Not Peer Reviewed
- Edition: Pericles
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Quarto)
- Texts of this edition
- Contextual materials
- Facsimiles
The Play of Pericles
Prince of Tyre. &c.
1Enter Gower.
3From ashes, auntient Gower is come,
5To glad your eare, and please your eyes:
7On Ember eues, and Holydayes:
8And Lords and Ladyes in their liues,
9Haue red it for restoratiues:
10The purchase is to make men glorious,
11Et bonum quo Antiquius eo melius:
12If you, borne in those latter times,
13When Witts more ripe, accept my rimes;
14And that to heare an old man sing,
16I life would wish, and that I might
17Waste it for you, like Taper light.
18This Antioch, then Antiochus the great,
19Buylt vp this Citie, for his chiefest Seat;
20The fayrest in all Syria.
21I tell you what mine Authors saye:
22This King vnto him tooke a Peere,
23Who dyed, and left a female heyre,
24So bucksome, blith, and full of face,
25As heauen had lent her all his grace:
26With whom the Father liking tooke,
27And her to Incest did prouoke:
28Bad child, worse father, to intice his owne
29To euill, should be done by none:
30But custome what they did begin,
32The beautie of this sinfull Dame,
33Made many Princes thither frame,
34To seeke her as a bedfellow,
35In maryage pleasures, playfellow:
36Which to preuent, he made a Law,
37To keepe her still, and men in awe:
38That who so askt her for his wife,
39His Riddle tould, not lost his life:
40So for her many of wight did die,
42What now ensues, to the iudgement of your eye,
Exit.