BOULT I warrant you, mistress, thunder shall not so awake the beds of eels as my giving out her beauty stirs up the lewdly inclined. I’ll bring home some tonight.

⌈Exit⌉

BAWD Come your ways, follow me.

MARINA

If fires be hot, knives sharp, or waters deep,

Untied I still my virgin knot will keep.

Diana aid my purpose.

BAWD What have we to do with Diana? Pray you, will you go with me?

Exeunt. ⌈The sign is removed⌉

Sc. 17 Enter ⌈in mourning garments⌉ Cleon and Dionyza DIONYZA

Why, are you foolish? Can it be undone?

CLEON

O Dionyza, such a piece of slaughter

The sun and moon ne’er looked upon.

DIONYZA

I think you’ll turn a child again.

CLEON

Were I chief lord of all this spacious world

I’d give it to undo the deed. A lady

Much less in blood than virtue, yet a princess

To equal any single crown o‘th’ earth

I’th’ justice of compare. O villain Leonine,

Whom thou hast poisoned too,

If thou hadst drunk to him ‘t’ad been a kindness

Becoming well thy fact. What canst thou say

When noble Pericles demands his child?

DIONYZA

That she is dead. Nurses are not the fates.

To foster is not ever to preserve.

She died at night. I’ll say so. Who can cross it,

Unless you play the pious innocent

And, for an honest attribute, cry out

‘She died by foul play.’

CLEON O, go to. Well, well,

Of all the faults beneath the heav’ns the gods

Do like this worst.

DIONYZA Be one of those that thinks

The petty wrens of Tarsus will fly hence

And open this to Pericles. I do shame

To think of what a noble strain you are,

And of how cowed a spirit.

CLEON To such proceeding

Whoever but his approbation added,

Though not his prime consent, he did not flow

From honourable sources.

DIONYZA Be it so, then.

Yet none does know but you how she came dead,

Nor none can know, Leonine being gone.

She did distain my child, and stood between

Her and her fortunes. None would look on her,

But cast their gazes on Marina’s face

Whilst ours was blurted at, and held a malkin

Not worth the time of day. It pierced me through,

And though you call my course unnatural,

You not your child well loving, yet I find

It greets me as an enterprise of kindness

Performed to your sole daughter.

CLEON Heavens forgive it.

DIONYZA And as for Pericles,

What should he say? We wept after her hearse,

And yet we mourn. Her monument

Is almost finished, and her epitaphs

In glitt‘ring golden characters express

A gen’ral praise to her and care in us,

At whose expense ’tis done.

CLEON Thou art like the harpy, Which, to betray, dost, with thine angel face, Seize in thine eagle talons.

DIONYZA

Ye’re like one that superstitiously

Do swear to th’ gods that winter kills the flies,

But yet I know you’ll do as I advise. Exeunt

Sc. 18 Enter Gower

GOWER

Thus time we waste, and long leagues make we short,

Sail seas in cockles, have and wish but for‘t,

Making to take imagination

From bourn to bourn, region to region.

By you being pardoned, we commit no crime

To use one language in each sev’ral clime

Where our scene seems to live. I do beseech you

To learn of me, who stand i’th’ gaps to teach you

The stages of our story: Pericles

Is now again thwarting the wayward seas,

Attended on by many a lord and knight,

To see his daughter, all his life’s delight.

Old Helicanus goes along. Behind

Is left to govern, if you bear in mind,

Old Aeschines, whom Helicanus late

Advanced in Tyre to great and high estate.

Well sailing ships and bounteous winds have brought

This king to Tarsus—think his pilot thought;

So with his steerage shall your thoughts go on—

To fetch his daughter home, who first is gone.

Like motes and shadows see them move a while;

Your ears unto your eyes I’ll reconcile.

Dumb show.

Enter Pericles at one door with all his train, Cleon

and Dionyza ⌈in mourning garments⌉ at the other.

Cleon ⌈draws the curtain and⌉ shows Pericles the

tomb, whereat Pericles makes lamentation, puts on

sack-cloth, and in a mighty passion departs,

followed by his train. Cleon and Dionyza depart at

the other door

See how belief may suffer by foul show.

This borrowed passion stands for true-owed woe,

And Pericles, in sorrow all devoured,

With sighs shot through, and biggest tears o‘ershow’red,

Leaves Tarsus, and again embarks. He swears

Never to wash his face nor cut his hairs.

He puts on sack-cloth, and to sea. He bears

A tempest which his mortal vessel tears,

And yet he rides it out. Now please you wit

The epitaph is for Marina writ

By wicked Dionyza.

He reads Marina’s epitaph on the tomb

‘The fairest, sweetest, best lies here,