Seas of Displacement, Acts of Hope: Pericles ’ Twenty-First-Century Adaptations

Abstract

abstract: Pericles (c. 1608–09), co-authored by George Wilkins and William Shakespeare, is a drama of radical displacement, which scatters its characters across perilous Mediterranean geographies and, in so doing, highlights an essential human vulnerability to physical and social harm. Its dramatic blend of oceanic precarity, family separation and community fracturing, and collective labor founded on hope against seemingly impossible odds has led artists in the twenty-first century to reimagine the play in terms of mobility, migration, and the displacement of human beings from early modern projects of empire and enslavement to the movement of refugees in the present. This article considers the relation between displacement and hope in the play and argues that the core ethic of the drama, conveyed through the character of Marina, is one of active hope, founded on work rather than faith. It then examines a series of recent responses to the play, including Adrian Jackson’s 2003 Cardboard Citizens adaptation, Ali Smith’s 2019 novel Spring , and Kent Gash’s 2021 staged reading for Red Bull Theater. In the relation between displacement and hope these works articulate, Pericles emerges as a resonant drama for an artistic practice in response to the political and ethical demands of the present .