Imatges de pàgina
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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. It cannot be bated one doit of a thousand pieces. Pand. 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 Pander 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.

Mar. 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?

Mar. That I am pretty.

Bawd. Come, the gods have done their part in you.
Mar. I accuse them not.

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

Mar. The more my fault

To 'scape his hands where I was like to die.

Bawd. Ay, and you shall live in pleasure.
Mar. 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?

Mar. Are you a woman?

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

Mar. An honest woman, or not a woman.

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

Mar. 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 pr'ythee 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 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 MAR.] Pray you, come hither awhile. You have fortunes coming upon you. Mark me: you must seem to do that fearfully which you commit willingly; to despise profit where you have most gain. To weep that you live as you do makes pity in your lovers: seldom but that pity begets you a good opinion, and that opinion a mere profit. Mar. I understand you not.

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

Mar. 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.

SCENE III.-THARSUS.

A Room in CLEON'S House.

Enter CLEON and DIONYZA.

Dion. Why, are you foolish? Can it be undone?
Cle. O Dionyza, such a piece of slaughter

The sun and moon ne'er look'd upon!

Dion.

You'll turn a child again.

I think

Cle. Were I chief lord of all the spacious world,
I'd 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?

Dion. That she is dead. Nurses are not the fates,
To foster it, nor ever to preserve.

Who can cross it?

She died at night; I'll say so.
Unless you play the pious innocent,
And for an honest attribute cry out,
She died by foul play.

Cle.

O, go to. Well, well. Of all the faults beneath the heavens the gods

Do like this worst.

Dion.
Be one of those that think
The petty wrens of Tharsus 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.

Cle.
To such proceeding
Who ever but his approbation added,

Though not his pre-consent, he did not flow
From honourable sources.

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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 pierc'd me thorough;
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.

Cle.

Dion. And as for Pericles,

Heavens forgive it!

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.

Cle.
Which, to betray, dost, with thine angel's face,
Seize with thine eagle's talons.

Thou art like the harpy,

Dion. 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.

Enter GowER, before the Monument of MARINA at Tharsus. Gow. 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
Advanc'd 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 Tharsus,-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, at one side, PERICLES with his Train; CLEON and DIONZYA at the other. CLEON shows PERICLES the Tomb of MARINA, 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 Tharsus, 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 visard 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 Mitylen.

[Exit.

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