Synopses & Reviews
Controversy has surrounded
Pericles for centuries, due to the fact that critics and editors have argued that much of the play was written between 1607 and 1608 by one of Shakespeare's inferior collaborators, and that it shows in both its style and content. However, Shakespeare was clearly the driving force behind the play, and it is important to remember that it was one of the most popular plays of its time. In the Arden Shakespeare Third Series edition, Suzanne Gossett gives readers a detailed introduction to the probable circumstances by which this anomaly of the Shakespeare canon was created, but also provides a thorough critical interpretation of the text, its characters, and its themes. A doubling chart for casting is included as an appendix.
The Arden Shakespeare has developed a reputation as the pre-eminent critical edition of Shakespeare for its exceptional scholarship, reflected in the thoroughness of each volume. An introduction comprehensively contextualizes the play, chronicling the history and culture that surrounded and influenced Shakespeare at the time of its writing and performance, and closely surveying critical approaches to the work. Detailed appendices address problems like dating and casting, and analyze the differing Quarto and Folio sources. A full commentary by one or more of the plays foremost contemporary scholars illuminates the text, glossing unfamiliar terms and drawing from an abundance of research and expertise to explain allusions and significant background information. Highly informative and accessible, Arden offers the fullest experience of Shakespeare available to a reader.
Table of ContentsList of illustrations
General Editors' preface
Preface
INTRODUCTION
'Everyone with claps can sound': the popularity of Pericles
'Incke, and paper': text and printing history
The condition of Q
Proposed explanations for Q
Early reprints
'To foster is not always to preserve': editing Pericles
The editorial task
Editing and interpretation
'Her art sisters the natural roses': the creation of Pericles
'Winged time': date and circumstances
'Fit counsellor and servant for a prince': evidence for collaboration
'From ashes ancient Gower is come': sources of Pericles
'What pageantry, what feats, what shows': the theatrical context
'The stages of our story': Gower and the structure of Pericles
'It hath been sung at festivals': production history
Interpretation and critical history
'The heavens through you increase our wonder': reading Pericles ideologically
'A book of all that monarchs do': reading Pericles politically
'Hark you, sir, do you know where ye are?': reading Pericles geographically
'You not your child well-loving': reading Pericles through the family
'Make us love your goodly gifts: Pericles and the gift
'Her way to go with warrant': imperatives for a conclusion
Collaboration, one last time
PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE
Longer notes
Appendix on casting
Doubling chart
Abbreviations and References
Abbreviations Used in Notes
Works By and Partly By Shakespeare
Editions of Shakespeare Collated
Other Works Cited
Modern Productions Cited
Index
Synopsis
The Arden Shakespeare has long been acclaimed as the established scholarly edition of Shakespeare's work. Now being totally re-edited for the third time, Arden editions offer the very best in contemporary scholarship. Each volume provides a clear and authoritative text, edited to the highest standards; detailed textual notes and commentary on the same page of the text; full contextual, illustrated introduction, including an in-depth survey of critical and performance approach to the play; and selected bibliography.
Synopsis
Suzanne Gossett offers a full and critical performance history, with an introduction showing how the play's performance history has paralled the criticism. It then gives an interpretation of this two-generation romance, with its successive male and female central characters, based on a reading 'through the family', and influenced by the feminist and new historicist criticism of the last two decades.The edition integrates cumulative research on Shakespeare's collaborative authorship and the transmission of the text without rewriting the play or ignoring years of emendations.
Synopsis
The Arden Shakespeare is the established scholarly edition of Shakespeare's plays. Now in its third series, Arden offers the best in contemporary scholarship. This edition of Pericles provides: A clear and authoritative text, edited to the highest standards of scholarship Detailed notes and commentary on the same page as the text A full, illustrated introduction to the play's historical, cultural and performance contexts A full index to the introduction and notes.
About the Author
Suzanne Gossett is Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago. She has edited or co-edited Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair as well as Jonson, Marston, and Chapman's Eastward Ho!, Thomas Middleton's A Fair Quarrel, Lady Mary Wroth's Urania, Jacobean academic plays, and plays from the English College, Rome. Her publications include many articles on Shakespeare and his contemporaries. She is one of the general editors of the Arden Early Modern Drama series.
Table of Contents
List of illustrations General Editors preface Preface