(Podcast recorded and produced by Daniel J. Rowe, blog written and edited byEric Jean)
Welcome back to the Bard Brawl! As promised, we’re happy to bring you our final brawl of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
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Like the acts which came before, act V begins with Gower’s prologue (starts with “Marina thus the brothel ‘scapes, and chances”). Gower narrates that Boult, who hasn’t been able to convince Marina to give up the goods, agrees to help find her a respectable household to welcomed into. While we don’t know yet which household, it seems that things are working out for her just fine. As for Pericles? Well, wouldn’t you know that his ship just happens to be sitting at anchor in Mytilene at this very moment!
Seeing such an important ship anchored off his coast, the governor of Mytilene – Lysimachus – takes a small vessel to greet the Tyrian ship and find out why it’s here and what it wants. He and Helicanus exchange a few words at the start of act V, scene 1. Lysimachus asks to meet Pericles, which Helicanus arranges but Perciles is a miserable mess. Helicanus is about to recount the events which have led to Pericles’ current condition but is interrupted when Marina arrives.
Seems that Lysimachus went all Pretty Woman on Marina and ended up marrying her. (Well, he wasn’t getting anywhere with her the other way…) They ask Marina to try to snap Pericles out of it. Marina is about to give up but feels compelled to keep at it until she’s broken Pericles out of his torpor. She decides to tell him her story and when she reveals her name and what happened to her, father and daughter are reunited. But, Pericles is overcome and lulled to sleep my some celestial music.
Then, an apparition of the goddess Diana arrives and tell him to go to her temple and relate the story of how he lost his wife. Yes, Shakespeare wraps things up by having a goddess show up on stage and point our hero to the place where his wife has been living as a nun all this time.
Act V, scene 2 is a short passage narrated by Gower again, as he stands before Diana’s temple. (Starts with: “Now our sands are almost run.”) Pericles agrees to let Lysimachus marry Marina but only after he has made his sacrifice to Diana.
Off to the temple they go for scene 3. Cerimon is there presiding as husband, wife and daughter are reunited at last. It occurs to Pericles that they should let Thaisa’s father know that she’s alive but turns out he’s been dead for a while now. Which of course means that Pericles gets to move to Pentapolis as the new king, and Lysimachus and Marina get to take over the throne of Tyre.
Gower gets the final word of the play where he gets to moralize about the people in the play: Helicanus is the model of loyalty, Cerimon is a model of charity; Antiochus, Cleon and Dionyza are evil sinners who have been justly punished by Heaven for their heinous crimes.
And that’s the end of the Bard Brawl’s seventh play!
Love it or hate it, it seems that this play leaves no one indifferent.
What did you think of Pericles,?
Sonnet 44 read by lord Jay Reid of Ethickshire.
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