The Pattern of Painful Adventures (1576) is a prose novel.David Skeele, Pericles: Critical Essays (2000), p. 66. A later edition, printed in 1607 by Valentine Simmes and published by Nathaniel Butter, was a source for William Shakespeare's play Pericles, Prince of Tyre. There was at least one intermediate edition, around 1595.Laura A. Loomis, Medieval Romance in England: A Study of the Sources and Analogues of the Non-Cyclic Metrical Romances (1969), p. 165.
It was a translation by Lawrence Twine of the tale of Apollonius of Tyre from John Gower's Confessio Amantis (in Middle English verse). It is also said to be translated from a French version. William Henry Schofield stated that Shakespeare used both sources.William Henry Schofield, English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer, p. 306.
Notes
External links British Library - Shakespeare Quartos