Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb (online e book reading .txt) 📕

to kind her, calling her Fair and beautiful Marina, telling her a great prince on board that ship had fallen into a sad and mournful silence; and, as if Marina had the power of conferring health and felicity, he begged she would undertake to cure the royal stranger of his melancholy. ‘Sir,’ said Marina, ‘I will use my utmost skill in his recovery, provided none but I and my maid be suffered to come near him.’

She, who at Mitylene had so carefully concealed her birth, ashamed to tell that one of royal ancestry was now a slave, first began to speak to Pericles of the wayward changes in her own fate, telling him from what a high estate herself had fallen. As if she had known it was her royal father she stood before, all the words she spoke were of her own sorrows; but her reason for so doing was, that she knew nothing more wins the attention of the unfortunate than the recital of some sad calamity to match their own. The sound of her sweet voice aroused the drooping prince; he lifted up his eyes, which had been so long fixed and motionless; and Marina, who was the perfect image of her mother, presented to his amazed sight the features of his dead queen.

The long-silent prince was once more heard to speak. ‘My dearest wife,’ said the awakened Pericles, ‘was like this maid, and such a one might my daughter have been. My queen’s square brows, her stature to an inch, as wand-like straight, as silver-voiced, her eyes as jewel-like.

Where do you live, young maid? Report your parentage. I think you said you had been tossed from wrong to injury, and that you thought your griefs would equal mine, if both were opened.’ ‘Some such thing I said,’ replied Marina, ‘and said no more than what my thoughts did warrant me as likely.’ ‘Tell me your story,’ answered Pericles; ‘if I find you have known the thousandth part of my endurance, you have borne your sorrows like a man, and I have suffered like a girl; yet you do look like Patience gazing on kings’ graves, and smiling extremity out of act. How lost you your name, my most kind virgin? Recount your story I beseech you. Come, sit by me.’ How was Pericles surprised when she said her name was Marina, for he knew it was no usual name, but had been invented by himself for his own child to signify seaborn: ‘O, I am mocked,’ said he, ‘and you are sent hither by some incensed god to make the world laugh at me.’ ‘Patience, good sir,’ said Marina, ‘or I must cease here.’ ‘Nay,’ said Pericles, ‘I will be patient; you little know how you do startle me, to call yourself Marina.’ ‘The name,’ she replied, ‘was given me by one that had some power, my father, and a king.’ ‘How, a king’s daughter! ‘ said Pericles, ‘and called Marina! But are you flesh and blood? Are you no fairy? Speak on; where were you born? and wherefore called Marina?’ She replied: ‘I was called Marina, because I was born at sea. My mother was the daughter of a king; she died the minute I was born, as my good nurse Lychorida has often told me weeping. The king, my father, left me at Tarsus, till the cruel wife of Cleon sought to murder me. A crew of pirates came and rescued me, and brought me here to Mitylene. But, good sir, why do you weep? It may be, you think me an impostor. But, indeed, sir, I am the daughter to king Pericles, if good king Pericles be living.’ Then Pericles, terrified as he seemed at his own sudden joy, and doubtful if this could be real, loudly called for his attendants, who rejoiced at the sound of their beloved king’s voice; and he said to Helicanus: ‘O Helicanus, strike me, give me a gash, put me to present pain, lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me, overbear the shores of my mortality. O, come hither, thou that west born at sea, buried at Tarsus, and found at sea again. O Helicanus, down on your knees, thank the holy gods! This is Marina. Now blessings on thee, my child!

Give me fresh garments, mine own Helicanus! She is not dead at Tarsus as she should have been by the savage Dionysia. She shall tell you all, when you shall kneel to her and call her your very princess.

Who is this?’ (observing Lysimachus for the first time). ‘Sir,’ said Helicanus, ‘it is the governor of Mitylene, who, hearing of your melancholy, came to see you.’ ‘I embrace you, sir,’ said Pericles. ‘Give me my robes! I am wild with beholding—O heaven bless my girl! But hark, what music is that?’—for now, either sent by some kind god, or by his own delighted fancy deceived, he seemed to hear soft music.

‘My lord, I hear none,’ replied Helicanus. ‘None?’ said Pericles; ‘why it is the music of the spheres.’ As there was no music to be heard, Lysimachus concluded that the sudden joy had unsettled the prince’s understanding; and he said: ‘It is not good to cross him: let him have his way’: and then they told him they heard the music; and he now complaining of a drowsy slumber coming over him, Lysimachus persuaded him to rest on a couch, and placing a pillow under his head, he, quite overpowered with excess of joy, sank into a sound sleep, and Marina watched in silence by the couch of her sleeping parent.

While he slept, Pericles dreamed a dream which made him resolve to go to Ephesus. His dream was, that Diana, the goddess of the Ephesians, appeared to him, and commanded him to go to her temple at Ephesus, and there before her altar to declare the story of his life and misfortunes; and by her silver bow she swore, that if he performed her injunction, he should meet with some rate felicity.

When he awoke, being miraculously refreshed, he told his dream, and that his resolution was to obey the bidding of the goddess.

Then Lysimachus invited Pericles to come on shore, and refresh himself with such entertainment as he should find at Mitylene, which courteous offer Pericles accepting, agreed to tarry with him for the space of a day or two. During which time we may well suppose what feastings, what rejoicings, what costly shows and entertainments the governor made in Mitylene, to greet the royal father of his dear Marina, whom in her obscure fortunes he had so respected. Nor did Pericles frown upon Lysimachus’s suit, when he understood how he had honoured his child in the days of her low estate, and that Marina showed herself not averse to his proposals; only he made it a condition, before he gave his consent, that they should visit with him the shrine of the Ephesian Diana: to whose temple they shortly after all three undertook a voyage; and, the goddess herself filling their sails with prosperous winds, after a few weeks they arrived in safety at Ephesus.

There was standing near the altar of the goddess, when Pericles with his train entered the temple, the good Cerimon (now grown very aged) who had restored Thaisa, the wife of Pericles, to life; and Thaisa, now a priestess of the temple, was standing before the altar; and though the many years he had passed in sorrow for her loss had much altered Pericles, Thaisa thought she knew her husband’s features, and when he approached the altar and began to speak, she remembered his voice, and listened to his words with wonder and a joyful amazement. And these were the words that Pericles spoke before the altar: ‘Hail, Diana!

to perform thy just commands, I here confess myself the prince of Tyre, who, frighted from my country, at Pentapolis wedded the fair Thaisa: she died at sea in childbed, but brought forth a maid-child called Marina. She at Tarsus was nursed with Dionysia, who at fourteen years thought to kill her, but her better stars brought her to Mitylene, by whose shores as I sailed, her good fortunes brought this maid on board, where by her most clear remembrance she made herself known to be my daughter.’

Thaisa, unable to bear the transports which his words had raised in her, cried out: ‘You are, you are, O royal Pericles’— and fainted. ‘What means this woman?’ said Pericles: ‘she dies! gentlemen, help.’ ‘Sir,’

said Cerimon, ‘if you have told Diana’s altar true, this is your wife.’

‘Reverend gentleman, no,’ said Pericles: ‘I threw her overboard with these very arms.’ Cerimon then recounted how, early one tempestuous morning, this lady was thrown upon the Ephesian shore; how, opening the coffin, he found therein rich jewels, and a paper; how, happily, he recovered her, and placed her here in Diana’s temple. And now, Thaisa being restored from her swoon said: ‘O my lord, are you not Pericles? Like him you speak, like him you are. Did you not name a tempest, a birth, and death?’ He astonished said: ‘The voice of dead Thaisa!’ ‘That Thaisa am I,’ she replied, ‘supposed dead and drowned.’

‘O true Diana!’ exclaimed Pericles, in a passion of devout astonishment. ‘And now,’ said Thaisa, ‘I know you better. Such a ring as I see on your finger did the king my father give you, when we with tears parted from him at Pentapolis.’ ‘Enough, you gods!’ cried Pericles, ‘your present kindness makes my past miseries sport. O

come, Thaisa, be buried a second time within these arms.

And Marina said: ‘My heart leaps to be gone into my mother’s bosom.’

Then did Pericles show his daughter to her mother, saying: ‘Look who kneels here, flesh of thy flesh, thy burthen at sea, and called Marina, because she was yielded there.’ ‘Blessed and my own!’ said Thaisa: and while she hung in rapturous joy over her child, Pericles knelt before the altar, saying: ‘Pure Diana, bless thee for thy vision. For this, I will offer oblations nightly to thee.’ And then and there did Pericles, with the consent of Thaisa, solemnly affiance their daughter, the virtuous Marina, to the well-deserving Lysimachus in marriage.

Thus have we seen in Pericles, his queen, and daughter, a famous example of virtue assailed by calamity (through the sufferance of Heaven, to teach patience and constancy to men), under the same guidance becoming finally successful, and triumphing over chance and change. In Helicanus we have beheld a notable pattern of truth, of faith, and loyalty, who, when he might have succeeded to a shone, chose rather to recall the rightful owner to his possession, than to become great by another’s wrong. In the worthy Cerimon, who restored Thaisa to life, we are instructed how goodness directed by knowledge, in bestowing benefits upon mankind, approaches to the nature of the gods. It only remains to be told, that Dionysia, the wicked wife of Cleon, met with an end proportionable to her deserts; the inhabitants of Tarsus, when her cruel attempt upon Marina was known, rising in a body to revenge the daughter of their benefactor, and setting fire to the palace of Cleon, burnt both him and her, and their whole household: the gods seeming well pleased, that so foul a murder, though but intentional, and never carried into act, should be punished in a way befitting its enormity.