payment page
John Gower was a fourteenth-century poet who, among other things, wrote a long poem titled Confessio Amantis, which provided the source material for this play. As though to honor this poetic forebear, Shakespeare has “revived” him and cast him in the role of this play’s chorus, or narrator. Gower appears frequently throughout the play, often entering between scenes to recount the previous action and present pantomimed scenes, or “dumb shows,” that advance the plot without the usual recourse to dialogue. As a narrator, Gower doesn’t undergo significant change over the course of the play. His role, rather, is to offer a frame for the play’s improbable events. His “ancient” provenance is important for the way it gives the play an antique feeling that implicitly authorizes us in the audience to suspend our disbelief. This antique quality stems from the fact that Gower uses numerous Middle English idioms that have a medieval feeling. He also generally speaks not in Shakespeare’s usual iambic pentameter but in the same tetrameter form of his medieval poem, Confessio Amantis. In his role as chorus, Gower also draws attention to the structural parallels and contrasts between characters, thereby helping to clarify the play’s thematic emphasis on virtuous familial relationships and the importance of honorable leaders.
