Thank you very much, Mr. Papahagi, I think you did a brilliant job of discussing and analyzing this interesting, fascinating play that has so many strange questions it asks us. I saw a wonderful performance of it by an amateur acting troupe with a professional pantomime as Pericles in Tübingen, Germany about 15 years ago, and it has caught my attention ever since, though my very personal favorite will always remain the strange journey that is Cymbeline (I think I like forests more than tempests, all in all...) I wanted to throw in one thought that I picked up somewhere, and I don't remember who it was that wrote this, but it made great sense to me. Since the actual "fame" and "glory" of the time supposedly went more to the acting companies themselves, their actors and directors, and since the Elizabethan/Jacobean period did perhaps not celebrate the playwrights individually quite as much as the collective troupe's capabilities for putting on great performances as an entity or a whole, the thought isn't entirely unthinkable that writers had "apprentices" just like artisans and craftsmen did, and that that's how you would learn to write plays and perhaps even direct them. In this vein, I believe I had read about someone suggesting - speculative, of course! - that playwrights like Nashe or even Marlowe might have taken on the "apprentice Shakespeare" in works such as part of the Henry VI plays or Two Gentlemen or Shrew, perhaps even Titus, whereas in plays like Timon we might see him collaborating with Middleton or in Pericles with Wilkins and later on with Fletcher on Henry VIII and Kinsmen. And that perhaps this "reworking other people's works" was done quite commonly and selflessly - without the concern about copyright and author's rights as it would be today. I mean, for all we know (not much, right?) Heminge and Condell could have been there at his death bed and told him about the Ben Jonson Folio collection coming out and had the idea to bring out one for him and Shakespeare might have "vetoed" Pericles... ...I am definitely glad that we have it, in any case - and I am going to see in at the RSC in August.
Thank you, this is the best account that I have heard of this curious play, it brings out very well why it is so magical in the final resort (and at the end!).
Frumos, dar cam greu pentru creierul meu de gandac. AR fi fain un filmulet in care faceti bash la orataniile leftiste de prin universitatile de afara. :D
