannot be offended with my trade. Please you to name it.
L. - How long have you been of this profession.
M. - E'er since I can remember
L. - Did you go to it so young? Were you a gamester at five or at seven;
M. - Earlier too; Sir, if now I be one.
L. - Why, the house you dwell in proclaims you to a creature for sale

- Act. IV, Sce. IV

When Dionyza and Cleon informs Pericles that his daughter is dead, he becomes insane (according to Gower) and vows not to cut his hair or wash his face. In Mytilene Marina whose purity and virginity bewilders her employers and the Governor Lysimachus, manages to leave the brothel and work in an honest house. Pericles in utter frustration, chances to visit the city.

Lysimachus sends for Marina to comfort the stranger in the anchored in the ship. Suddenly Pericles realises that this is long lost daughter. He is asked to visit a temple in Ephesus by Diana in a dream. He visits the temple and relates the dream to a priestess and discovers her to be his ‘dead’ wife, Thaisa. All are united. Thaisa with Pericles who decide to spend the rest of their lives in Pentpolis while Marina who is presently married to Lysimachus, will rule in Tyre.

In performance

Shakespeare's rambling narrative from which the sound of the sea is never far distant, can and does warrant the riddle and the appearance of the unnamed daughter of Antiochus through shipwreck and wooing, storm and lost and to the final reunion of Pericles and Thaisa in Diana's temple.

The Lavantine tour drifts us from Antioch to Meditarranian, to Mytilene and Ephesus, The prince gains a king's daughter. He calls in grand Shakespearian phrase. It wash both heaven and hell. A princess rises alive from a wave-tossed chest. Her daughter's innocence shines through the murk of a brothel.

Oddly, the Restoration staged as its first Shakespeare-play, Pericles with Thomas Betterson who was only 25 as the Pericles which was too much of a challenging role. The play suffered from a feeble adaptation by George Lillo in 1738. The play was subtitled as Marina. A revival by Samuel Phelps in 1854 at the Sadler's Wells had no luck. However, after a silence of almost half century, John Coleman's legendary and preposterous adventure titled, Pericles in 1900, eccentrically expunged, eradicated, eliminated and omitted a good deal of rubbish.

Someone who came to Shakespeare's help was Robert Atkins who put back the Bard and directed with loving simplicity at the Open Air theatre, Regent Park in 1939. It is then that Robert Eddison's romantic, lyrical Prince grew as the play did. The play picked momentum as it moved onwards especially at Birmingham Repertoy in 1954 and revived in 1958 and turned Gower to a calypso singer in 1969 at Stratford. Another version was mounted by RSC at Stratford in 1990. I cannot recall seeing Pericles in movie, TV or ballet (even excerpts) but became a favourite stage drama.

So much so for one of Shakespeare's idiotic attempts, the stuff sometimes he carried in his mind.

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