Pericles, Prince of Tyre Art and Culture Quotes

Gower acts as the chorus in this play, which means he's kind of like a narrator. Here, he rolls out on stage and tells us he's come back from the dead to share an ancient story with us. This immediately gives the play an old-school vibe, because the English poet John Gower (1327-1408) was the dude who wrote Confessio Amantis, which is one of the major literary sources for this play. Gower died about 200 years before Shakespeare (co-)wrote Pericles. Oh, yeah: did we mention that the story of Pericles dates back to 5 C.E.? John Gower didn't invent the story—he just retold it. This is one story that's been around for a really long time, and this play goes out of its way to remind us that it's an ancient tale.

This is a pretty bold statement, don't you think? Gower suggests that storytelling has the power to heal, and that it's even better than medicine ("restoratives"). This idea appears in other parts of the play, too. When Marina prepares to sing to her father and tell him the story of her life in Act 5, Scene 1, Lysimachus compares her to a physician or "sacred physic" (5.1.74).

When Gower says "rhymes," he's referring to verses of poetry in general, but he also literally rhymes throughout his prologues, and that helps give this play an old-school vibe. Even Shakespeare's 17th-century audience would have found this old-fashioned, since they were used to his plays being mostly in iambic pentameter. (More on this in "Writing Style.")