Complete Plays, The (441 page)

Bawd

Why to give over, I pray you? is it a shame to get when we are old?

Pandar

O, our credit comes not in like the commodity, nor the commodity wages not with the danger: therefore, if in our youths we could pick up some pretty estate, ’twere not amiss to keep our door hatched. Besides, the sore terms we stand upon with the gods will be strong with us for giving over.

Bawd

Come, other sorts offend as well as we.

Pandar

As well as we! ay, and better too; we offend worse. Neither is our profession any trade; it’s no calling. But here comes Boult.

Re-enter Boult, with the Pirates and Marina

Boult

[To Marina]
 
Come your ways. My masters, you say she’s a virgin?

First Pirate

O, sir, we doubt it not.

Boult

Master, I have gone through for this piece, you see: if you like her, so; if not, I have lost my earnest.

Bawd

Boult, has she any qualities?

Boult

She has a good face, speaks well, and has excellent good clothes: there’s no further necessity of qualities can make her be refused.

Bawd

What’s her price, Boult?

Boult

I cannot be bated one doit of a thousand pieces.

Pandar

Well, follow me, my masters, you shall have your money presently. Wife, take her in; instruct her what she has to do, that she may not be raw in her entertainment.

Exeunt Pandar and Pirates

Bawd

Boult, take you the marks of her, the colour of her hair, complexion, height, age, with warrant of her virginity; and cry ‘He that will give most shall have her first.’ Such a maidenhead were no cheap thing, if men were as they have been. Get this done as I command you.

Boult

Performance shall follow.

Exit

Marina

Alack that Leonine was so slack, so slow!
He should have struck, not spoke; or that these pirates,
Not enough barbarous, had not o’erboard thrown me
For to seek my mother!

Bawd

Why lament you, pretty one?

Marina

That I am pretty.

Bawd

Come, the gods have done their part in you.

Marina

I accuse them not.

Bawd

You are light into my hands, where you are like to live.

Marina

The more my fault
To scape his hands where I was like to die.

Bawd

Ay, and you shall live in pleasure.

Marina

No.

Bawd

Yes, indeed shall you, and taste gentlemen of all fashions: you shall fare well; you shall have the difference of all complexions. What! do you stop your ears?

Marina

Are you a woman?

Bawd

What would you have me be, an I be not a woman?

Marina

An honest woman, or not a woman.

Bawd

Marry, whip thee, gosling: I think I shall have something to do with you. Come, you’re a young foolish sapling, and must be bowed as I would have you.

Marina

The gods defend me!

Bawd

If it please the gods to defend you by men, then men must comfort you, men must feed you, men must stir you up. Boult’s returned.

Re-enter Boult

Now, sir, hast thou cried her through the market?

Boult

I have cried her almost to the number of her hairs;
I have drawn her picture with my voice.

Bawd

And I prithee tell me, how dost thou find the inclination of the people, especially of the younger sort?

Boult

’Faith, they listened to me as they would have hearkened to their father’s testament. There was a Spaniard’s mouth so watered, that he went to bed to her very description.

Bawd

We shall have him here to-morrow with his best ruff on.

Boult

To-night, to-night. But, mistress, do you know the
French knight that cowers i’ the hams?

Bawd

Who, Monsieur Veroles?

Boult

Ay, he: he offered to cut a caper at the proclamation; but he made a groan at it, and swore he would see her to-morrow.

Bawd

Well, well; as for him, he brought his disease hither: here he does but repair it. I know he will come in our shadow, to scatter his crowns in the sun.

Boult

Well, if we had of every nation a traveller, we should lodge them with this sign.

Bawd

[To Marina]
 
Pray you, come hither awhile. You have fortunes coming upon you. Mark me: you must seem to do that fearfully which you commit willingly, despise profit where you have most gain. To weep that you live as ye do makes pity in your lovers: seldom but that pity begets you a good opinion, and that opinion a mere profit.

Marina

I understand you not.

Boult

O, take her home, mistress, take her home: these blushes of hers must be quenched with some present practise.

Bawd

Thou sayest true, i’ faith, so they must; for your bride goes to that with shame which is her way to go with warrant.

Boult

’Faith, some do, and some do not. But, mistress, if
I have bargained for the joint,—

Bawd

Thou mayst cut a morsel off the spit.

Boult

I may so.

Bawd

Who should deny it? Come, young one, I like the manner of your garments well.

Boult

Ay, by my faith, they shall not be changed yet.

Bawd

Boult, spend thou that in the town: report what a sojourner we have; you’ll lose nothing by custom. When nature flamed this piece, she meant thee a good turn; therefore say what a paragon she is, and thou hast the harvest out of thine own report.

Boult

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

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 us?

Exeunt

S
CENE
III. T
ARSUS
. A
ROOM
IN
C
LEON
’
S
HOUSE
.

Enter 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 look’d upon!

Dionyza

I think
You’ll turn a child again.

Cleon

Were I chief lord of all this spacious world,
I’ld give it to undo the deed. O lady,
Much less in blood than virtue, yet a princess
To equal any single crown o’ the earth
I’ the justice of compare! O villain Leonine!
Whom thou hast poison’d too:
If thou hadst drunk to him, ’t had been a kindness
Becoming well thy fact: what canst thou say
When noble Pericles shall demand his child?

Dionyza

That she is dead. Nurses are not the fates,
To foster it, nor 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 heavens, the gods
Do like this worst.

Dionyza

Be one of those that think
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 coward a spirit.

Cleon

To such proceeding
Who ever 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 disdain 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
Perform’d 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 finish’d, and her epitaphs
In glittering golden characters express
A general 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’s face,
Seize with thine eagle’s talons.

Dionyza

You are like one that superstitiously
Doth swear to the gods that winter kills the flies:
But yet I know you’ll do as I advise.

Exeunt

Scene IV:

Enter Gower, before the monument of Marina at Tarsus

Gower

Thus time we waste, and longest leagues make short;
Sail seas in cockles, have an wish but for’t;
Making, to take your imagination,
From bourn to bourn, region to region.
By you being pardon’d, we commit no crime
To use one language in each several clime
Where our scenes seem to live. I do beseech you
To learn of me, who stand i’ the 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 Escanes, whom Helicanus late
Advanced in time to great and high estate,
Is left to govern. Bear you it in mind,
Old Helicanus goes along behind.
Well-sailing ships and bounteous winds have brought
This king to Tarsus,— think his pilot thought;
So with his steerage shall your thoughts grow on,—
To fetch his daughter home, who first is gone.
Like motes and shadows see them move awhile;
Your ears unto your eyes I’ll reconcile.
Dumb Show.

Enter Pericles, at one door, with all his train; Cleon and Dionyza, at the other. Cleon shows Pericles the tomb; whereat Pericles makes lamentation, puts on sackcloth, and in a mighty passion departs. Then exeunt Cleon and Dionyza

See how belief may suffer by foul show!
This borrow’d passion stands for true old woe;
And Pericles, in sorrow all devour’d,
With sighs shot through, and biggest tears o’ershower’d,
Leaves Tarsus and again embarks. He swears
Never to wash his face, nor cut his hairs:
He puts on sackcloth, 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.

Reads the inscription on Marina’s monument

‘The fairest, sweet’st, and best lies here,
Who wither’d in her spring of year.
She was of Tyrus the king’s daughter,
On whom foul death hath made this slaughter;
Marina was she call’d; and at her birth,
Thetis, being proud, swallow’d some part o’ the earth:
Therefore the earth, fearing to be o’erflow’d,
Hath Thetis’ birth-child on the heavens bestow’d:
Wherefore she does, and swears she’ll never stint,
Make raging battery upon shores of flint.’
No visor does become black villany
So well as soft and tender flattery.
Let Pericles believe his daughter’s dead,
And bear his courses to be ordered
By Lady Fortune; while our scene must play
His daughter’s woe and heavy well-a-day
In her unholy service. Patience, then,
And think you now are all in Mytilene.

Exit

S
CENE
V. M
YTILENE
. A
STREET
BEFORE
THE
BROTHEL
.

Enter, from the brothel, two Gentlemen

First Gentleman

Did you ever hear the like?

Second Gentleman

No, nor never shall do in such a place as this, she being once gone.

First Gentleman

But to have divinity preached there! did you ever dream of such a thing?

Second Gentleman

No, no. Come, I am for no more bawdy-houses: shall’s go hear the vestals sing?

First Gentleman

I’ll do any thing now that is virtuous; but I am out of the road of rutting for ever.

Exeunt

S
CENE
VI. T
HE
SAME
. A
ROOM
IN
THE
BROTHEL
.

Enter Pandar, Bawd, and Boult

Pandar

Well, I had rather than twice the worth of her she had ne’er come here.

Bawd

Fie, fie upon her! she’s able to freeze the god Priapus, and undo a whole generation. We must either get her ravished, or be rid of her. When she should do for clients her fitment, and do me the kindness of our profession, she has me her quirks, her reasons, her master reasons, her prayers, her knees; that she would make a puritan of the devil, if he should cheapen a kiss of her.

Boult

’Faith, I must ravish her, or she’ll disfurnish us of all our cavaliers, and make our swearers priests.

Pandar