PERICLES PRINCE OF TYRE: 6--It's difficult to believe that Shakespeare had much to do with this farrago. The play begins with Pericles challenging for the hand of the King of Antioch's daughter. Only the suitor who can answer the King's riddle can become his daughter's husband. Pericles correctly sees that the answer to the riddle is that Antiochus is in an incestuous relationship with his daughter--and to flee the King's wrath Pericles escapes from Antioch and then leaves Tyre itself. This is effectively the start of the real play as this early theme dies during Pericles' travels, and he later marries, becomes father to a daughter, and loses both wife and daughter in a storm at sea. Neither, however, dies and Pericles is later reunited with both. The plot simply doesn't hang together and there is little poetry of any real merit in the play. I feel fairly certain that Shakespeare had either nothing or very little to do with the writing of this drama.

I give it 6 only because of a strong performance as Pericles by Mike Gwilym--who earlier starred as Berowne in the BBC's "Love's Labour's Lost".