Forty days longer we do respite you,

If by which time our secret be undone,

This mercy shows we’ll joy in such a son.

And until then your entertain shall be

As doth befit your worth and our degree.

⌈Flourish.⌉Exeunt all but Pericles

PERICLES

How courtesy would seem to cover sin

When what is done is like an hypocrite,

The which is good in nothing but in sight.

If it be true that I interpret false,

Then were it certain you were not so bad

As with foul incest to abuse your soul,

Where now you’re both a father and a son

By your uncomely claspings with your child—

Which pleasures fits a husband, not a father—

And she, an eater of her mother’s flesh,

By the defiling of her parents’ bed,

And both like serpents are, who though they feed

On sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed.

Antioch, farewell, for wisdom sees those men

Blush not in actions blacker than the night

Will ’schew no course to keep them from the light.

One sin, I know, another doth provoke.

Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.

Poison and treason are the hands of sin,

Ay, and the targets to put off the shame.

Then, lest my life be cropped to keep you clear,

By flight I’ll shun the danger which I fear. Exit

Enter Antiochus

ANTIOCHUS

He hath found the meaning, for the which we mean

To have his head. He must not live

To trumpet forth my infamy, nor tell the world

Antiochus doth sin in such a loathèd manner,

And therefore instantly this prince must die,

For by his fall my honour must keep high.

Who attends us there?

Enter Thaliart

THALIART

Doth your highness call?

ANTIOCHUS

Thaliart, you are of our chamber, Thaliart,

And to your secrecy our mind partakes

Her private actions. For your faithfulness

We will advance you, Thaliart. Behold,

Here’s poison, and here’s gold.

We hate the Prince of Tyre, and thou must kill him.

It fits thee not to ask the reason. Why?

Because we bid it. Say, is it done?

THALIART My lord, ’tis done.

ANTIOCHUS Enough.

Enter a Messenger hastily

Let your breath cool yourself, telling your haste.

MESSENGER

Your majesty, Prince Pericles is fled. ⌈Exit⌉

ANTIOCHUS (to Thaliart)

As thou wilt live, fly after; like an arrow

Shot from a well-experienced archer hits

The mark his eye doth level at, so thou

Never return unless it be to say

‘Your majesty, Prince Pericles is dead.’

THALIART

If I can get him in my pistol’s length

I’ll make him sure enough. Farewell, your highness.

ANTIOCHUS

Thaliart, adieu.

⌈Exit Thaliart⌉

Till Pericles be dead

My heart can lend no succour to my head.

Exit. ⌈The heads are concealed⌉

Sc. 2 Enter Pericles, distempered, with his lords

PERICLES

Let none disturb us.

Exeunt lords

Why should this change of thoughts,

The sad companion, dull-eyed melancholy,

Be my so used a guest as not an hour

In the day’s glorious walk or peaceful night,

The tomb where grief should sleep, can breed me

quiet? 5

Here pleasures court mine eyes, and mine eyes shun

them,

And danger, which I feared, ’s at Antioch,

Whose arm seems far too short to hit me here.

Yet neither pleasure’s art can joy my spirits,

Nor yet care’s author’s distance comfort me.

Then it is thus: the passions of the mind,

That have their first conception by misdread,

Have after-nourishment and life by care,

And what was first but fear what might be done

Grows elder now, and cares it be not done.

And so with me. The great Antiochus,

‘Gainst whom I am too little to contend,

Since he’s so great can make his will his act,

Will think me speaking though I swear to silence,

Nor boots it me to say I honour him

If he suspect I may dishonour him.

And what may make him blush in being known,

He’ll stop the course by which it might be known.

With hostile forces he’ll o’erspread the land,

And with th‘ostent of war will look so huge

Amazement shall drive courage from the state,

Our men be vanquished ere they do resist,

And subjects punished that ne’er thought offence,

Which care of them, not pity of myself,

Who am no more but as the tops of trees

Which fence the roots they grow by and defend them,

Makes both my body pine and soul to languish,

And punish that before that he would punish.

Enter all the Lords, among them old Helicanus, to Pericles

FIRST LORD

Joy and all comfort in your sacred breast!

SECOND LORD

And keep your mind peaceful and comfortable.

HELICANUS

Peace, peace, and give experience tongue.

(To Pericles) You do not well so to abuse yourself,

To waste your body here with pining sorrow,

Upon whose safety doth depend the lives