Marina in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, probably 1607. I don’t know the actress or production above.
This is unquestionably the worst play by Shakespeare, though his co-author Wilkins gets some of the blame. Well, maybe Titus Andronicus. But Pericles is pretty fucking bad.
Among the many tragedies that befall Pericles is having his daughter Marina captured by pirates and sold to a brothel. But rather than embrace the reality of this tragedy, the script ensures that Marina’s virtuousness and piousness mean she gets to keep her virginity. It’s a very old-Christian-hagiography / perils-of-Pauline ruse, and it seems really, really cheap. But Elizabethean audiences probably would not have stood for a princess actually getting prostituted.
Eh.
I remember going to see a stage production of Peter Pan when I was a kid. They had even set up the whole wire thing so that Peter and the kids could fly, which was very impressive for a small theatre group. But what I remember most was Wendy (and Tiger Lily?) being tied up. Oooooo! I would have traded places in a second.
Here, some very classic pirate peril, with a rather more mature Wendy.
(Source: wontonart)