RemarkaBULL Podversations are informal, livestreamed conversations that investigate approaches to essential passages from the Shakespearean and Jacobean canon―and beyond.
This event is part of PERICLES 2021, is a multi-faceted endeavor to provide an opportunity for our entire community to explore William Shakespeare’s Pericles – the founding production of Red Bull Theater (2003) – with BIPOC voices in our present moment. GET DETAILS
Appearing on stages all across the country and the Off-Broadway rialto, Raphael Nash Thompson has built a sterling reputation as a brilliant actor in the classics. He’ll join host Nathan Winkelstein, Red Bull’s Associate Artistic Director, and special guest Jesse Berger, Red Bull’s Artistic Director, for a conversation focused on Shakespeare’s Pericles. Thompson tackled the role of Gower in Red Bull Theater’s 2003 production – the founding production of the company. He reprised the role in 2016 at Theater for a New Audience under the direction of Trevor Nunn. He’ll read a selection and join in a discussion of the rewards and challenges of this unique Shakespeare play.
Shakespeare's PERICLES
from ACT 3
​
IMOGEN
Now sleep yslackèd hath the rout;
No din but snores about the house,
Made louder by the o’erfed breast
Of this most pompous marriage feast.
The cat with eyne of burning coal
Now couches from the mouse’s hole,
And crickets sing at the oven’s mouth
Are the blither for their drouth.
Hymen hath brought the bride to bed,
Where, by the loss of maidenhead,
A babe is molded. Be attent,
And time that is so briefly spent
With your fine fancies quaintly eche.
What’s dumb in show I’ll plain with speech.
By many a dern and painful perch
Of Pericles the careful search,
By the four opposing coigns
Which the world together joins,
Is made with all due diligence
That horse and sail and high expense
Can stead the quest. At last from Tyre,
Fame answering the most strange enquire,
To th’ court of King Simonides
Are letters brought, the tenor these:
Antiochus and his daughter dead,
The men of Tyrus on the head
Of Helicanus would set on
The crown of Tyre, but he will none.
The mutiny he there hastes t’ oppress,
Says to ’em, if King Pericles
Come not home in twice six moons,
He, obedient to their dooms,
Will take the crown. The sum of this,
Brought hither to Pentapolis,
Y-ravishèd the regions round,
And everyone with claps can sound,
“Our heir apparent is a king!
Who dreamt, who thought of such a thing?”
Brief, he must hence depart to Tyre.
His queen, with child, makes her desire—
Which who shall cross?—along to go.
Omit we all their dole and woe.
Lychorida, her nurse, she takes,
And so to sea. Their vessel shakes
On Neptune’s billow. Half the flood
Hath their keel cut. But Fortune, moved,
Varies again. The grizzled North
Disgorges such a tempest forth
That, as a duck for life that dives,
So up and down the poor ship drives.
The lady shrieks and, well-anear,
Does fall in travail with her fear.
And what ensues in this fell storm
Shall for itself itself perform.
I nill relate; action may
Conveniently the rest convey,
Which might not what by me is told.
In your imagination hold
This stage the ship upon whose deck
The sea-tossed Pericles appears to speak.