Sailing with Pericles - from Cortanovci to Chicago

Abstract

Pericles is one of Shakespeare’s late plays, written in collaboration and rarely staged – probably due to its complicated plot and disregard for the Aristotelian dictum of three unities. Produced rather late in Shakespeare’s professional and private life, it sublimes all the experience of the man, father and actor, permeated by Shakespeare’s personal relationship with his wife and daughters, as well as the political uncertainty and anxiety caused by the union with Scotland – akin to the present-day fear of the European Union and rise of British nationalism. Restless sailing, fleeing and seeking, alchemy, father-daughter relationship, Jungian spectrum of woman, migrant crisis, Brexit and human trafficking, all can be found in this play of the Prince of Tyre. This paper takes stock of the Serbian production of Pericles, with a pronounced comic note, via British to American stage productions, making way to the presentist interpretations against the backdrop of the ongoing flux and, at the same time, twinning of the local and global context of the play, the geography of which is definitely supportive and stimulating for such an approach. Though resembling a fairy tale by structure, the play’s complex topography, dramatis personae and time scheme correspond with the manifold meaning, themes and questions that it opens.