Hear director Joseph Haj exploring the spiritual side of William Shakespeare's pirate-packed Pericles
Director Joseph Haj explaining why William Shakespeare's pirate-packed Pericles is a great spiritual “adventure yarn.”
Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn about the fate of Agamemnon, according to Homer's Odyssey, Book XI, by listening to his ghost telling Odysseus how he was murdered.
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Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Learn about the First Folio edition (1623) of William Shakespeare's plays and its allure for collectors and scholars. In addition, take a look at the Hinman collator, a machine originally developed to help scholars detect minute differences between copies of the First Folio.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Watch as Homer plunges the reader into the saga of Odysseus's return from the war.
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Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)William Shakespeare's Othello is discussed by the cast and crew of a Folger Shakespeare Library production of the play.
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Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)A teacher explains why King Lear is his favourite Shakespeare play to teach.
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Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Why Titus Andronicus is this teacher's favourite Shakespeare play to teach.
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Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)A look at an illustrated manuscript by Ralph Brooke, a herald in the English College of Arms in the 1590s. During that period, the college granted coats of arms to a prominent fishmonger and to William Shakespeare, but Brooke considered both applicants unworthy.
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Transcript
SPEAKER: Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven! Wind, rain, and thunder, remember earthly man is but a substance that must yield to you.
JOSEPH HAJ: So I love Pericles. It's a play that bewilders scholars in a way that, I think, doesn't bewilder audiences at all. I think audiences love the play, too. I think there's something just so true about it. And it's interesting to think about Pericles, relative to the late romance plays; and particularly, Winter's Tale.
There is unimaginable beauty that's going to show up in all of our lives. And there is unspeakable tragedy that's going to show up in all of our lives, because that's what it is to live a life. And I think that's a lot of what is being charted and explored in Pericles. it's a very human play.
And where Winter's Tale, as I read it, is a morality play. It's a religious play of a kind. And I think Pericles is not a religious play, but I think it's a deeply spiritual one with pirates.
The play is built as a series of photo negatives. There's the bad daughter and the good daughter. Bad father, good father. There's the bad wife and the good wife. And a lot of the doubling in the play will be asking the same actor to play both ends of this spectrum. So, I think, real fun for the actors.
Gower functions as our chorus in Pericles, much like the chorus does in Henry V, in that Gower comes out, tells us what we need to know so that he can just keep dropping the needle on the good parts. So in Pericles, we don't spend a ton of time in these long expository scenes. The thing just goes from important moment to important moment to important moment.
And he is set on his journey by a series of events. There are two shipwrecks in the play. He finds himself in various lands. Whatever else the play is, it's this wonderful adventure story, and adventure yarn, which is part of the great fun of the play.
JOSEPH HAJ: So I love Pericles. It's a play that bewilders scholars in a way that, I think, doesn't bewilder audiences at all. I think audiences love the play, too. I think there's something just so true about it. And it's interesting to think about Pericles, relative to the late romance plays; and particularly, Winter's Tale.
There is unimaginable beauty that's going to show up in all of our lives. And there is unspeakable tragedy that's going to show up in all of our lives, because that's what it is to live a life. And I think that's a lot of what is being charted and explored in Pericles. it's a very human play.
And where Winter's Tale, as I read it, is a morality play. It's a religious play of a kind. And I think Pericles is not a religious play, but I think it's a deeply spiritual one with pirates.
The play is built as a series of photo negatives. There's the bad daughter and the good daughter. Bad father, good father. There's the bad wife and the good wife. And a lot of the doubling in the play will be asking the same actor to play both ends of this spectrum. So, I think, real fun for the actors.
Gower functions as our chorus in Pericles, much like the chorus does in Henry V, in that Gower comes out, tells us what we need to know so that he can just keep dropping the needle on the good parts. So in Pericles, we don't spend a ton of time in these long expository scenes. The thing just goes from important moment to important moment to important moment.
And he is set on his journey by a series of events. There are two shipwrecks in the play. He finds himself in various lands. Whatever else the play is, it's this wonderful adventure story, and adventure yarn, which is part of the great fun of the play.
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