# Pericles — Character guide

> Key figures in Pericles by William Shakespeare.

- [Pericles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/pericles.md): Pericles enters Antioch as a confident suitor, willing to stake his life on a princess whose beauty is framed by a field of dead princes. The riddle he solves reveals a horror he cannot speak aloud, forcing him to flee h
- [Marina](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/marina.md): Marina grows up in Tarsus as a governor's ward, gifted enough that her guardian's wife begins to see her as a threat to her own daughter's prospects. Sold into a Mytilene brothel, she refuses every customer with such elo
- [Thaisa](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/thaisa.md): Thaisa moves through her father's court as a prize in a tournament of kings, but her attention fixes on the melancholy stranger from Tyre rather than the knights who arrive with titles and retinues. Her father tests Peri
- [King Simonides](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/simonides.md): Simonides rules Pentapolis with an eye for character, hosting a contest of arms where the ragged stranger from Tyre outshines gilded princes. He feigns anger at Pericles's supposed presumption in courting Thaisa, a test 
- [Cleon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/cleon.md): Cleon first appears as a ruler whose people are starving, saved when Pericles arrives with grain and asks nothing in return. He accepts Marina as a ward and raises her alongside his own daughter, but his authority shrink
- [Dionyza](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/dionyza.md): Dionyza watches Marina outshine her own daughter in every grace and decides the comparison is intolerable. She arranges a killing and then stages a monument and a public grief so convincing that Pericles accepts the loss
- [Antiochus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/antiochus.md): Antiochus stages his daughter like a bride for Jove, then warns Pericles that her beauty is a Hesperides guarded by death. His court is a graveyard of princes, and he wields the riddle as both gate and executioner's axe.
- [Helicanus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/helicanus.md): Helicanus answers Pericles's anger with the plain question of how plants dare look at heaven, showing a counselor who trusts his own integrity more than royal favor. When Pericles flees Antioch, Helicanus holds Tyre toge
- [Lysimachus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/lysimachus.md): Lysimachus governs the port where Pericles's grief-stricken vessel lies anchored, and he comes aboard with courteous authority to learn the cause of the king's muteness. He sends for Marina, hoping her music can break th
- [Cerimon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/cerimon.md): Cerimon is the learned lord of Ephesus whose skill with herbs and minerals makes him a figure of near-magical authority. When a chest washes ashore bearing Thaisa's body, his study and his charity combine to restore her,
- [Bawd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/bawd.md): The Bawd presides over a house where desire is merchandise, and she buys Marina expecting another profitable commodity. Instead Marina preaches chastity to customers and sends Lysimachus away cold, threatening the brothe
- [Boult](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/boult.md): Boult serves the Bawd as muscle and middleman, tasked with deflowering Marina when she refuses the trade. But Marina turns his own trade back on him, naming him damned door-keeper to every rogue and offering gold if he w
- [Leonine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/leonine.md): Servant of Dionyza hired to murder Marina.
- [Pandar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/pandar.md): The brothel keeper in Mytilene.
- [Thaliard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/thaliard.md): A lord sent by Antiochus to kill Pericles.
- [Lychorida](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/lychorida.md): Nurse to Marina who raises her after Thaisa's apparent death.
- [Diana](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/diana.md): Goddess who appears in a vision to Pericles, directing him to Ephesus.
- [Escanes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/escames.md): A lord of Tyre who serves with Helicanus.
- [Gower](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters/gower.md): Chorus figure who narrates and introduces scenes throughout the play.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pericles_se/characters