SOURCE: Mowat, Barbara. “‘I tell you what mine Authors saye’: Pericles, Shakespeare, and Imitatio.” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 240, no. 1 (2003): 42-59.

In the following essay, Mowat discusses Shakespeare's authorship of Pericles, maintaining that the dramatist integrated and innovated, within the dramatic design of his romance, the imitatio tradition of transforming authoritative sources into a new literary work.

Near the beginning of Pericles, the Chorus introduces a shocking story of father-daughter incest with the apologetic line, “I tell you what mine Authors saye.”¹ This Chorus, “auntient Gower,” opens the play by saying that he comes to sing a familiar song:

To sing a Song that old was sung, From ashes, auntient Gower is come, Assuming mans infirmities, To glad your eare, and please your eyes: It hath been sung at Feastiuals, On Ember eues, and Holydayes: And Lords and Ladyes in their liues, Haue...