SOURCE: Delvecchio, Doreen and Antony Hammond. Introduction to Pericles, Prince of Tyre, edited by Doreen Delvecchio and Antony Hammond, pp. 1-78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

In the following excerpt, Delvecchio and Hammond trace the production history of Pericles from the seventeenth through the twentieth century.

Performance and Reception

Seventeenth Century

From the beginning Pericles has been a play that has divided opinion. It is evident that it was a popular play on stage, and this success surely was at least in part owing to the opportunities it (like the other romances) offered for theatrical spectacle and musical embellishment. The implications for staging found in the quarto text are quite elaborate, though often ambiguous. Many of them are discussed in the Commentary, but this is a good place to remark on their scope.

The opening scene, with the grim display of severed heads, is one. Act 2 presents many challenges...