Harvard ENGL E-129 - Lecture 9: Pericles

okay so hello everybody welcome back had a good break and that you found time during a break to read Pericles for how many of you was this your first time experiencing Pericles knee would ever see it staged you see the recent English production gosh I missed that when was that was it aha okay and was good it was good it this is an amazing I should say amazing this is a constantly successful theatrical vehicle it was very successful in Shakespeare's time one of his most popular plays and it has been enormous ly successful in twentieth-century productions there was a production at the Globe Theatre in London a couple of years ago which I did not see but as I went around as I do talking to various groups about about Shakespeare person after person he offered me and said did you see this production II it was so brilliant I loved it and for many of the people who saw it at the globe they had not read it they weren't familiar with it as a vehicle and one of the many things I want to say to you about this kind of playing about this play in particular is that the way romance and a spectacle intersect with this kind of drama makes for a terrific dramatic experience that the the combination of the adventure is the Peripatetic nature of things that the the storms the comic bits and so forth and then those amazing moments of confrontation loss reunion mourning recapitulation are really function very very effectively on stage sometimes I really feel the impoverished here by by being able only to talk about the plays as texts but but it's there things about it and things about all of these late plays that are superb performances superbly capable of engaging the eye and the ear as well as the mind their eye for those of you who have now read the play for the first time I realized that in picking it up you may not have read the preparatory material beforehand and may not have come to the play realizing that it's probably written by Shakespeare and at least one other person but but certainly there is a change in the style as the play continues and it becomes in the middle of the text that we have of Pericles more recognizable as Shakespearean whatever that means more recapitulate events in other plays that we've looked at just very briefly what plays if Shakespeare did some of parts of Pericles remind you of yes where should this interesting where the caskets you know what's on the outside isn't that what's on the inside very nice good and also the ring at the which is the moment of a moment of recognition for Pericles at the end of plays a ring sing at the end of the merchant as well so tokens and baskets and boxes and the question of women as containers or contained women as treasures women as lost and found given away buried or reclaimed and so forth so that there is this kind of language of symbol or emblem or allegory in these plays which we talked about you're quite right in the Merchant of Venice and we talked about the way in which the those moments didn't didn't seem tonally to synchronize the fairy tale moments as we often call them didn't didn't seem to totally synchronize with the pathos of the narrative with romantic love plot and so forth that they seem to belong to a certain kind of storytelling mode and they certain seemed also to use a certain kind of symbol or emblem that is familiar from for example for its reading of dreams but other readings of symbolic language where something stands for something and that standing for becomes the beginning of a conversation and again you're right to talk about the container and the contained or the inside and the outside good Merchant of Venice what else what other plays of Shakespeare did this play seem to recapitulate for you to remind you of yes please The Winter's Tale only around the Winter's Tale okay would you tell we haven't got to yet so let's talk about King Lear what parts of King Lear the relationship with the father and the daughter and actually King us simoni news alot of these commodities reminded me of Lear a little bit when his daughter didn't come to him about being interested in this man and I don't know if it was supposed to completely just be a front he was putting on but I got the sense that it was almost like he was trying to control her the relationship between some oddities of Aissa and his pretense if it is a pretense to want to ordain her marriage and to resist her supposed choice and so forth when this this we'll see this again in the tempest to this question of rather than the father as with Brabantio for example in a fellow genuinely wishing to ordain or to forbid the marriage choice it functions more or less as a kind of a test but yes it's up that the various father-daughter relations here seem quotations of our citations over r-e visitations of on the one hand the father in the comedies who is the blocking father as Northrop Frye had called him the father who says no the father who's saying no is the beginning of the search for independence and agency on the part of the daughter who needs to break away from him and from the rules that he seems to set up in order to make a life for herself in order to justify her choice we see this with Desdemona when she stands in front of the whole council chamber and says I choose I choose a fellow as my mother chose you I chose a fellow as the if Avanti oh you've been part of one of those early Shakespearean comedies that we have been lost in which you see the romance of the parents of Desdemona but certainly also keen so King Lear in the extraordinary scene that do which we're going to turn before to very long in the recognition scene between Pericles and his daughter marina and also that earlier scene that I think I also talked about in my chapter in which caught in the storm he cries out for patience and the complete the the constant call for patience both on his part and also in the case of this play on the part of other people who say to him patience good sir do not assist the storm and so forth a the question of what the what the what the virtues are and what the limits of patience are when enduring something that seems to be the most extreme kind of privation whether it's a natural disaster like a storm or whether it's the death of a wife the death of a child the loss of the father and the father's armor and so forth his moment when Pericles has lost everything their various moments when he's lost everything so there are moments that seem I can't say deliberately that's to go too far but to seem insistently let me put it that way insistently to be reminiscent of or evocative of King Lear any other place that we have looked at together that parts of this play would have or might have reminded you of yes Charlie's in Cressida and it's just it's a it's just a reference here which turns out differently in this play but it's when Mariana is being talked to by the BOD and Mariana says the gods defend me in the BOD says if it please the gods to defend you by men and men must comfort you men must feed you men must stir you up and there's a illusion here to the fact that women are controlled finally by men that their fortunes are determined by that I read that line and I thought of Cressida her situation which is of course different from fine this is very well observed the idea that in certain kinds of situations the what anthropologists have called the traffic in women the the degree the degree to which women are exchangeable Goods who are used as negotiation tools between men whether it's Kings or or as we saw on a tanning Cleopatra generals Emperor is heads of armies and so forth figures who could make peace but in this case where their price is fallen that it's her body that is the it not not her not her hand in marriage but the rest of her that is the the object of exchange here and that this is all this this is what they think she's worth at this point and what she does it's really an interesting economics actually in this moment because she says no no I'm much more valuable to you as a teacher I can teach singing I can teach needlework I can teach virtue I can teach a whole I mean she this is a marina as the premier humanist here she's teaching the entire humanities Canon and she's also teaching female arts I won't call them femininity but these those things that the needlework needlecraft she's teaching female independence we could say she's teaching precisely what she does not have the capacities of women to represent themselves through their own work and she also turns out to be an unbelievable proselytizer much to the dismay of course of the sex industry that she well really that the Lord's go to her for the usual reason and they wind up saying let's go listen to the Vestal Virgins sing I'm out of the way of running forever one of my favorite Shakespearean lines and that I no longer interested in things of the body I have been converted but and they said and that her tap door is here the bought and and the pander say let's get rid of her she's ruining business she's not only refusing to her or persuading people that they don't need to sleep with her in order to get pleasure from her but she's also persuading them that this is not that the house of ill-repute de ville resort is not where they want to be at all and she's basically doing that thing that turning of the abject back into the high of taking remember the get thee to a nunnery in Hamlet the idea where that that nunnery is slang in this time period for a whorehouse as well as for a place of total abstinence and virtue and prayer in this case she's taking the whorehouse and she's making it into the place of the Vestal Virgins she is the preeminent Vestal version so they don't mean one could do and I'm doing here kind of snapshot really interesting set of feminist readings about this particular moment it's not only 12 us interested oh but that other play that we read early on in the semester that seems although to take place almost exclusively in this terrain of the body for sale what's the other play measure for measure exactly we're again this question of virginity the loss of virginity the sex trade the degree to which it's the body that is the the object or how one can transcend having a body and so on that these the the scenes in act 4 that were often I are sometimes highly praised and sometimes criticized is somehow not in the same fairy tale MO as indeed they are not except in their conversion mechanism not in fairy tale style let us say of the rest of this play are scenes that that should bring us right back to measure for measure and to those stews or brothels in we're rare is measure for measure set Vienna in Vienna so so so here we have again it's not as if Shakespeare visited this fact but now it's a reality but that's not the issue this this this performative fact about Elizabethan Jack could be in culture the idea of the house of ill-repute the idea of the brothel the idea of the place in which women's bodies are negotiated it's not that he only visits them inin those early the early Jacobean plays of Troilus and Cressida and measure for measure but that we come right back to that place here and that somehow those that that that spot that that brothel is made the beginning of a moment of transformation and the lead seems of in prose once again as you're suggesting there's a lot of body interplay and the the way in which that's recuperated into these moments of sublime poetry and in fact of again conversion in a different sense is is one of the remarkable successes I think of this play so one of the things that I will want to say about this next series of plays that we're looking at the plays that have been called the romances the last plays of Shakespeare the tragic comedies of Shakespeare is that they do consciously or not and who can say revisit or echo or partner with moments in the tragedies that we have been looking at and that they turn them to another mode they turn them into romance they instead of being the end of something these losses are the beginning of something what cannot happen in the tragedy they that thing that King Lear wants to happen when he holds the mirror in front of Cordelia's mouth and says this is feather stirrers she lives he wants her to believe that she's breathing when she's dead that thing that a fellow wants to imagine happening in the audience does it as well the end of a fellow that Desdemona should somehow magically have survived not only her second life but her third life these these moments of a you recupera bellossom macbeth saying about Lady Macbeth she should have died Hereafter there would have been a time for such a word the thing that happens in tragedy is something that cannot be recuperated except on the moral ethical level the level of profiting from loss what happens among other things in the dramas of these plays is that somehow it all comes out right and they get a second chance yeah and you get a second chance partly not entirely but partly because of these citations or quotations from earlier plays and partly because of the presence in these later plays of a second generation that they're these plays profoundly violate this supposed notion about unity of time and place this this play of course takes place in many many Mediterranean settings it's extremely peripatetic in that sense it goes from where to where to where what is it what are some of the places where Antioch okay good we'll talk about the Antioch moment a second where else Tarsus emphasis emphasis yes good okay what's emphasis famous for in the Bible sorry I'm sorry I can't hear yeah letter to the Ephesians beware but but what are the Ephesians famous for this what did Paul think what went on well those those who practice magic arts and so for the idea that this was a place of magic now does anybody happen to know what other play of Shakespeare takes place in Ephesus very very early play so you're all excused from notice it's the comedy there's comedy Varys is set by Shakespeare in Ephesus although his sources do not locate it in Ephesus and it's an all order to call up this paw line echo of the idea of a people who know magic and who do magic and where magic is an everyday way of doing things so tyre also we could mention which is the home birthplace of Pericles Michelini all of these we draw a little map in fact one of my my dreams that I keep raising with the harbour travel people is that I would love to conduct a tour I've roughed it out for them and then I was unable to do it for personal reasons but I would love to do it sometime in the future would be one of these Harvard travel tours of shakespeare's mediterranean in which we actually went to the places where these plays were set so so it has this kind of peripatetic quality but the other thing is it is this notion of time it's not only place but it's also time how many years elapsed in the middle of this play 14 and why is that if you're the playwright why should you commit such a cardinal violation yes so that marina can grow up exactly so that she can grow up become an agent become a beloved become a lover that she can marry that there can be a moment at the end of the play where he says these are going to go off and rule in in who goes where they're gonna go to tyre I think lesson MCUs and marina going to go to Tyre and Pericles and his restored thought dead wife thighs are going to back go back to the kingdom of Pfizer's father that these the the naturalization of the resurrection happens through the generational change the anybody has ever said to you you know my children are my immortality that is what is enacted here this idea that it's not magic or it's not only magic that produces rebirth here it's also the transference of the generations and so there is this gap in the middle of the play morena we see as this baby born in the storm and you can again they see this storm as like the caskets and so forth as both a real storm and then it's raining in their Wedd and so forth and also the storm of human catastrophe of childbirth of it's a cataclysmic event it's a metaphor it's a staged metaphor for a cataclysmic event and out of that cataclysmic event comes the birth of the child marina called marina for she was born at sea and and then her name again becomes so naturalized that you forget to think about what it means until it resurfaces at the end of the play as a recognition sign I think that it becomes just a woman's name until it is a magic word until it's a word that is used as an identification token between father and daughter and also a name that recalls her whole history in one thing but the the the idea of recuperation here of restoration happens in part because of the possibility of another generation another marriage so this category tragic comedy could be here you know really anatomized because there are tragic parts of the play in their parts of the play that are not only comic in the sense that they are pleasurable or joyful but pleasurable in in the way that that traditional new comedy is that is to say that there is courtship and there is marriage and there are a lotta and the possibility of a resistance but also ultimately a finding of the true partner it out and it a love test to because less Symmachus goes through a kind of love test in which first Keith the same as all these other brothel consumers except he's worse because he's the governor of Medellin II and so he ought to know better and he goes through the process of education and conversion that makes him whatever you think about the suitability of this at least in the in the terms of the drama of the play itself a suitable husband for marina about whom he is cautious in that way that comic heroes are cautious if she's well born enough and if all the circumstances work okay then indeed I would think of her as a bride that is this is not a unconsidered love match but it is indeed a love match so romance here as a category I should say is not a term that so far as we can tell Shakespeare is using to label this play in the listing displays in the first folio you may remember there are three categories not for what are the three categories what are they what are the classifications of Shakespearean plays yes comedies tragedy histories exactly how many tragedies and histories there's some question about whether you know a play belongs among the the comedies or the tragedies or the history is Cymbeline is listed as we'll see next week in one place as a comedy and one is or is it as a tragedy in one places that has a history and so forth that the Royals and Cressida we saw also is in that kind of marginal space but this concept of romance what we might call a kind of adventure fairy tale which is well known in this period in prose and indeed in poetry that some of the books of Spenser's Faerie Queene are romances or are are shot through with romance elements that there are that the the source text for as you like it Rosalind you say romance so it's not as if this is a category that is invented after Shakespeare but it's not used to describe these plays at least by his the editors who are part of his own company or by him within the plays at the time that the plays are first written and performed that term becomes a term of powerful currency really in the 19th century really in the Victorian period which love these plays and which saw them as romantic love stories this is a Victorian period it's also the period of Peter Pan the period of in which these kind of fairy tale adventures that take place in never-never land that involve monsters who are also human and so forth in which is the kind of a drama of Education on the part of the person experiencing them that these these are these are categories that are appealing to Victorian tastes and this so that the word romance is a term that has been used to describe plays like Pericles assemblying The Winter's Tale and The Tempest for all 150 years at least probably these days Mel I'm gonna check with you who or is an expert in this I believe that that one is more likely to call them tragic comedies is this right you want to say why you've got the magic wand right in front of you so you can speak into the microphone oh please please say we say weird because I know you've taught these two things say something about the category if you would have tragicomedy okay well it's just a comedy that it's a it starts out as a tragedy and one would think that it was meandering in that direction but at the end you have what some would argue seems a false resolution to a play that starts out headed in the direction of tragedy and the irresolvable that you've been talking about before so it's a it's a it's a hybrid it's a hybrid genre the tragic comedy it is a very popular song right in Shakespeare's own time the restoration of this term tragic comedy is in part because this is a term which is is is functional in the early 17th century whereas the term romance to describe these plays is not functional though it's perfectly accurate but the these these place many of them co-authored certainly there so they're hybrid in many ways they're hybrid in that they bring together comedy tragedy in history they're hybrid in that they may bring together more than one author they're hybrid in that they cover more than one time period they they involve spectacle as well as drama music as well as words there's a sense in which we're moving toward a work of art that is quite comfortable with its own mixed nature now we could go all the way back to the beginning of Shakespeare's plays and I could point out to you moments that are hybrid just like this so it's not that this is merely a historical development but it's something that becomes much more vivid toward the end of his career and this is partly because this is what audiences want just as when he writes Roman history plays or English history plays or whatever he's partly writing for an audience that is meeting him halfway that is a tune to an interest in this but it's it's also it's partly because there's a taste for this kind of work it's a complicated historical moment in which notions of nationalism and national identity are being fused with myths of national origin and national supremacy this is an emergent moment for stories about national history of which you know that Spencer at the beginning of this it was beaten periods writing about King Arthur in much the same kind of way but we'll see with this play and even more so with Cymbeline that one of the many kinds of allegories that are embedded in it is an allegory about the royal family an allegory about what about the need to root to bring the parts of the dispersed royal family together about the you know kings and queens who have children whose children carry on a dynasty that there are heirs here and that what's being restored is a certain sense of national history again we'll see it more and more vividly in sibling than we see here because Cymbeline is a play about britain and so it has that that double message but here for example even in the moment in which the the wonderful comic scene whoever wrote it with with Pericles and the fisherman in which they're complaining in the way in which the way that Shakespeare's comic lo characters do about weather and the market and so forth and along comes Pericles out of the water and and they he enlists them in his his attempt to move on with his life in a way that again those of you who know the the earlier plays of Shakespeare and let us say the Twelfth Night which is a romance much and the same thing happens to viola that viola at the beginning of Twelfth Night is in a shipwreck and comes out of the shipwreck and thinks that she has no living family at all and wants to start a new life and it says enlists the help of the indigenous population of Illyria and and moves on to rediscover her brother whom she thought was dead and a new life and a husband and so on so here two out of the water always in Shakespeare again the double signal of death and birth because storms are disastrous they may your look at what happened to this this ship in the Antarctic recently where you think the sort of thing cannot happen and cannot be seen to happen except in the movies anymore but a ship sinks and people are rescued as it as it happened happily all of them were rescued but but in in Shakespeare's time going on a ship is always a risky business storms happen you remember the in the middle of a fellow that a storm happens and really disperses the whole fleet of the Turks bringing to the end their threat against the the the city of Venice in its its army so the storms are always dangerous but they're also here signs of Reba Guinea and of rebirth and that this oceanic feeling as one writes about from time to time is here partnered with a literal ocean with a literal see here the Mediterranean Sea out of which fertile things will come and again we saw that dynamic in in a play that could easily be called a romance among all its other things and that is Antony and Cleopatra so so here's a play that that as we'll look at it in detail has the markings of romance fairy tale ship neck wreck loss rebirth recognition it has the the dynastic story of the family reunited and suddenly you see generations of a family where in earlier plays maybe play is written under Queen Elizabeth who is not herself a producer of a dynasty but rather the inheritor of a dynasty you don't have so much this sense of many generations so whatever the reason is you have the parents and the children you have the sense of the the two moments of generation and regeneration and you also have in this play a kind of political allegory of nation-building of founding a new place or a new dynasty so these stories that could have been encoded under history or comedy or tragedy are here again brought together and partnered with that element of fairy tale or fantasy that we again we have seen hints of in other plays wherein a fellow for example did we encounter the genre of the romance anybody remember yes please not in the accounts that he made to Desdemona of his past absolutely supposed to be very romantic tell metell me some of the elements of his story does anybody remember remember he's sold into slavery his it's he's in deserts he's in caves and enters while their caves he slows sold into slavery and he escapes that again it's it's travels and travails true the word these words have a similar etymology we're travail meaning trouble and the word travel I mean in our modern sense these things are happening together in the romance so it's an adventure with a hero who goes up against unassailable odds and somehow miraculously wins we are familiar with this in films and in comic books and in video games today we have another sort of new moment in which this kind of fantasy hero overcoming all odds is and what's wonderful about the kind of video game analogy if I can just and well on that for a second is that it empowers the user that there's a sense here in which the audience of this play of Shakespeare is not merely watching Pericles prevail it is itself participating in that conquest in that overcoming in that moment of self transcendence and it's different from the tragic moment this is the last thing I want to say in a kind of predatory way how is the language of this play different from the language of the tragedies by a large yes Dave Morris ID for example well throughout the scene with sending the message over to pericles between semana DS and and/or in the argument between the two of them when their i suppose that one even more the argument between Samanta DS and pericles which is kind of has that element of ruse to it they're constantly turning toward the audience and keeping keeping the situation grounded as far as it's really good this is very helpful to have because they get these two moments at the beginning of the play in which you've got fathers and daughters and Pericles wants to marry the daughter the Antiochus and his daughter moment in the and the riddle and we'll talk about that and then the semana DS and phase a moment and we'll talk about that in in both cases the the father whether it's the wicked father Antiochus who says oh he's guessed my secret he better die or whether it's some oddities saying to us I'm just fooling I just want to test him I just want to make sure that she really loves him and so forth in both cases you have to use this rather old-fashioned gesture of the Assad because you don't have the soliloquy you don't have the person talking to himself and giving you that sense of the interior monologue this supernatural soliciting cannot be ill cannot be good or Yago saying I have it it is engendered Helen night must bring this monstrous birth to the world's like you not inside the mind of the thinker whether it's the heroic thinker or the the doubting thinker or the Machiavellian thinker at the beginning of this place you you don't have the your sense of inferiority these characters and is not created by that kind of language yes sir makes them feel more participant you have this exactly we you us need to supply that thing we because we are the recipients of these pieces of information if they don't talk to us we don't know it becomes even more like a cartoon so the audience and and of course what is the big deal that frames this play that brings the audience into function I've got ya whoo-hoo really knits all of the sequences together give us a verbal bridge in this in the story pieces and at the end of the play reminds the audience that after all were the ones who are who are lending our imagination to this play that make this story work so at the end of the it's the poet John Gower or bore or as many years ago in the Harvard English department there was a whole business of Gower studies and which everybody called him Gore the moat most scholars outside of Harvard call this this public gala which is what I'm going to call him but in any case the confessional Montes the lovers confession of John Doris is one of the several sources of this plan please I hope you will have read both my chapter and also the preparatory material that talks a little bit about some of these sources and how they're used are not going to spend a lot of time today I think talking about that but in this case Gower becomes a figure on the stage who is both a narrator and also I mean he both invites us into the conversation and asks us to participate in the making of it those of you who know Henry v know that the prologues to every act of henry v function is relatively similar way and that in both cases the speaker says there's something I cannot words cannot describe this to you Gower makes this very evident when he says the action may the the story convey that words can't do it only it's only action that can do he speaks in this archaic what is it it's it's it's pentameter it speaks for stress verse and he's he's always undercutting the capacity in his own description and suggesting that the narrative that he is speaking he is only predatory to what the actual drama will show so you have have a kind of scream in front of the play blocking your way and this was the point that I wanted to make about the other use of Gower that on the one hand he invites you in and he makes you work o partner and he says your imagination is gonna make this possible on the other hand he's constantly they're saying it's a story I'm going to tell you a story actually can't tell you they're really way to be and so forth so you have that sort of sense of of something in the way of you in the story at the same time you have somebody inviting you into it but in any case it's a very it's a again theatrically it may have struck you reading it as a kind of well let me not put words in your mouth did you find this irritating or charming or both the figure of Gower irritating charming good for you okay good meet you the the there's a sense though in which more than one things going on on the stage at the same time and hard to say whether this narrating figure would have always been present on the stage or in any production or would have been whisked away and been replaced by the drama but if you think of Gower as the kind of voice over to a newsreel or something that is that you've got one art form one genre the genre of poetry without pictures and verse here and and and deliberately are chaotic verse a verse that that invents or reuses old words like the slated for slack and so forth so there's there's I mean this is not good language contemporaneous with Shakespeare you make much of Shakespeare's like which makes strike to there's not contemporaneous with your own but Gower's language is not contemporaneous with Shakespeare is deliberately it's it's like when kids do archaic plays and they say Dolf all the time and what other kinds of words appear RK Ising in modern usages anon excellent excellent okay so it's it's exactly that stuff if these are the signature words of I am archaic it's not that this is a consistently archaic I mean you wouldn't go back and actually find this these are signs of archaism it's they're they're they're showing their baloney to a different time and there's kind of bardic quality to this character what which among other things emphasizes the fact that this is a story so maybe you can kind of relax about it because somebody is telling you a story it's not as if with King Lear or a fellow you're actually face to face with something inexpressibly terrible and there's nothing you can do it there is somebody telling you a story the story might turn out okay and so there's a kind of prophylactic aspect Gower as well kind of keeping you from being harmed by something by returning to both the linaria frame itself and also this archaic language that says not only the story it's an old story probably a story that's been told before actually I'm a famous poet come here and tell you this story so there's a lot of apparatus here that that signals a certain kind of reception that might take place yes true and I think it's reassuring because it it makes us able to tolerate the sort of what appeared to be silliness upon reading it well this is after all a tale being told and so you immediately distance from that's right what's working is silly the coincidences the coincidences and everything just you know people dying and being mean after I thought about it and read what you had to say and others that in fact this they become almost metaphors being reborn is an old story not always but I didn't see that at first the first time through right right well but you know what happened it's a woman who dies in his report that's that's what's part of what I mean what really could make a very interesting argument about the degree to which female agency takes over in these later plays because you'll see in The Winter's Tale - there's a woman who dies and is reborn know the story of dying and being reborn is an old male story authorizing many many cultural powerful structures but in this case the figure that and whether it's for its Lazarus or whatever it is they the the the the sublimity of that moment and the under ability of that moment is here domesticate it somehow and the both both the death of phii's are lying with simple shells and so for this around her with all this stuff its domesticated its feminized in a certain kind of way that makes the rebirth and the the epiphany that moment you know what an epiphany is it's this kind of confrontation with something that appears and that seems to be religious and transformative that the epiphany of the return of FISA is somehow still domesticated she's among women she does she's but in his absence please notice that she's found herself a very good political career that she is the head of the she's the head Priestess in Ephesus that she hasn't languished at all she's the priest of Diana that these are not actually stories despite the brothel setting of female disempowerment but stories about female empowerment in in this fantastic mode but yes indeed that the coincidence is the the fantasy of never really losing something yes John when Pericles his father's armor happens to wash ashore just at the moment that he happens to meet it seems a little fast yeah of course if we think that the armor was on important ship with him then it's not quite so bizarre as it might seem if he's travelling with his father's armor and there's a shipwreck they might you know how much armor could there be floating her I did the Mediterranean if they find any armor they might find his father is if it happens to have been on the boat with him but nonetheless this is another kind of reunion and this is a generational reunion between the father and the father is represented by the armor and by the son and to go back to Ephesus for a second and and the Epistle to the Ephesians remember the moment in in Ephesians in which Paul says put on the whole armor of God is that a passage that any of you are familiar with its passage that was very important to spend sir and is is crucial to book one of the fairy queen the book of holiness in which the Red Cross night is really pursues a set of adventures which are very much romance adventures in which the putting on the armor of God becomes the kind of subtext here but but in this case the this is a very you know the secular play it's a popular entertainment and so forth but nonetheless finding the father's armor and putting it on and finding yourself empowered here is carries and with it this sense of Christian agency as well as a paternal power yes first person there in in here getting back to the effect of Gower another element in in his appearance is in several instances a dumb show yes and I was reminded very strongly of the the play within the play in Hamlet of course and I was trying to just calibrate what what theatrical era is this alluding to is this like the late 16th century or what style is Shakespeare giving us it's certainly not the style of his own plays it's it's a different style yeah the history of the dong show is a long history it's often functions as it does in Hamlet in counterpoint to what is then about to be performed in language and of course one of the things about the dumb show in Hamlet as people have have analyzed it is that it corresponds in some ways but not entirely with what is performed in the play within the play that we see and be in the play of Hamlet that to which both allude and that the the tensions between the differences between what is left out in the dumb show that is presented in speech or what the or or how when you see a dumb show and you interpret it and then you find out what they were you have to revise what it is that you thought you saw partly the dumb the dumb show is historically speaking a like a shadow play or like a pre play away precisely of providing a pre narrative and a pre narrative for an only partially literate audience of what's about to happen that is snapshots like the an abstract of something you first you see it and then you see it again you see it in a more expanded way with language so it has a long history ok how long it has some years of history of performance here but certainly it is it functions in this place and other RK Ising move absolutely no please something that I always find fascinating too is that dumb shows are very important for the political arena at this time that kings and high-ranking politicians would actually act out dumb shows for the benefit of the populace she's ways of making explicitly clear what's happening so at this time period for instance it's fascinating to think about I believe it was James and the Spanish ambassador acting out a dumb show when they sign a treaty for instance in very much the same choreographically as a dumb show would have happened all right on Shakespeare estate thank you and that makes it not unlike today's photo ops for example that the sign of treaty we'll look at this morning's times where you have the the the aunt aunt whatever it is between the Palestinian ambassador the Israeli ambassador who knows how many times they tried to get them into the same frame and where George Bush's with respect to that that if he's the Gower figure so to speak or making this dumb show function but the photo-op often you know replaces or emblem Atanas for the audience in this case the the people who are watching it as a as a news item either still are moving M limit eyes as this moment of history and and you're right that it's a kind of translation device it's a kind of quotation it's it's a it's a signal it's both memorialization and also an anticipation of something so it's both before and after in a way and and it is high as well as low Thank You Mel very much for that yes I'm sorry please imagine Li the dumb show as well that it's say the third way of telling you what is about to happen and by doing that it plants seeds that it to some extent I mean the story is is somewhat preposterous has a lot of coincidences and by planting the seeds in this ancient text you work sort of concentrating on the way the story is being told to you and it sort of does away with that well this can't this can't possibly happen I think it's very well observed I think that's right then that the first time you hear about it you think that's ridiculous same time you think well that was unusual but maybe it was convincing in the third time you think well that's what happened I'm oversimplifying here but but you're right that it conditions you to impossibility as a conceptual possibility Aristotle famously said that he would prefer for drama a probable impossibility to an improbable possibility yes he preferred a plausible impossibility in a cartoon to a a possible implausibility well that's that's I didn't know that he said that and that's very interesting but cartoons are a very good example of exactly this kind of thing where you know pigs don't fly or or talk for whatever it is but but then that you get into the language of what's happening it becomes now becomes convention it becomes naturalized you think oh the father is armored well that's interesting oh the returned wife the returned don't work I mean after a while this repetition of finding the lost one or first the lost fragment and then increasing the the whole one because you get the armor without the father in it and then you get the daughter but too bad about the lost and then finally the mother returns and so forth you have again this this little moment of this one of the few moments in which the wife returns and you get the whole domestic family for a little moment and Enki again one of the few moments in which when the wife returns the child is female that the the progeny here functions in a in a way that produces a female line now again James had a marriage ax Belize marriage was the occasion for several of these productions either originally or in in read performance so that one of the political signals being sent here is indeed the idea of marriage and dynasty through the female lot that though the daughter is the bearer of history and she marries a powerful king or governor or whatever and they go off and rule someplace while the parents retreat to a place of previous location was he the same thing happens in The Tempest where Prospero does not get his wife back and we'll talk about the absence of prosperous wife but where where Miranda and Ferdinand go off and rule in Naples and he goes back to Milan where he came from every third thought will be his grave so that this is this is again part of the narrative but this this this question of the naturalization of the impossible or the implausible it's crucially important thank you very much for bringing up the dumb show both of you I think that's very very helpful so you have as you say three frames you got Gower you've got the the dumb show then you've got the play itself and then within the play you have the early scenes almost surely not by Shakespeare though there's some discussion about the fisherman scene which is so good it ought to be by Shakespeare even if it isn't as people often say and then the latter parts of the play that that that seem to be very very powerfully reminiscent at least and recognizable as a Shakespearean language and Shakespearean action and Shakespearean kinds of characters so that you have here also a kind of evolution you have that three layers so to speak in the course of the play itself so that this is this is the kind of reading that one would make for example if I were talking about the cult of ruinous in the late 18th early 19th century or about the cult of the fragment in the 20th century or something I think the way in which a ruin was for certain romantic writers and critics and so forth more powerful than it would be if the whole temple had stood or the finding a fragment of a poem or a fragment of a painting somehow is more evocative or powerful than if you had the whole thing here so also the fact that this play is not certifiably and entirely by Shakespeare makes it in a way a more interesting artifact partly because it it performs in its own writing history something of this layering and something of this versioning that we've been talking about and again the kind of key way you might look at this is to look at those opening scenes with incest from the post incensed incest and then see how Shakespeare turns it into the story of the family bromance that he realized as this idea of incest because incest of course at the beginning of the play is the it is an irredeemable secret and it's a secret that is a secret to whom who doesn't know about the incest the suitors don't know the suitors don't know and principally pericles says for a long time he doesn't know i mean this we know and yes we know we've heard the sorry you know it's Steve it's Steve himself speaking to us the telling us that we have just a few minutes to to close down and then to start again the the ucs riddle let's look at the incest riddle just for a second because it's so wonderful in its you know doesn't have to be written by Shakespeare to be wonderful I think a lot of these things are simply fabulous okay so we are in act 1 scene 1 that's where you would find a real so let me also just say something about the genre of the riddle this is a way in which a play like this itself functions as a riddle that it is a riddle functions as an impossibility where you have to figure out what could make it actually true and it's it's a it's a mysterious saying that when you analyze it you begin to understand how it functions and here's Pericles right name you have to understand I have to imagine it me know what the Pericles of these earlier scenes is is not a genius is really there are a lot of things he doesn't get and he is not getting them as it are important to our understanding them and also understanding because of what I said a little bit earlier about the the the the resistance to interior already and some of these characters that you don't see him thinking to himself no now let me see you don't sort of see the inside this moment so here's Pericles reading that the riddle I am no viper yet I feed on mother's flesh which did me breathe I sought a husband in which labor I found that kindness in a father he's father's son and husband mild I mother wife and yet his child how they may be and yet into as you will live resolve it you so you consider this a hard riddle when you read it did you do you think yourself what in the world could this mean speak no no okay now again try to imagine the obverse riddle try to imagine three persons in one try to imagine father son ghost try to imagine a kind of riddle which is holy rather than unholy which is a mystery of a transcendent car rather than a mystery of a fleshly and bodily kind part of the power of this comes from it being the anti-type of a religious moment that is the this is the opposite of that and I think with this we will stop for a second then we'll come back to the riddle and and and I'm going to look particularly in the next hour that we have together the scenes of recognition and discovery in this play which is simply astonishing so let's take five minutes in an welcome back okay so I want to go back to where we we had stopped that is to this discussion of the riddle and I want to insist for a second just politically on its sort of anti Christological quality on the degree to which this story about being in too many different relationships is a carnal one rather than a spiritual one that it that the demonized figure is the female here that this that the incest riddle that which was also we won't one of Oedipus's problems is is here constellated around female transgression and female sexual over availability and that this is the secret that the father has Antiochus has and that Pericles as we saw was beginning to try to figure out when he was reading the riddle and he sees that he is in danger and what does he do how does he respond to his reading of the real yes well he he sort of tries to evade actually coming out with the answer because he you can see that that would probably be a disaster and so he hints at the fact that he knows the answer and tries to beg off right and ultimately he's trapped in me knowledge as so often is a problem he can't get rid of the knowledge that he has Antiochus says he has found the meaning and he understands that that Pericles is going to be in danger to him and so the only way for it so Pericles from being in love with his notice that she's nameless notice that the daughter of us Antiochus is nameless that again she's a not even a type she's a kind of a fantasy she's a kind of it she's an object of carnal desire and she's his first object of carnal desire and going all the way back to Romeo and Juliet for example we often see that there is a gesture toward an object before you actually know what it means like to be really in love so the second time around so he flees Antioch and winds up in in Tarsus Tarsus yes and it's there that he encounters as if it's a dream the same scenario there's a father and a daughter and the daughter is available to get married and I mean it so you have the same thing happen all over again but in a different language in a different frame if it were cut out it would be in a different color now she has a name the father rather than pretending he wants the suitor pretends he doesn't want the suitor but you have really the same thing staged all over again and I the reason I wanted or attention to this is partly because it points forward toward that third moment of father/daughter love which is the Pericles reunion with Marina moment which yeah remember where it takes place I mean what where is what marina is employed in a brothel even though they've tried on her out of the brothel there she's now a kind of Tudor governess or whatever she is but but she's she's not completely removed from this world of the carnal though she removes herself from it can converts them out of it but there there's a third repetition here and it's a repetition with a difference and you know the point I'm making is a fairly obvious one here it's not only about repetitions and fairytales and so forth it's about how a playwright let's call him Shakespeare might take some materials that he's working with that are kind of rough though charming and rework them thematically into something that is more profound or more moving or more more compelling that rather than sort of saying this is kind of dumb or this is kind of obvious or this is kind of crass or whatever it is it utilizes those materials as if this were you know sedimentary rock that you see the various layers here but it utilizes those earlier materials and it converts some it and and indeed the initial playwright or playwrights of these opening scenes does the conversion himself that going from Antiochus and his daughter and the riddle - I mean so the riddle is really sort of you know what's the right place for parental love what is the what is the moment when it turns transgressive what is the moment when it's possessive what is the moment when you have to say no I mean these are the the riddle is not merely a riddle about a secret it's also a riddle about the possibility of relationship and about categories and resistances and the power of both love and desire and as crude as this riddle is that even Pericles can understand what it's about it does September ease and love does subtend the whole play so and before you think you're gonna get thigh back before you know it when it seems as if things are complete with the reunion of the father and the daughter and indeed if it were King Lear you would say it was complete with the reunion of Lear and Cordelia you wouldn't look around and say where is mrs. Lear that it's at that moment that again happily for the play and its return to everyday life both a husband for marina and a wife for Pericles will somehow magically or circumstantially be provided so that the father-daughter reunion is the beginning of a return to life and relationship and the everyday and the dynastic not as Lear and Cordelia fantasized that they would be like birds in a cage singing to one another and that they would live a fantasy life in which they looked constantly into one another's eyes as a kind of parental daughter li dyad yes I was thinking about um the scene where marina is brought to her father as somebody who's gonna get him out of his depression yes exactly and basically what she says is I'm your daughter and if you think about what maybe previous incest where the father forgets that the daughter is the daughter and she basically says I'm your daughter right right and I thought that was really powerful then it's sort of an undoing of repetition it's great it's that's great that's and it's such a wonderful wonderful scene and I want to talk about it but I first I want to talk about that just one more scene when I talk about the birth of Marina and the shipwreck and the death of Taizo and then come to this scene but you're right she is the position of the analyst absolutely he is dysfunctional he is he's let his hair grow he is you know won't speak anybody won't listen anybody won't talk anybody he's in a kind of traumatic catatonic situation in which they said oh she's a miracle world so so oh no nobody can fix him he is beyond hope well let's just try let's just kind of bring him into the the the aura of this person but it's true and what she does she she gets him just make and she gets him to speak by asking him these kinds of questions by posing him and I could say this in my chapter again another set of riddles the riddle of her name the riddle of her being born at sea of being of no country because she's born at sea and so forth and that she she cures the bad riddle by the good riddle she cures his enemy by curiosity she but she and it's a it's a wonderful knowledge sorry by real knowledge well by recognition but because it's if if this I mean she doesn't it's not that she tells him anything he doesn't know she tells him a set of things and this is very romance like but he recognizes or he half recognizes or he doesn't dare to recognize and that sort of slow pulling of the curtain away about called marina because she's been courted and see what country were of no country said that that little bits and pieces of introduces it's as if he had been ill as he had been and could not eat a whole meal at once but is given being given little bits and pieces at a time until he is able to eat on his own it is he's just giving him just enough information stage by stage to come and you can see him awakening just as taissa awakens from the the casket it's an extraordinary moment but I think it's not only information it's a recognition it's remember the worry recognition means to know again it's cognition plus read so and and in a way all cognition is recognition because if you didn't if didn't make sense to you you couldn't incorporate it in some way so that when when Pericles reads the incest riddle to begin with he recognizes it not because he's committed incest but because it is a cultural formation that makes some sense to him and so his cognition is a kind of recognition and in the case of his what is often called a recognition scene between the father and the daughter they precisely she he she allows him to read know something and to re know someone and that recognition which is a repetition is a sign of the color of the fact that cognition is always a kind of repetition that it that in order to understand it it needs to match up with something that that you already know like that the famous moment in the Helen Keller movie about when she begins to he needs to understand what the word water means that it's not just a word that that is spelled out but that it actually corresponds to something in the world and that's that marina gives him back our correspondence with the world make it a slightly more mystical there's not been normally that I would talk about it but I think that that is that it's functionally partly what's happening let's look at the play let's let's look for a second act at the the death of taissa in a storm and then the the the discovery of her body by and restoration of her body by the very well named magician Sarah MA or physicians cerimon so where are we wearing act 3 scenes 1 & 2 I think if I'm remembering correctly so Pericles is on shipboard in act 1 notice that marina is accompanied by liquor Oda and who is liqueur EDA she's the nurse she's the nursemaid she's going to be part of the ultimate recognition scene and she's also the the foster mother the the foster mother that makes the point about foster parenting and parenting again later on in the in the play so so he's on shipboard he's in the middle of the storm and and here again I just want to emphasize the degree to which this play works with images in a different way from the tragedies that we've been looking at and I think I probably underscore this a good deal in the chapters that I've asked you to read but let me just say it out loud as well that that we're in the tragedies that we've been looking at images are metaphorical by and large the jealousy the green-eyed monster or the doubtful it stood like tooth Spence went spent swimmers that did cling together and choke their Orin at the beginning of Macbeth where the itch in the doubtful it stood is the battle and the outcome of the battle that that you have this mental picture of these two exhausted swimmers pulling each other down in these romances by and large that medical not not entirely but to a certain extent that metaphorical language drops out and is replaced by action it's as if you had a green-eyed monster on stage it's as if you had the two exhausted swimmers on stage that what what what is accomplished by magical images within discourse in the tragedies is to a certain extent expanded and opened up so that it becomes again the plausible impossibility of the image walking around on stage here which again the incest is one example but here we have a storm which is both an emotional storm and also a physical and physiological storm and it's out of this storm that the baby is born and so I want you to look first 2 act 3 scene 1 about line oh gosh about 145 where the sailors begin to say we have to throw your wife overboard she's dead sir your queen must overboard the sea works high the wind is loud will not lie to the ship be cleared of the dead so that's her superstition he says pardon us sir with us at seed hath been so observed and we are strong in custom now that's a line that you could find almost any place in the Shakespearean play about the difference between superstition and custom therefore briefly yielder for she must over a board straight as you think me most wretched Queen and now he addresses what he thinks to be the dead body of the Queen a terrible child then hast thou had my dear no light no fire the unfriendly elements forgot the utterly nor have I time to give the hallow to thy grave but straight must cast thee scarcely coffin din the ooze wherefrom monument upon thy bones and air remaining lamps the belching wail and humming water must or whelmed by corpse lying with simple shells now this little picture of underwater life and of the friendliness somehow underwater life is a picture that will see again in the the song an aerial sings to Ferdinand in the tempest full fathom five thy father lives there these are pearls that were his eyes and so forth and that is horrific we present early on in a Shakespearean play in Clarence's dream and Richard the third in this this underwater nightmare of being eaten alive by by creatures but in this case these are friendly creatures that somehow participate in the obsequies here liqueur to bring Nestor bring me spices ink and paper my casket and my jewels so he's going to surround her with artifacts that tell who she is and that will be signs of recognition and almost anybody knowing any fairy tale is going to know that these things are not going to disappear forever they're going to come back and be read and be interpreted sir we have a chest beneath the Hat is Compton by two men ready I thank Mariner here and they the the the hopefulness of Pericles really is shown always in his capacity to move sideways to move metonymically so forth sideways to yet another Island where something good might happen so he's done a good deed for Cleon and dionyza you may remember that he came to them and he brought they he thought they thought he was going to be bringing weaponry into to overrun their star glad instead he brings food and so he thinks that he can claim a favor of them and he brings them now on the second go-round and here we could think about Coriolanus and the cry for food and so forth he brings them his daughter to bring up now what's the problem with as we're about to find out I mean even we're gonna look at this next scene what what happens to Marina offstage as we are about to watch the the rebirth on stage of taissa why are Cleon and dionyza not good foster parents for marina yes the dionyza decides that she's a competitor with her daughter when she's when she grows up and otters are killed alright so we yeah we learned that they have a daughter the daughter - OH - the daughter's name is Phil ocean and oh it's gonna be a rivalry situation again if we're not unfamiliar with this structure with the structure of the foster child the sibling rivalry the the real child over it real the the the child of these parents being being overwhelmed by the appearance of the foster child who outshines them and so forth and these these people who the first time we met them seemed to us to be you know wonderfully hospitable needy thankful folks now turn yet out to be total monsters especially the wife I mean so interesting that that in the course of the text as you will have noticed they both of them get blamed for this and they both of them get punished for this but it's the wife it's this awful wife this protective mother let us call her dionyza who hatches the plan I mean it's a little snapshot of the Lady Macbeth scenario she urges the husband to do something he is reluctant she says no no we have to do for the sake of our daughter we have to do this thing we have to kill her really well yes we do we have to kill her for the sake of our daughter and so again you may think it's unrealistic it's a kind of snapshot from an earlier Shakespearean moment but it also it it it brings out that question of the rivalry of the two daughters that is thematic in almost every Shakespearean comedy manifestly in as you like it also to a certain extent in much ado about nothing.the comparison between the two daughters they I mean if you look about much at much you do once again you've got the silent daughter hero who's the biological child the Leontes and the cousin and Beatrice who is the the one who overshadows and and speaks so in the background we're gonna have this drama taking taking place but in the foreground of the play we're going to have the arrival now of the the the casket here in the hands of ephesus again ephesus the place where magic happens the place where they did you magic arts the place inhabited by sorcerers in Saint Paul the concern is that these are you know evil sorcerers that these there are are that this is is a negative kind of magic rather than a powerful kind of magic but in this case Lord cerimon who is a physician and a learned man and again a kind of snapshot perhaps for or a foretaste of a kind of transcendent figure that Prospero will be in The Tempest is knowledgeable in arts and medicine let's just look at this passage for a second because it's very suggestive about 126 and act 3 scene 2 I hold it ever virtue and cunning or endowments greater than no boldness and riches now cunning here means knowledge it's from the same work as weird as con to learn something by heart this is not not dissimulation cunning careless errors made the two latter darken and expend but immortality attempts the former making a man a god now in most Shakespearean instances this would be a very dangerous thing to say but here it's knowledge not the desire for riches or nobleness that makes a man a god so this is a humanist statement a statement about man a little lower than the Angels through knowledge through scholarship through learning tis no not ever have studied physics rich secret art by turning or authorities I have together with my practice made familiar to me into my a the blessed infusions that dwell in vegetal stones so so here we have both the description of a kind of medical practice and a kind of semi magical practice and also carefully overlaid with virtue and with with with with good religiosity can speak of the disturbances that nature works and of her cures which talk give me so so again here we talked a little bit before about how Marina is going to serve this function she's gonna be a lay at lay analyst and a lay doctor in the second half of the play here we have a professional doctor who's a man who has learning and training and a cabinet full of herbs and things that he's able to use we should have give me a more content and course of true delight and to be thirsty after a tottering honour or tile I treasure up in silken bags to please the fool and death in other words to be a miser or a hoarder of money foolin death often in woodcuts of this period are either versions of the same the antic death shows up in richard ii as a figure where shakespeare conflates the two your honor has to Ephesus port for charity I just want you to notice again the UH the way in which this magical physician figure is over larded with words like charity and blessed and so forth lest you think that this is bad magic the these things of burnt Lord cerimon such strong renown as time shall never raise and now income the chest here comes the this this thing on which he's going to be working his magic and they open it and instead of smelling like rotten flesh it smells wonderful smells most sweetly in my sense a delicate odor as ever hit my nostrils so up with you know you most potent gods what's here a corpse of course most strange shrouded in clothes of state bombed and in treasured with full bags of spices a passport to know this is not today's passport this is a piece of writing that explains something but this word passports passport meaning literally what is it it's a letter of introduction and it allows you to cross over from one place to another as from one nation or one jurisdiction to another Hamlet uses the word here but interestingly this passport is going to allow her to cross over in the way that Hamlet was never able to make it from death back into life again but but what's what's what's what's literally meant here is just a piece of writing a piece of description here Apollo perfect me in the characters help me read the characters and here we have a piece of forgettable verse here I here I give to understand if air this coffin drives al and I King Pericles have lost this Queen worth all our mundane cost who finds her give her burying she was the daughter of a king besides this treasure for a fee the gods requite his charity and you would think that this would be the end of it but it isn't two lines before cerimon says no no wait a second she's not dead look how fresh she looks they were too rough that threw her in the sea make a fire with the infant's hither all my boxes in my closet death may use her upon nature many hours and yet the fire of life Kindle again the or Express spirits and again this is a not unfamiliar Shakespearean phenomenon where somebody looks as if they are dead and then turn out in fact to be alive I heard of an Egyptian that had nine hours long dead who was by good appliance recovered appliance meaning the applying of clause sense of what this isn't like a Maytag this is a the applying of things well said well said the firing Clause the still that's still and woeful music that we have caused it to sound beseech you and here at what I partly want to to remind you of is that at this moment of magical transformation as in let us say the awakening of King Lear you do me wrong to take me out of the grave there is music there is darkness there are odors I mean good odors there's the herbs burning and so forth but but but music attends upon the transformation and upon the real awakening and upon the rebirth here the biome once more how thou stirs thou block now that that is described this is a comment of course to the the servants here that you're not doing the right thing the music there I pray you give her air gentlemen this queen will live nature awakes a warm breath out of her she have not been entranced above five hours see how she gives to blow into lights flower again well this is about as metaphorical as this play is going to get this is a metaphor she is a natural option a flower sorry jool she's been a something in the casket but now she is going to be returning to the cycle of nature she is alive says cerimon behold her eyelids cases to those heavenly jewels which Pericles have lost begin to part their fringes of bright gold and here you might want to remember that moment in King Lear where the anonymous gentleman in Act four is describing Cordelia's response to the story about her father where her smiles and tears were like sunshine and rain once and the tears dropping from her eyes were like pearls from diamonds drop this is the same language the Diamonds of the most praised water doth appear to make the world tried twice rich live and make us weep to hear your fate fair creature rare as you seem to be noticed I uses first words oh dear Diana so that she's going to turn out to be the priestess of Diana is already here dramatically foreordained where am I where's my lord what world is this and again these are questions these are riddling questions these are questions that anticipate the questions that we're going to hear in the exchange between Pericles and Marina and again in the second recognition scene between Pericles and taissa these in this case these are real questions so to speak that is say she'd like to know the answer to them but the fact that they are posed as questions and that they are in these short plain lines of verse that it's verse but these and they're very direct but still the easier these are unvarnished questions and they're there the fact that they're questions not answers is important to the structure of the play because the the riddle as question the question as riddle the the necessity of finding answers as recognition will again inform the rest of the structure of the play it's not strange most rare hush my gentle neighbors lend me your hand now this matter must be looked to for her relapse is mortal meaning again that she will die if she relapses here come come and aesculapius guide us so again this is the classical god of medicine so you have built into this player so often with Shakespeare the combination of Christian and classical references but cerimon very much protected by the language surrounding him against any idea that this is black magic that these are mystical arts he has studied he has learned he for swears the idea of of wealth or power or social visibility what he wants is knowledge and healing escalade esv our God so so this this is this is the moment of the first reawakening so to speak and then the action will take us to show us what has happened to Marina and the combination that sort of the comparison between Marina and falutin and the the narrative that we have discussed already about how she gets into the brothel and how she gets out of the brothel that she's a completely unsatisfactory not only it won't she do it but she convinces them all that really they're wasting their time we are out of the way of writing forever come let us hear the vestal sing and again that might strike you as merely a comic thing to say except that the idea of the Vestals and the Vestal Virgins are going to return in the figure of taissa because of course what's become of her talking at the end of act 3 we have a little scene between cerimon and taissa in which now she's well enough to chat with the physician cerimon and he says matter this letter and some jewels lay with you in your coffer which are your command know you this character and so forth and she says characters handwriting character in this being as in writing characters it is my lords she remembers this but sink since King Pericles my way Lord I never shall see again a vestal livery will I take me to and Nevermore have joy and he says well actually you're right near the Temple of Diana why don't I just take you there and this is the other you know location in Ephesus is that Diana is indeed the one of the the resident goddesses in Ephesus so you have the Christian emphasis of Saint Paul very much invoked and evoked here and you also have the classical emphasis the place of Diana's temple and notice how how quickly and completely they assume that Pericles is gone forever and she's gonna go on to her next thing which is to become a vestal virgin again the she she is not I want to emphasize this to she she is going into an all-female world but she is not turning her back on the world this is not really the same thing as Friar Lawrence saying about about Juliet I'll dispose of her in a nunnery or or Aegean saying to Hermia either you can die the death or or you can live a barren sister all your life chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon if you don't marry the guy I tell you to marry you can either die right away or you can have all kind of living death in a nunnery this is not that this yes what is Diana the goddess of chastity and she is the twin sister of Apollo yes and she's a Huntress absolutely but she is and and but she's like she is the goddess of chastity and he had chastity is a positive virtue here not yesterday as abstinence not chastity as Turney not not she's not the goddess of the Isabella of the opening scenes in measure for measure she's the goddess of a kind of empowered chastity that is to say a kind of female agency that is alone and by itself yes I actually wanted to ask you about Diana here because first time I think it's a strange relationship between Teresa and Diana she swears that by Diana she will not that she will not marry any of those suitors of the Knights basically and then she marries immediately so she kind of deceives or betrays Diana and I thought Diana is also a patron of births of labor helps in labor yes right yes and childbirth and and first I read it I it's not okay now she dies maybe because of that right and and then it turns out it's it's just the first time that Diana is involved with her and then again it reappears in a very different mode for for her sure so when she thank you ready right now then when she awakens first thing she asked Oh Diana where where I am so I I couldn't well I found it difficult to to put it all together if there is any sense in all that well let us say that Diana is her patron that she from the very beginning of the play identifies herself with Diana and again Diana is not necessarily about never marrying as you say she's are as also paradoxically we might think that the the the protectress of childbirth here but but within the scene that we didn't talk about the scene of the various suitors of taissa it's it's like the suitors of Porsha or I mean these are these are anti suitors that are meant by contrast to and how do they differ from Pericles Pericles is suffering his merit or they're all handsome and well tricked out and they haven't had to work a day in their lives he has suffered privation he has been been shipwrecked he's wearing a rusty armor people make fun of him he's he has he has a his empresa says i still hope and he it's a little twig with a little leaf at the end of it and so forth that that as in all fairy tales she has two eyes as in even the fairy can't tell but a casket choice Bassanio has to choose the least promising casket the lead one rather than the gold one she has to choose inside rather than outside she has to choose the man rather than the apparatus here so and she and she also has to do that thing that we saw Desdemona do that we see Portia do that is to become aggressive with respect to the father's wishes in saying this is the man I choose I want this one I do want to marry and I want this one where where the the sense is that she has fallen in love that she has found her perfect mate whatever it is but that there were going through stages here and you could say that she's moving from the one Diana to the other Diana and then back to the first Diana if you like from the virginal Diana to the childbirth Vienna who with which may well be the one that she is remembering as she awakens here since last time she was conscious she was giving birth but also that she's moving toward the temple of diana in all of her aspects which she's going herself to represent so i don't think that it's a they mean so for its it's inconsistent it's just because of Diana's various avatars not I think because there's any moment when when taissa is unde i anna like what I also found difficult why did she have to swear because well in other place in other places in Shakespeare when somebody mentions God or or when God is involved somehow and here she swears by her and immediately betrays this why why why does she have to let's find the passage so that we can answer your question okay just in the lane one Quelf monk more she'll wear Dianna's livery she says so he says that she says Knights my daughter says she's she's not going to marry for 12 months that's the message she think of Juliet lying to the nurse and saying who's that guy who's that guy who's that guy when they actually wanted to be Romeo think of Juliet lying to her parents die easy here is sending a message send those suitors away I don't want to marry but she's not swearing by Diana he's the father's invoking Diana here and know this birthday I have seen thea has she Wow and the Virgin honor will not break it yeah but who's saying that that's the father says father says the daughter says this that's very different from the daughter says this the father is the one who is invoking Diana and Cynthia who's a version etcetera the daughter says to the father I don't want to marry fathers delivers the and embellishes the message she's not gonna marriage she's going to be Diana's whatever it is so she is ironically this comes true she is going to wear Diana's livery and so forth not in the way that he understands it but it's not that she does not a blasphemy on her part misusing the name of Diana this is the father quoting embellishing citing paraphrasing what he thinks the daughter said to her to him when in fact both he and she know what he is really up to the QI actually is marrying not one of those guys but somebody else and semana Diez takes us aside periodically and says I'm really glad this is happening you know it's so lest we think that the heavy father is really being heavy but but but in fact I think this is perfectly consistent because what happens here is that she does where Diana's livery at the end of her life where she didn't wear it in this early moment and she wears it because she can become as a priestess of Diana so let's let let me bring you if you can't if we can to these two unbelievable scenes that I really want us to be sure to remember one of which is the the awakening of Pericles now we've just talked about the awakening of taissa now we're going to talk about the awakening of Pericles who is similarly dead he's absolutely as dead as she he is also living a living dead life his hair is growing he's not talking to anybody he's not interacting with anybody he has opted out of life he is living in death in life and he has taken this vow that about about not cutting his hair and so forth but but he he's he is is functioning he's dysfunctional he's functioning in a way that is like death in life and in fact if you were to go to the Ancient Mariner you would find exactly a figure like this in Coleridge's poetic imagination and they say nobody can fix him absolutely nobody can fix him let's start here at f-15c one line 24 speakers helicanus who is one of those old retainer figures that we're we become very familiar with the old man who is trustworthy and the surrogate whom he has left briefly in command of the of the land who's then sent been sent after him because remember there's some exigency in trying to deal with Pericles here sir our vessel is of Tyre Edith the king a man who were these three months have not spoken to anyone nor take sustenance but to prorogue his grief to prolong his grief upon what ground is his distemper turning into interlocutory ears Lysimachus the governor of medellin ii and that will be the husband finally of marina the main grief strings from the loss of a beloved daughter and a wife may not see him you may but there's no point he will not speak to any yet let me obtain my wish says listen him because because he's the governor this is going to happen they pericles discovered that is to say they reveal him whether he is hidden behind something whether there's a curtain or something that he is now revealed and he's revealed in his privity of state with his long hair with his unkempt he again he is mourning but he is mourning is such that it is it is a kind of mourning that is also a kind of melancholia that has incorporated death in life it is in vain he will not speak to you we have a made in Italy knee who would words that were some words of him good idea says listen I guess good well bethought she question list I love questionless hear what that means without question but of course it's going to be with lots of questions with her sweet harmony and other chosen attractions would a lure and make a battery through his death and ports which now are Midway stopped so this is now described as a his ears and eyes are like ports to the body they they say well it's pointless all affectless yet nothing will omit that bears recover his name will try this and hella canis here I'm moving out of line 6061 they want to know what what's the story wreaking sorrow sir I will recount it to you but see I am prevented and what I want you to notice here is that this is a repetition of what Gower does that somebody's going to tell you no no we're going to show you that over and over again in this play telling is replaced by showing enter Lord from the barge with marina here's the lady and they describe her and then she sings and again so it's again music is part of this moment of transformation and here now at line 85 the she he's resistant hum ha he doesn't want to talk to her I am a maid my lord that NER before II invited eyes but have been gazed on like a comet I never asked anybody look at me before people have stared at me she speaks my lord that maybe hath endured a grief might equal your as if both were justly waved the wayward fortune did malign my state my derivation was from ancestors who stood equivalent with mighty Kings now this is again a typical romance thing ordinary person turns out to be royal we'll see this in later Shakespearean romances as well if Freud thinks that this is a fantasy this is part of the one of one of Ford's notions about the family romance and I'm not an ordinary person I'm a highborn the word romance is well-taken in the phrase family romance this is precisely a family romance but like as with all of these actual romances in the Renaissance it turns out that the lowborn is highborn my derivation was from ancestors who stood equivalent with mighty kings but time hath routed out my parentage and to the world an awkward casualties bound me in servitude so I have fallen low asad I will desist but there is something glows upon my cheek and whispers in my ear go not till he speak so here we do have a little moment of interior already or intuition and Pericles who remember doesn't listen or speak is beginning to take fragments of what she has said my fortunes parentage good parentage to equal mine was it not thus what say you I said my lord if you didn't know my parentage you would not do me violence I do think so he says pray you turn your eyes upon me you were like something that what country woman hear of these shores no when he says you're like something that what does he recognize what does he his wife his wife and arguably the actress or actor playing marina is the same as the actor or actress who played taissa in the first half of the play 14 years ago in it so the recognition could be metha theatrical as well as the at Racal but any case he sees in her something like his wife or himself maybe who knows what country woman here these shores no nor of any shores so riddle again but lest you think again that is magic we have the explanation of the room yet I was mortally brought forth and AM no other than I appears don't think I'm magical I'm just a riddle I am great with woe and shall deliver weeping so what's happened to Pericles here what does it mean to be great with low woe in to deliver what kinds of languages is this pregnancy its pregnancies this is male pregnancy this is not unknown in the period as it interestingly poets often sydney's as famous on in which he talks about himself as being great with child and yet difficult difficult to speak you know fool said my muse to me speaking like look at my heart and write and that the the idea of writing or political creation is sometimes by male authors in this period thought of as a kind of childbirth but here we have male childbirth where previously we had female childbirth and the what's gonna be born here is whoa not a child my dearest wife was like this made and so she won my daughter might have been my queen square browse her stature to an inch as wanted like straight as silver voice arises jewel like and taste as richly in pace another Juno so we've switched from Diana to Juno here the queen of the gods and the wife of Jupiter who starves the ears she feeds and makes them hungry the more she gives them a speech and where we heard that language before she makes hungry where most she satisfies Cleopatra so now suddenly we have the same language that was used for someone culturally and erotically insatiable as well as as the cynosure of all eyes here being describing this virginal figure of marina where do you live where I am but a stranger from the deck you may discern the place where were you bred how achieved you etc if I should tell my history should seem like lies prithee speak falseness cannot come from thee and then he goes on and asks her over and over again what were they friends what what's that they are perceived in thee did you sweetly say you came from good penny can't get rid of this question if you're good parent is rapport your parentage some such thing I said tell thy story if thou considerest prove the thousandth part of my endurance thou art a man and I have suffered like a girl so again we saw this language in Macbeth we saw an anticipation of it in his he is being pregnant and so forth yet thou does look like patience gazing on Kings graves and smiling extreme out of act and for those of you who know Twelfth Night this is the same image that we have a viola describing herself as like patients like on a monument smiling at grief what were their friends how lost though them thy name my most convert and here we're looking for that recognition that magic talisman because we've had so to speak metaphor up to this point born here parentage that the certain kind now we're gonna give the thing itself recount I do beseech you come sit by me my name is marina oh I am mocked and thou by some incense that God sent hither to make the world to laugh at me patience good sir so here's that invocations of patience again to or here I'll cease I'll stop talking no no so again he now wants her to keep talking it is very much like the recognition scene between Lear and Cordelia after he awakens from death that little knows how that a startled me to call thyself Marina now cuz she doesn't know the story of her name the name was given me by one that had some power my father and a king how a king is daughter and called marina are you flesh and blood and have you a working Paulson are no fairy again and again this play will want to underscore and re-emphasize the fact that this is not magic this is the real deal they are alive they were never a dead yeah this is the concretization absolute finding absolutely that's what I meant by the recognition again yes exactly this is this is the literalization exactly of that finding as re finding that they meet for the first time the second time and that he sees her through the half recognition of the wife which if it's the same actor as even more uncanny called Marina for I was born at sea at sea what mother and so again what I want here to underscore to you is how long this takes how many little clues that we get it already right they said it already she said I'm a king's daughter I'm Marina he lost a daughter his name he's a king etc there we could have closure to this recognition scene long before we have it but is immensely prolonged it's like an area goes on and on and on and an every moment of repetition brings him back closer to life so it is a restorative for him at sea what mother my mother was the daughter of a king who died the minute I was born and she names the nurse lychorida and so forth how came you in these parts where we bred and now she begins to tell the story of the the the betrayal of clay on and dionyza because of course as far as he knows she's someplace else she ought to be with clean and dionyza but the crew of pyruvic to mention the pirates the crew pirates came and rescued me brought me the middlee knee and so forth you think me an impostor no good faith I am the daughter to King Pericles if good King Pericles be if he's alive and now we have the recognition seen with give me a gash bring me to present pain pinched me let me know that I'm alive just as we saw with Lear again and finally in this speech Oh come hither thou that begets him that did the beget so this and again I know I say this in my chapter because it struck me so powerfully this is the redemption of the incest riddle now that begets him that did the begin this is also an incest rule and it's been in again predicted by all these images of childbirth but here it is redeemed of anything noxious or criminal or or carnal and it becomes instead a different kind of beginning Oh come hither avow that begets him that did beget and the final talisman is going to be the mother's name is it no more to be your daughter than to say my mother's name was taissa taissa was my mother who did end the minute I began and here I'm just gonna hope they don't come barging in until we've been able to move just just finally - the Taizo daughter recognition seen in act 5 scene three where they're a couple of quick things I want to say one is that in this play the father daughter recognition is foregrounded and the father wife recognition is made subordinate or secondary it is important but it is not the center of the action we'll have a different version of this when we come to look at The Winter's Tale and secondly and we'll probably have to be lastly because our time is coming up we have both the repetition of the riddles and the questions did you not name a tempest of birth and death she asks of the husband taissa is recovered oh my lord are you not Pericles like him you spake like him you are did you not name a tempest of birth and death the hoarse voice of dead taissa says Pericles no once again you're gonna eat old know that taissa am i suppose it dead this play is never going to say they really were dead it's gonna keep telling you they weren't and drown immortal Diane so here's Diana again and more tokens of recognition the ring and finally Pericles oh come be buried a second time within these arms so we have the recognition the restoration the the the resurrection and the reburial as naturalisation be buried a second time within these arms so burial itself becomes metaphorical at the end of this play where we had what seemed to be a literal burial in the sea that turned out not to be varying the dead here can be buried a second time within these arms where the act of burying is actually the act of unburying this is a wonderful play and this is a play that you can see why this well as audiences because it's it's it shows you theatre as magic it shows you that what the play disavows the performance performs play says this is not magic the production gives the lie to that claim I'll see you next week

Channel: CosmoLearning

Views: 9,603

Rating: 4.7674417 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: QRu2E1QW4L0

Length: 112min 23sec (6743 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 18 2015