Pericles, prince of Tyre, is one of the suitors for the hand of the beautiful daughter of Antiochus, king of Antioch. To win her hand, Pericles must solve a riddle or be executed. Pericles deciphers the shameful answer to the riddle and, fearing for his life, hastens home. Terrified that Antiochus’s wrath will follow him, he decides to “go travel for a while.” His first destination is famine-stricken Tarsus where he brings a shipload of provisions to rulers Cleon and Dionyza. Then he puts to sea for parts unknown.
In a terrible storm at sea, his ship is wrecked leaving Pericles as the only survivor. He is saved by three fishermen when he is cast up on the shore of Pentapolis, the kingdom of King Simonides. Hearing that the king is about to give a tournament in honor of his daughter Thaisa’s birthday, Pericles enters the tourney. Thaisa and Pericles fall in love at first sight, and Thaisa tells her father of her choice. King Simomides sees the young lovers quickly married.
Pericles and Thaisa—now pregnant— live quietly at Pentapolis for several months. Helicanus, who has been ruling wisely in Tyre in the absence of Pericles, sends word that Antiochus has died and so it is finally safe for Pericles to return home. Pericles reveals to his new family that he is a king and plans to journey home. Tragedy strikes on the stormy voyage to Tyre when Thaisa dies giving birth to a daughter. Yielding to the sailors’ superstitions, Pericles throws her entombed body overboard. The coffin is found by a priest of Diana at Ephesus; and the priest finds Thaisa is not dead, restores her to health, and installs her as (assuming all is lost) a priestess of Diana.
Meanwhile Pericles leaves his new daughter, Marina, and her nurse, Lychorida, with the governor of Tarsus, Cleon. Cleon and his wife Dionyza agree to raise Marina along with their own daughter. After living with Cleon eighteen years, Marina grows so talented at arts and music that she outshines Dionyza’s own daughter; so Dionyza arranges for her murder. Marina’s circumstance seems dire until she is captured from her murderer by pirates. The pirates take her to sea and then sell her to a brothel in Mytilene. Marina refuses to become a prostitute and uses her virtues to cause all her would-be customers to reform their ways.
Her father, in the meantime, visits Tarsus, and is so grief-stricken at the news of Marina’s supposed death that Pericles refuses to cut his hair or speak ever again.
The sorrowing Pericles, sailing for Tyre, is blown by the wind to Mytilene. The governor of Mytilene, Lysimachus, boards Pericles’s ship to try and help the grieving king. Lysimachus is a patron of Marina’s school for the arts and suggests she can help King Pericles to heal. With surprise and great jubilation, he recognizes his lost daughter. Soon after, Pericles has a vision of the goddess Diana who urges him to go to her Temple in Ephesus where he must tell his story. Pericles and Marina arrive in Ephesus and find Thaisa there. After eighteen trying years, the family is joyfully reunited.
