Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- Everyone's always saying that theevents in Pericles are highly improbable and unrealistic. Do we have to suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy this play or for it to make any sense?
- Why do you think there's only one movie version of Pericles? (As opposed to the 50+ film adaptations of Hamlet.)
- If Pericles had a Facebook account, what would his timeline look like? What kinds of photos and status updates do you think he would post?
- Shakespeare's fellow playwright Ben Jonson called Pericles a "mouldy" play. What do you think he meant by that? Do you agree? Why or why not?
- Why is this play so obsessed with father-daughter relationships?
- In terms of verse style and language, the first two acts of Pericles seem completely different from the last three acts. Why do you think that is? Do you think Shakespeare collaborated on this play with another writer? Or do you think he took an old play and revised it, paying most attention to rewriting the last three acts? Or is there some other explanation?
- Do you think Pericles is a fairy tale? If so, what kinds of fairy tale themes and character types do you recognize in the play? If not, what genre do you think it fits into?
- How would the play be different if "Gower" weren't used as a chorus figure in the opening prologues of each act?
- Compare and contrast themes and events in Pericles to the movie The Impossible.
- Why do you think there's so much doubling (of events and characters) in Pericles? How does it impact our experience of the play?
- How is Pericles like Shakespeare's other romances (The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Cymbeline), which were also written toward the end of his career?