h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Pericles 1983 BBC Complete Shakespeare

I would guess that if you asked a hundred random people to name as many of the works of William Shakespeare this one wouldn’t appear on the list. Even Hemminges and Condell his friends who put together the First Folio in 1623 didn’t include it. It didn’t make it into the canon until the third folio in 1664. Many people doubted it was by Shakespeare but modern scholarship suggests that the last half was his, the first half written by George Wilkins.

Wilkins was a thoroughly disreputable character. He had a brief dramatic career with a successful play produced before this effort. Most of the records of his life are of a different sort. He was a vintner and tavern keeper and also ran a prostitution business. He appears a number of times in court records for assaulting and beating women in the street, undoubtedly his ‘workers’.

Hard to believe that such a man could work with someone like our Will. They have another connection. In 1604 Will was lodging with the Mountjoy’s, a French Huguenot family of tire makers in Silver Street. Tires were the fancy creations that women wore on their heads, and the Mountjoys were top of the range, even supplying Queen Anne. They had an apprentice Stephen Belott whom they wished to marry their daughter Mary, and they asked Will, being good with words, if he would endeavour to ‘persuade’ the lad to this end. Which he successfully did.

Sadly all did not go smoothly. A dowry was promised but Mountjoy and Belott fell out and Stephen and Mary left the home and set up business for themselves. In the interim they lodged with George Wilkins, who was located just round the corner from Silver Street in Turnmill (also called Turnbull) Street which although only a stones throw from the respectable area they had left was a notorious hive of taverns and brothels which must have been a very trying experience for Mary.

We know all this detail because some eight years later Stephen actioned his father in law for the payment of the promised dowry. Witnesses were called and examined and their evidence written into the court records. Amongst the witnesses were George Wilkins and one Master Shakespeare. He gave evidence that a dowry was agreed but he was unsure what the figure mentioned might have been. Christopher Mountjoy appears from the evidence and his reported remarks among the lines of he would see them dead and rotted before he would give them a single penny, to have been a rather obnoxious man.

When he died his possessions went to his second wife and nothing was ever received by his daughter or Stephen.

But back to ‘Pericles’, not well known and not often played but in its day one of the most popular plays on the Jacobean stage, and ran into six printings in quarto, the Penguin publication of the era. It is a rambling tale, a series of adventures for the hero and his wife and child in the time of Ancient Greece, each episode linked bizarrely by a medieval English poet called Gower who was a contemporary of Chaucer. To give the plot full justice would take another two journals so this is me being very restrained.

Our hero Pericles journeys to Antioch to try to win the hand of the Princess. As in all good fairy tales he has to answer a riddle to be deemed worthy. If he fails to answer he dies. Unlike most fairy tales this riddle has an answer which would also lead to his death as it directly exposes that, to put it in Shakespearean terms, the King and his daughter have been making the beast with two backs.

Pericles rushes back to Tyre but with the King’s assassin on his trail takes ship to unknown parts to avoid pursuit. He arrives at Tarsus in the middle of a famine and relieves the town to the almost undying gratitude of the people. Word is received that the assassin is on his way to Tarsus so Pericles takes ship again but is caught in a storm and washed ashore. Rescued by fishermen he learns of a tournament for young knights at the local ruler’s court in honour of yet another fairy tale princesses’ birthday and this time it works proper magic. He is successful, wins the princess, they are married and she is suitably impregnated.

He decides to return home but during the journey there is another storm, his wife gives birth to a daughter but dies. The superstitious sailors require that the body be removed from the ship and this done placing it in a sealed box with herbs perfumes and jewels. Pericles then leaves his daughter to be brought up by his friends in Tarsus and returns home.

Meanwhile on another part of the coast the box bobs onshore, is taken to a local wise man who revives the wife. She thinks her husband is gone and becomes a nun. Time passes and the daughter has grown so accomplished and pure and beautiful, it is still a fairy tale, that the foster mother is envious because she puts her own daughter in the shade. She arranges to have Marina, that’s Pericles daughter’s name, murdered but before the murderer can strike the fatal blow a bunch of pirates arrive and kidnap her. For some reason at this point there is no daughter of any of the pirates called Ethel.

The murderer reports back that he has killed Marina and is promptly poisoned for his trouble.

The pirates sell Marina to a brothel but she is so pure that she persuades her customers that virtue is the true object of life and they all foreswear the sins of the flesh, ruining the pimps business. Eventually they make their money back by hiring her out as a tutor to teach young ladies good manners and right thoughts.

Pericles returns to Tarsus to meet his daughter, is told she is dead and grief stricken takes to the seas to wander forlornly alone. Of course he ends up mooring outside the very town where Marina lives and she is sent on board to try to cheer him up. Eventually they realise that they are father and daughter. After much rejoicing and probably too much wine, Pericles falls asleep and gets a message from the goddess Diana, no the real one, to go to the temple where unknown to him, his wife now lives.

Thus they all meet again and everyone lives happily ever after, except the King of Antioch and his incestuous daughter who are standing together in a chariot when they get hit by a meteor and are burned to death.

Phew, for a while I didn’t think I was going to make it.

Deb

[Amy P]

I'm sure I would have been more engaged with Eng.Lit if this had been part of my education

I wonder whether 'tire' is an etymological ancestor of 'tiara'?

According to Charles Nicholls in his excellent (if you are a Shakespeare geek) book 'The Lodger'

The full blown tire was an assemblage rising up some inches above the head, based on a framework of silver or gilt wire, embroidered with silk, lace, and gold thread, decorated with pearls, gem, and spangles, and often topped off with a feather or two.

That's at the top end of the market

Tire derives from Attire and, according to Nicholls 'has no etymological link with tiara although these creations could be described as complicated tiaras.'

Tire makers could also be wig makers (apparently the word wig may not have existed in English at this time it being an Italian courtesan fashion imported via France in the late 16th century). Tire makers would use hair in the creation of their works of art.

According to Wikipedia a tiara (from Latin: tiara, from Ancient Greek: τιάρα) is a form of crown. There are two possible types of crown that this word can refer to. Traditionally, the word "tiara" refers to a high crown, often with the shape of a cylinder narrowed at its top, made of fabric or leather, and richly ornamented. Alternatively the modern type is that often worn by members of European royal families although they may be worn by anyone of any rank including Brides and Wonder Woman.

I loves me some etymology.