Let us beseech you', That for our gold we may provision have, Lys. Hel. Sit, sir, I will recount it to you ;- Enter Lord, with MARINA, and a young Lady. Lys. Oh! here is The lady that I sent for.-Welcome, fair one!— Is't not a goodly presence'? Hel. She's a gallant lady. Lys. She's such a one, that were I well assur'd, she came Of gentle kind, and noble stock, I'd wish No better choice, and think me rarely wed.- Let us beseech you,] Here Malone added "further," without any authority, and merely because he seems to have thought the line too short. 6 And so AFFLICT our province.] It is "And so inflict our province" in every old edition, as well as in Rowe; and it has been taken as an elliptical mode of expressing "And so inflict it upon our province." However, it is perhaps better, as the Rev. Mr. Dyce, with some vehemence, urges ("Remarks," p. 270), to alter inflict to "afflict." We rather wonder at his decisive mode of treating this point, seeing that in his own edition of Middleton's " Your Five Gallants" (Works, Vol. ii. p. 236), he has himself deliberately left " affliction" in the text, when it is as clear as day, that what he prints " It is no affliction, gentlemen," ought to be, "It is no fiction, gentlemen," as indeed his own note confesses. So, in another play by the same dramatist, "No Wit, no Help like a Woman's" (Dyce's Middleton, Vol. v. p. 97), he most unaccountably prints "fection" (which he pleases to construe affection, although the word was never before so spelt or printed) for fiction, elaborately defending the absurdity, we must call it, in a note. Mr. Dyce ought, therefore, to be a most forbearing, instead of a most eager censurer of the lapses of other people. It may be worth noting that near this very place, in Twine's version of the Gesta Romanorum, “affliction" is misprinted affection, so easy was it to confound the two words "afflict" and inflict. 7 Is't not a goodly PRESENCE?] Present in the old impressions. 8 - all goodness that consists in BOUNTY] In the original copies beauty is put for "bounty," to which Steevens more than plausibly altered it. In the next line but one, "artificial feat" is misprinted "artificial fate." Can draw him but to answer thee in aught, My utmost skill in his recovery, Lys. Come, let us leave her, And the gods make her prosperous! [They stand a little behind: MARINA sings'. My lord, that ne'er before invited eyes, But have been gaz'd on like a comet: she speaks, Might equal your's, if both were justly weigh'd. 9 Marina sings.] No song is given in the play, but according to the novel by Wilkins, founded upon "Pericles," the following is what is sung by Marina on the occasion; and, excepting in the omission of a concluding couplet, "He will not let, in care and thought, You still to live, and all for nought," which is not in the same measure as the rest, it agrees nearly with the version of the words of the Gesta Romanorum, as translated by Twine, and quoted by Malone :— "Amongst the harlots foule I walke, Yet harlot none am I: The rose amongst the thornes doth grow, "The thiefe that stole me, sure I thinke, A bawde me bought, yet am I not "Nothing were pleasanter to me I am the issue of a king; My blood from kings dooth flow. "In time the heavens may mend my state, For sorrow addes unto our griefes, "Shew gladnesse in your countenaunce, That God remaines that once of nought Though wayward fortune did malign my state, Per. I do think so. I pray you, turn your eyes again upon me.- Mar. No, nor of any shores; Yet I was mortally brought forth, and am No other than I appear. Per. I am great with woe, and shall deliver weeping. My dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one My daughter might have been: my queen's square brows; Her stature to an inch; as wand-like straight; As silver-voic'd; her eyes as jewel-like, And cas'd as richly: in pace another Juno; 1 You would not do me violence.] Few things can be more evident, than that in the printed copies of this play, in 4to. and folio, something important has here been omitted, which was at one time acted. The words "You would not do me violence" have here no application; but in Wilkins' novel, the materials for which were derived mainly from the representation on the stage, we read that after Marina had told Pericles that it did not become him so to lament, he interposed; "Not fitte to sorrow, quoth he, rising up like a cloude that bespeakes thunder: presumptuous bewty in a childe, how darest thou urge so much? and therewithall, in this rash distemperature, strucke her on the face." Sign. I 4. It is possible that this incident was not carried to such a length in the performance, but Pericles himself afterwards alludes to some sort of "violence" which he had used towards Marina, when he asks her, ་་ "Didst thou not say, when I did push thee back," &c. Perhaps, when the painful incident was omitted, it was forgotten to strike out all the words relating to it; for Marina complains afterwards that for her curtesies" she had been "struck thus to bleeding." The fact of the blow is given in Twine's version from the Gesta Romanorum, where it is said that Pericles "stroke the maiden on the face with his foote, so that she fell to the ground, and the bloud gushed plentifully out of her cheekes." She then went off in a "swoone," as Twine spells it, and "swowne" as it stands in Wilkins' novel. 2 Here of these SHORES?] For "shores," both in this and the next line, the old copies read shews. Lord Charlemont gave the emendation to Malone. Who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry, Per. Where were you bred? Should I tell my history, And how achiev'd you these endowments, which Mar. 'Twould seem like lies, disdain'd in the reporting. Per. Pr'ythee, speak: Falseness cannot come from thee, for thou look'st To points that seem impossible; for thou look'st Mar. So indeed I did. Per. Report thy parentage. I think thou saidst And that thou thought'st thy griefs might equal mine, Mar. Some such thing I said, and said no more but what my thoughts Per. Tell thy story; If thine, consider'd, prove the thousandth part Of my endurance, thou art a man, and I Have suffer'd like a girl: yet thou dost look Like Patience, gazing on kings' graves, and smiling You make more rich to owE.] i. e. To own. It is unnecessary to refer to previous frequent instances. Didst thou not SAY,] All the old copies misprint, "Didst thou not stay.” 5 Thou hadst been toss'd from wrong to injury,] Marina has not said so, but merely "to the world and awkward casualties Bound me in servitude." But Pericles speaks as if she had used the very words he had repeated: so, perhaps, she had used them, when the play was represented, for we meet with this very expression put into her mouth by Wilkins, " And, O you gods! creators both of heaven and earth, looke uppon my afflictions, and take compassion upon me that am unfortunate in all things: I have bin tossed from wrong to injurie," &c. Sign. I 4 b. Extremity out of act. What were thy friends? Thy name, my most kind virgin? Recount, I do beseech thee. Mar. My name is Marina. Per. And thou by some incensed god sent hither Come, sit by me. Oh! I am mock'd, Patience, good sir, Nay, I'll be patient. To make the world to laugh at me. Mar. Or here I'll cease. Per. Thou little know'st how thou dost startle me, To call thyself Marina. Mar. The name Was given me by one that had some power; My father, and a king. Per. And call'd Marina ? Mar. How! a king's daughter? You said you would believe me; But, not to be a troubler of your peace, I will end here. Per. But are you flesh and blood? Have you a working pulse? and are no fairy Motion ?-Well; speak on: where were you born, Mar. For I was born at sea. Per. Call'd Marina, At sea! what mother'? Mar. My mother was the daughter of a king; Who died the minute I was born, As my good nurse Lychorida hath oft Deliver'd weeping. Per. Oh! stop there a little. This is the rarest dream that e'er dull sleep Did mock sad fools withal; this cannot be. My daughter's buried.-Well-where were you bred? • How lost thou THEM?] Malone added "them" to the text, and we adopt it, because it seems necessary to the sense. 7 At sea! what mother?] So the 4to, 1609, completing the line: later editions have "At sea! who was thy mother?" thus ruining the measure, besides destroying that most natural brevity of inquiry, which, in the eagerness of the curiosity of Pericles, rendered the use of superfluous words impossible. In the next line but one, modern editors have silently foisted very into the verse, though not found in a single ancient edition. |
