Pericles: the wrap up

Pericles.

I can’t help but think of a song by the band X, one of the greatest punk bands to come out of the Los Angeles music scene in the late 70s/early 80s: “The World’s a Mess, It’s in my Kiss.”

This play’s a mess, but the magic is in its evocation of emotion.

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Podcast 146: Pericles: concept, cast, conclusion

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This week’s podcast concludes our discussion of Pericles with a concept and cast (kinda, not really) and a conclusion.

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Pericles – Speech study: Gower, the end

The day before yesterday, I took a look at the opening Gower chorus for Pericles. And I pretty much found it to be a mess.

Today, let’s take a look at the three Act Five choruses…

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Pericles – midpoint: huh?

Using Professor Rodes’ midpoint theory, let’s take a look at Pericles.

There are 2329 lines in in the play, which means the midpoint is at line 1165, or at Act Three, Scene Two, line 5. According to Dr. Rodes’ theory, you could find at this midpoint–or within twenty lines either way–a speech that perfectly sums up a major theme of the play (the 20-line leeway was to help remove the differences in prose line lengths between individual editions).

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Speech Study: Gower, opening chorus

The play-opening chorus of Pericles, spoken by Gower, runs 42 lines, mostly in iambic tetrameter. Those are four-foot lines, as opposed to the five-foot iambic pentameter we’re used to hearing come from Shakespeare; of course, the historical Gower wrote in tetrameter, so it fits.

The speech in interesting as it introduces the play and Gower…but not Pericles. He’s not mentioned a single time in the speech, one that spends almost its entire length on Antioch and Antiochus.

And that’s not the only weirdness in the speech…

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Pericles: Hope

In Act Two of Pericles, during the parade of jousters at the Pentapolis tournament, Pericles delivers to Thaisa a “withered branch that’s only green at top” (II.ii.43), with the motto “In hac spe vivo” (II.ii.44).

So what does it mean?

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Pericles: Viral Virtue

A couple of days back, I played with the idea of Marina as quasi-protagonist in Pericles. There’s so much bad sex in the play, that what she stands for–virginity and virtue–seems all the more important.

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Pericles: Scansion for names

No, it’s not bowling for dollars. But looking at the scansion of some of the poetic lines in Pericles gives us a better idea of how to pronounce the unusual names found therein…

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Pericles: Prince of Tyre? or King?

Yesterday, I discussed that troublesome Act One, Scene Two of Pericles, what with its weird entering and exiting lords, and references to actions not done. Today, I want to talk about what might seem to be the troublesome title.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

title page from 1609 folio

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