Pericles, Prince of Tyre
By Shakespeare
Pericles, Prince of Tyre is one of Shakespeare’s latter Romance plays and while it is a lesser-known title today, it is believed to have been a popular one for Shakespeare’s audience. The Romance genre includes other titles such as The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest and feature plots that explore multi-generational story lines, and themes of forgiveness and reunion.
There are two phrases that come to mind when working on Pericles: Nothing can stop true love and fortune favors the kind. Not to spoil a four hundred and seventeen-ish year-old play, but you’re in for a story that ends with a happily ever after. Nothing can stop true love is such a true saying for Pericles and his family– storms, shipwrecks, and even death cannot keep them apart. We follow Pericles as he searches for love, and once he finds it–he loses it. But this is not a story of loss, but one of reunion. Not only is Pericles reunited with his wife, but also his daughter, both of whom he believed to be dead. Throughout the play Pericles calls out to Fortune and our narrator, Gower, references Fortune’s temperament towards Pericles and other characters. Fortune’s wheel spins and deals both good and bad luck to everyone, but it is Pericles’s kindness to others that separates him from other leaders and Fortune seems to smile on him for it. Those who are kind to Pericles and his family tend to be rewarded, while those who aren’t do not.
Pericles truly feels like a fairy tale. It is an action adventure, oceanic voyage, filled with danger, romance, and comedy. In reinforcing this fairy tale feeling, this production has reimagined Gower (the play’s narrator and originally a fourth century poet), our out of time poet as a modern grandparent from Fairbanks telling the story of Pericles to a multi-generational family.
Pericles, Prince of Tyre was performed with Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre in the summer of 2026.
