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The medieval poet John Gower has returned from the grave to tell the story of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Pericles, in search of a wife, sails to the city of Antioch, where the King has a beautiful and mysterious daughter. Any knight who can solve the riddle of her identity will win her hand; many have perished in the attempt. Pericles successfully deciphers the riddle and learns that the King and his daughter have an incestuous relationship. Horrified, Pericles flees Antioch, but the King sends an assassin in pursuit. After a brief visit to Tyre, Pericles escapes to the famine-struck kingdom of Tarsus, where he delivers wheat to the starving citizens. But the murderer from Antioch is on his trail and Pericles must set sail again. A tempest leaves him shipwrecked on the shore of Pentapolis, where a group of fishermen rescue him and take him to the royal court. The King of Pentapolis holds a contest for the hand of his daughter Thaisa, who falls in love with Pericles. They marry, and Thaisa conceives a child. Some months later the family sets sail for Tyre, but another storm blows up during which Thaisa seems to perish while giving birth to a daughter, Marina. Pericles leaves his child with Cleon and Dionyza, King and Queen of Tarsus, and continues on his journey. Thaisa's coffin washes up at Ephesus, where the magician Cerimon revives her and sequesters her as a priestess in the Temple of Diana. Marina passes her childhood in Tarsus, where Dionyza grows jealous of her beauty and orders her murder. A group of pirates rescue her and sell her to a brothel in Mytilene, where her goodness and purity threaten to destroy the business. Lysimachus, Governor of Mytilene, falls in love with Marina almost as soon as he meets her. He takes her from the brothel and intends to marry her, when news comes that a ship from Tyre, bearing a crushed and lonely old man, is sailing into port ...

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