Seven Ages

Romance · c. 1608

Shakespeare’s Pericles

The first of the late romances, co-written (the first two acts are almost certainly George Wilkins’s) and preserved only in a mangled text — yet audiences have always loved it.

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By the Seven Ages editors2 min read

Pericles sails the eastern Mediterranean losing everything: wife, daughter, hope, in a storm-tossed episodic saga narrated by the medieval poet Gower.

The last act, in which what was lost is found, contains a recognition scene of such tenderness that the play’s rough patches stop mattering. Read it as a folk tale told by firelight, and as the sketch for The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest.

Pericles on screen

1Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1984)

TV film · dir. David Jones

BBC Television Shakespeare

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Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.

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