You know that thing when you have an incestuous relationship with your daughter, but you don’t want anyone to know about it, so you disguise the truth in a riddle and make her suitors guess its meaning? No? Well, that’s what the king of Antioch is up to. Guess correctly and marry the princess, he says. Get it wrong and be killed. Today we might shake our heads and wonder why the King didn’t just keep his mouth shut instead of broadcasting his dirty laundry in rhymes, but young Pericles is the only one to actually guess the hidden meaning of the riddle. And guess what. It’s a trap! With assassins on his tale he flees for his life, taking the reader on a journey that spans more years and countries than your typical Shakespeare play.
Adventurous, romantic and funny, Pericles, Prince of Tyre is bound to keep you entertained. T.S. Eliot loved it so much he based a poem, Marina, on it. To add to its intrigue, it is believed that Shakespeare share the writing credit with George Wilkins – can you tell who wrote which parts?
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. Regarded as the greatest playwright in the world and the greatestEnglish languagewriter, her wrote poems and sonnets, and also comedic, tragic and historical plays such as "Hamlet", "Othello", "King Lear", "Much Ado About Nothing", "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Macbeth". Incredibly influential and popular, he also invented numerous words and phrases.
