Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Roles

• Gower - Young Adult (20-35), Adult (36-50), Senior (>50), Male

About this piece

Gower narrates about Marina's death

Summary

In the city of Antiochus, in Syria, King Antiochus rules the city. We learn in the prologue that he is committing incest with his beautiful daughter and is keeping all her suitors away by forcing them to answer a riddle or die. One of the suitors is Pericles who in the first scene of the play is in King's Antiochus court, determined to try and answer his riddle. When he reads the riddle he realizes that it is about the incest going on with his daughter. He then refuses to answer it saying that he knows the truth but rather not tell it. The king, who realizes Pericles knows about the incest, tells him he will be executed in 40 days. Pericles decides to flee and goes back to Tyre. Back in Tyre one of his councilors, Helicanus, for fear that Antioch might invade Tyre to kill Pericles, advices him to flee to Tarsus, a neighboring city ruled by King Cleon and his wife Dionyza. When he is called back to Tyre Pericles is shipwrecked in a place called Pentapolis. There he learns of a king, King Simonides, who is giving his daughter's hand (Thaisa) to whoever wins a jousting tournament the following day. Pericles decides to enter the tournament and wins. On the way back to Tyre, however, Thaisa dies giving birth to their child Marina. Considering the trip to Tyre too dangerous for his daughter, Pericles lands in Tarsus and gives his child to Cleon and Dionyza. When Marina grows up, however, Dionyza gets jealous of her and decides to hire a murderer to kill her. Before she is killed she is rescued by pirates and brought to Myteline where she is sold as a prostitute. In this monologue, Gower, the narrator, narrates that when Pericles decides to go back to Tarsus to reunite with his daughter, Cleon and Dionyza tell him that she died and show him a monument that they have erected for her. Pericles is distraught. In the last part of the monologue Gower reads Marina's epitaph saying that she was a good and virtuous person.

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