Early Modern Productions

Caralina Lawless and Sylke Lesinski

Pericles, Prince of Tyre 1609 Title Page

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is a play detailing the story of the fictional prince Pericles and his adventures along the Mediterranean. It was inspired primarily by the story of Apollonius of Tyre, an old Greek Romance translated by John Gower, who narrates the Shakespeare version of the play. It also drew inspiration from The Patterne of Painefull Adventures, a work written by Lawrence Twine produced in 1576, which saw a renewal in popularity when it was reprinted in 1607. Although the question of Pericles’ authorship has long been debated, it wasn’t until 1919 after the publication of H. Dugdale Sykes that George Wilkins was widely accepted to have co-authored the play with the Bard. The play was partially written by William Shakespeare, and partially by George Wilkins, as co-authoring was a fairly common practice at this time. It was most likely written between 1606-1608, as that was when George Wilkins was most active as a writer.  It was around this time that a Venetian ambassador to England named Zorzi Giusinian saw a play called Pericles in London, which ran from January 5^th 1606 to November 23 1608, though there is some speculation as to whether this was the Shakespeare version, or a different version of the play altogether. The play was first published in 1609 in a quarto edition, likely a pirated version. 

The Old Globe Theatre, London, 1642

            Though the title page of the first quarto states that it had been put on many times before 1609 at the Old Globe theater, the first confirmed production of Pericles was in May 1619, in the “King’s great chamber” in Whitehall. The Kings Men performed Pericles numerous times thereafter at the Old Globe between 1625 to1631. While it does not appear in the First Folio in 1623, it was published in quarto form in 1609, 1611, 1619, 1630, and 1635, before being added to the Third Folio in 1663.

Sadler Wells Theatre, Clerkenwell, c. 1808

            There is little evidence of a performance again until John Rhodes’ staging of it in 1660, at the start of the Restoration. Thomas Betterton played the title role at the Cockpit Theater, as the first production of any of Shakespeare’s works in the new era. However, the play is difficult to perform, and with the changing values of the Restoration period, the play’s structure did not fit the new neoclassical formats.  Critics of the time generally disliked the play, and scholar Edward Dowden cited it as being “as a whole singularly undramatic” and that it “entirely lacks unity of action”. Thus, it seems to have vanished from performance afterwards until 1854, with Samuel Phelps' staging of the play at the Sadler Wells Theatre in Clerkenwell, though not without heavy edits to fit the Victorian ideals.

            The play seems to disappear from view once more until the 1929 production by Walter Nugent Monck at the Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich, though again, cuts were made, most notably in the first act regarding the incest between King Antiochus and his daughter. It seems that as the play moved through time, time moved with the play, making adjustment where necessary, and editing scenes to fit the values and the ideals of the age in which it was performed.

            In contrast to its previous scalding reviews, the production of Pericles at the Theatre for a New Audience was recently praised by the New Yorker as being “Sweeping, majestic…magical, theatrical…with music, dance, and pageantry all contributing to the glow.” Despite its rocky history, its content, and the difficulty of its staging, Pericles, Prince of Tyre went on to rise in popularity and success, eventually becoming one of Shakespeare’s better known plays.