"Let's just say this right up front: no one is sure how much of Pericles was actually written by Shakespeare. The majority of the play is so far from Shakespeare's style, in fact, that many scholars believe the first two acts were written by someone else entirely possibly George Wilkins. That Wilkins is remembered as much today for his reputation as a part-time pimp as he is for his career as a part-time dramatist tells you everything you need to know about Pericles' critical reception over the last 416 years."
"So much so that it's become the butt of many a Shakespeare joke most notably in Lauren Gunderson's play The Book of Will, where it's a running gag in which a group of Shakespearean actors groan every time the name of the play is mentioned. But when Santa Cruz Shakespeare produced The Book of Will in 2023, the company's artistic director Charles Pasternak discovered that those jokes had a completely unexpected effect."
"It just so happened that that the Pericles' joke stuck with the audience, said Pasternak, and it was maybe the first time that any artistic director ever has had audience members coming to them saying, When are you going to do Pericles?' Ah, but the joke was on all of us, it turns out, as Pasternak was already planning to produce Pericles in fact, when he was asked to put together a hypothetical season while applying for the job, he included it."
Pericles has uncertain authorship, with the first two acts frequently attributed to George Wilkins rather than Shakespeare. Wilkins carries a scandalous reputation as a part-time pimp as well as a dramatist, which has influenced the play's reception for centuries. Many scholars disparage Pericles and treat it as inferior Shakespeare. Santa Cruz Shakespeare is producing Pericles in the Audrey Stanley Grove through Aug. 30. Sean Keilen expresses limited interest in authorship debates. Lauren Gunderson's The Book of Will turned Pericles into an onstage joke that unexpectedly generated audience curiosity, and Charles Pasternak had already planned to mount Pericles.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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