The Perils of Pericles
Meet Shakespeare’s “Pericles,” the most unfortunate of men, but more fortunate than women
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I’m reading through Shakespeare’s plays in an attempt to make sense of the world. Today I’m writing about “Pericles, Prince of Tyre.” For a quick reference to posts on previous plays, click here. Next week, “Cymbeline.”
Imagine standing in a somber gathering, casting your eye across the crowd, when you’re startled to see a pair of shoulders shaking in barely-disguised laughter. That undignified person you spot might be me.
Witnessing the most solemn occasions, I’ve been alarmed to feel the rise of irrepressible, hysterical laughter bubbling to the surface. This uncontrollable desire to burst out laughing at entirely inappropriate moments mortifies me. And yet, with a complete disregard for taboos, this uncontrollable desire to laugh simply rips through my shame.
The trigger is never something amusing, much less funny; absurdity tips me over the edge. Once seen, I cannot unsee it. I cannot, like most normal adults, put it back in its box. Inappropriate laughter: I think I may have a gift for it.
And so we embark with the Shakespearean tragedy, Pericles. Be forewarned. Read on.
Summary
The play introduces us first to King Antiochus and his beautiful daughter who’s courted by lords from every realm.
Antiochus has devised a game for suitors to win the prize of his daughter in marriage. The game consists of a glass-like riddle of transparent verse for the suitors to solve. A tyrant, Antiochus has added a kicker: solve the puzzle or die. Antiochus waves his hand to draw attention to the array of impaled heads, all former suitors unfortunate in their guesses, that crowd the stage. That they were unfortunate is clear, but were their guesses wrong?
ANTIOCHUS
I am no viper, yet I feed
On mother’s flesh which did me breed.
I sought a husband, in which labour
I found that kindness in a father.
He’s father, son, and husband mild;
I mother, wife, and yet his child.
How this may be and yet in two,
As you will live resolve it you.
-Scene 1Pericles, Prince of Tyre, finds himself one of those unfortunate suitors as he comprehends the forthright message in this verse, in which Antiochus owns his incestuous relationship with his daughter. The king has no intent of letting another man take his daughter from him: solving the riddle will get you killed; not solving the riddle will get you killed.
Unwilling to donate his head to the grisly display, Pericles dodges when called to answer. The king may be many things, but he’s no dummy. He realizes Pericles has deduced the incestuous meaning behind the riddle. Antiochus gives Pericles 40 days to give an answer. Released for the moment, Pericles flees the kingdom. Antiochus sends an assassin, Thaliart, to hunt down and murder Pericles.
Back in Tyre, Pericles discusses his situation in confidence with his advisor Helicanus. Pericles must flee for his life.
Thaliart, now in Tyre, overhears Helicanus telling other lords that Pericles has fled his kingdom and gone to sea. The lords want to know the cause: Helicanus claims he knows only that Pericles has reason to suspect he angered Antiochus, and fears for his life.
Pericles arrives in Tarsus, which has been laid low by famine. At Pericles’ arrival, the Governor of Tarsus, Cleon, and wife Dionyza throw themselves at the mercy of Pericles, asking for help, which Pericles generously provides. Cleon and Dionyza make undying claims of gratitude for Pericles saving Tarsus from sure death.
Helicanus sends a message to Pericles, warning him that Thaliart is headed to Tarsus to murder him. Pericles sets sail but his ship is caught in a storm and shipwrecked. He washes ashore in Pentapolis, which is ruled by the good King Simonides. In honor of his daughter’s birthday the next day, the king has prepared a jousting tournament for princes and knights who want to marry his daughter Thaisa.
Some fishermen find Pericles washed ashore, followed by his armor, which has been rusted by the sea. Pericles decides to use the armor to enter the competition for Thaisa.
The day of the tournament, five contenders, richly armored and attended by pages, parade the grounds in front of the king and his daughter. The sixth contender, Pericles, arrives in rusty armor, unaccompanied by a page or finery. It would seem laughable, but the good king cautions against drawing conclusions of a man’s worth based on his appearance.
KING SIMONIDES
Opinion’s but a fool, that makes us scan
The outward habit for the inward man.
-Scene 6Pericles wins the tournament and at the celebratory dinner, the king seats him in a place of honor. Pericles marvels that the king treats all of his guests equally, and he recalls his own father, now gone.
Thaisa, the king’s daughter, finds she’s smitten with Pericles. After hearing Pericles’ life story, the king gives Pericles a handsome horse and fine equipment, acknowledging Pericles’s royal status.
In Tyre, Helicanus announces that the tyrant Antiochus and his daughter have been killed in a fire from the heavens, which he considers a just reward for their sins. The lords in Tyre demand to know where Pericles is; if he’s lost then they demand a new leader to rule the country. Helicanus asks the lords to wait for 12 months, and suggests they use the time to search for Pericles.
King Simonides, in Pentapolis, tells the suitors that Thaisa has decided she won’t marry for a year; all but Pericles leave the city. After they’re gone, the king reads a letter from Thaisa in which she tells him that she’s decided to marry Pericles, a decision she’s willing to pursue even if her father disapproves. He’s amused by her determination and says to himself that he supports the match. However, he plans to play a trick on his daughter: he’ll act outraged and see how Thaisa and Pericles react to his obstinance. After testing them, Simonides is satisfied that both have characters of integrity and honor. Smiling, he announces they will wed.
Pericles and Thaisa marry and have a child. News from Tyre arrives: time’s up and Pericles needs to return to his kingdom or lose it. They board a ship and set sail to Tyre. Unsurprising to anyone except Pericles, their ship is caught in a storm. While the storm still rages, Pericles is distraught to learn that Thaisa has died. Pericles has her body placed in a freshly caulked chest, surrounded with spices and jewels, and he adds a note identifying her and asking whomever finds her to bury her. The sailors throw the chest overboard.
Thinking his infant daughter Marina won’t survive the longer trip to Tyre, Pericles heads to nearby Tarsus to drop off Marina, accompanied only by her nurse. Pericles is certain that Creon and Dionyza will take good care of Marina, given their debt to him. Pericles swears that he’ll not cut his hair until Marina grows up and is married by Diana (the goddess).
The chest containing Thaisa washes up in Ephesus; when it’s opened, the men who find the chest are amazed to see the body inside is alive. When Thaisa wakens, she concludes that her husband and child are lost to her, and decides she’ll go to Diana’s temple, where she’ll live a celibate life.
Marina grows up in Cleon’s palace alongside Cleon’s daughter Philoten. Cleon’s wife, jealous of Marina, decides to have Marina murdered to remove any competition for Philoten. As the assassin prepares to murder Marina, pirates rush in and take her.
The pirates take Marina to a brothel at Mytilene, which is all out of wenches since they treat their workers vilely. The bawd and pimp (pander) who run the whore house think they’ve found a jackpot: a virgin of exceptional beauty and breeding.
Pericles takes to the sea to find his daughter. In Tarsus, Cleon lies to Pericles, telling him that Marina died in her sleep; he shows Pericles her tomb. Pericles takes to the sea, telling Fortune to steer his ship, since, you know, this has worked out so well in the past.
Marina outwits the bawd and pimp who hoped for treasure from selling her body: she talks every man sent to her into being virtuous. She convinces a man working in the brothel not only to not rape her but to accept a deal: take her to an honorable house where she will teach music and the arts; in return, she’ll send the brothel her earnings. The deal accepted, she embarks on a viturous profession.
Pericles’ ship approaches Mytilene. The governor, one of Marina’s whore house conversions, hears the ship is captained by a man sunk in despondency. The mayor asks to speak with Pericles. Unable to gain admittance, the governor sends for Marina. When she arrives, Marina tells her story to Pericles, who realizes she is his daughter; he tells her that he’s her father. Swooning with joy, he suddenly hears music and asks for privacy so he can sleep. Diana comes to him and tells him to go directly to her temple in Ephesus. Pericles and Marina set sail for Ephesus.
At the temple, surrounded by Diana’s attendants, Pericles announces who he is and that he once had a wife named Thaisa. Upon hearing this, one of the nuns, Thaisa, falls to the ground. Pericles is stunned that his wife would still be alive, since he’d thrown her coffin overboard. The family history, stitched together, reunites Pericles, Thaisa, and Marina.
The rejoined family sets sail for Tyre, where Pericles will rule. The epilogue pronounces a roll call of the evil actors who earned their terrible deaths and the good people who fought through obstacles and, through virtuous means, succeeded in turning around their fates.
Thoughts
The play Pericles is attributed to both Shakespeare and George Wilkins. According to “The Oxford Shakespeare,” George Wilkins had written a popular novel called “The Painful Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre” in 1608. The play Pericles, Prince of Tyre was produced a year later and although ascribed to Shakespeare, was ‘manifestly corrupted’ and appeared to have been produced from someone’s memory of the play as performed.
If you’ve been following along with this series and/or have read or seen Shakespeare’s other plays, you’ll recognize that this play stands apart, in a manifestly not-good way. It’s overtly moralistic. Supernatural forces (‘Fortune,’ gods and goddesses) direct the action. A narrator intermittently explicates the mechanistic plot, filling in what happens during time gaps, ending with a dumb show of the actors miming plot points.
While these were conventions commonly used in Elizabethan theatre, Shakespeare didn’t follow them. His characters are often morally ambiguous. He explicates the interior life of his characters, who determine their own fates. Plot lines flow along a trajectory that’s both plausible and naturalistic.
Consider, in Macbeth, Banquo under attack and yelling to his son:
“Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!”
That simple statement contains the heartbreaking love of a father for his son as well as a desperate hope for his country. For any parent who would offer one’s own life to save a child, that moment grips our emotions. We don’t need a maudlin explanation. We don’t need to be reminded of the import of Banquo’s decision, or its relation to virtue.
The sight of a tragic character, Pericles, whose unkempt state (hair and beard uncut, face and body unwashed) presents a caricature of bereavement, would be overly hammy and risible in any other Shakespearean play. Not once but twice Pericles proclaims that he won’t cut his beard in mourning. Best I can tell, dude really doesn’t like to shave.
My husband and I once saw Pericles performed at the Globe Theatre. It was top flight entertainment. In my memory, the play was comic, over-the-top camp. Picking up the text of the play this week, I was amazed to discover the text is purposefully tragic and written with a tone both serious and sermonizing. It begins with an incestuous king on a stage bristling wtih impaled heads, and from there the miseries pile on each other, scene after scene. The decision by the director of the play we watched is probably the best take: just make it as entertaining as you can.
In the 31 Shakespeare plays I’ve written on in previous posts, I haven’t failed to discover some new insight into both the text itself and life as I experience it. With this play, I’m stumped. What did I learn? Maintain your purpose and virtue despite whatever obstacles appear. Or perhaps, don’t go to sea if you’re as unskilled or unlucky a sailor as Pericles? If you’re not a brightest bulb, maybe don’t devise a puzzle that will be so transparent that it can be solved by anyone with slightly more intelligence? Don’t entrust your infant to a couple who were so clueless they ruined their kingdom?
A lingering distaste prevents me from moving on without acknowledging it: the play’s handling of Antiochus’ daughter disgusts me. A victim of incest, the daughter is made to bear the shame of her father’s crime. She shares her father’s chariot when the gods strike it with fire, burning them both to a crisp. Beyond that character, the play has no feeling for women, burdening them with the expectation that they overcome with their spirituality every assault against their bodies. Thaisa retreated to a temple to live away from men; Marina proselytizes men to prevent the prostitution of her body. This is the ambit of women’s defenses in the play.
The mind that memorialized this play must have been riddled with memory holes. Feel free to release your inappropriate laughter in its face.
Ellie’s Corner
We prep a week of Ellie’s meals at a time. She’s literally the sous cheffe trying to supervise under my feet. Look at that face! No worries, Ellie. Every little thing is going to be all right.
Thanks for reading,
