Synopses & Reviews
Pericles was one of the most popular plays of its time, and it has regained much of that popularity in the modern theater. Roger Warren draws upon his extensive experience of the play in rehearsal and performance to suggest why. Pericles survives only in a corrupt text, and this edition offers a conjectural reconstruction of what the original play might have been like. It also presents the play as a collaboration between Shakespeare and the Jacobean dramatist George Wilkins.
Synopsis
Pericles was one of the most popular plays of its time, and it has regained much of that popularity today. In a wide-ranging introduction, Roger Warren draws on his experience of the play in rehearsal and performance to explore the reasons for this enduring popularity. Unfortunately
Periclessurvives only in a corrupt text, the
Quarto of 1609, in which many passages are nonsensical and others appear to be missing altogether. Earlier editions have merely cleaned-up the
Quarto, but this edition offers a conjectural reconstruction of what the original play might have been like. It draws
upon George Wilkin's
The Painful Adventures of Pericles (1608) to emend some of the errors and missing material. It does so in the belief that the play is a collaboration between Shakespeare and Wilkins. The entire
Quarto text is reprinted in an appendix, together with the passages from Wilkin's
narrative that have particularly contributed to the reconstruction, so that readers can see for themselves how the reconstruction has been made.
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Editorial Procedures
Pericles
Appendices
Index