Let us beseech you',
That for our gold we may provision have,
Wherein we are not destitute for want,
But weary for the staleness.
Lys.

Oh, sir! a courtesy,
Which if we should deny, the most just God
For every graff would send a caterpillar,
And so afflict our province'.-Yet once more
Let me entreat to know at large the cause
Of your king's sorrow.

Hel. Sit, sir, I will recount it to you;-
But see, I am prevented.

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. -
Fair one, all goodness that consists in bounty
,

• Expect even here, where is a kingly patient: If that thy prosperous and artificial feat

Let us beseech you,] Here Malone added “further," without any authority, and merely because he seems to bave 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.

8

6

Can draw him but to answer thee in aught,
Thy sacred physic shall receive such pay
As thy desires can wish.
Mar.

Sir, I will use
My utmost skill in his recovery,
Provided, none but I and my companion
Be suffer'd to come near him.
Lys.

Come, let us leave her,
And the gods make her prosperous !

[They stand a little behind : Marina sings '. Lys. Mark'd he your music ? Mar.

No, nor look'd on us.
Lys. See, she will speak to him.
Mar. Hail, sir !--my lord, lend ear.-
Per. Hum! ha!

Mar. I am a maid,
My lord, that ne'er before invited eyes,
But have been gaz'd on like a comet: she speaks,
My lord, that, may be, hath endur'd a grief
Might equal your's, if both were justly weigh’d.

a

9 Marina sings.] No song is given in the play, but according to the novel by Wilkins, founded upon Pericles,” the following is what 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 J:
The rose amongst the thornes doth grow,

And is not hurt thereby.
" The thiefe that stole me, sure I thinke,

Is slaine before this time.
A bawde me bought, yet am I not

Defilde by fleshly crime.
Nothing were pleasanter to me

Then parents mine to know :
I am the issue of a king;

My blood from kings dooth flow.
“In time the heavens may mend my state,

And send a better day;
For sorrow addes unto our griefes,

But helps not any way.
“Shew gladnesse in your countenaunce,

Cast up your cheerefull eies :
That God remaines that once of nought

Created earth and skies.”—Sign. I 4.

Though wayward fortune did malign my state,
My derivation was from ancestors
Who stood equivalent with mighty kings ;
But time hath rooted out my parentage,
And to the world and awkward casualties
Bound me in servitude.--I will desist;
But there is something glows upon my cheek,
And whispers in mine ear, “Go not till he speak.”

Per. My fortunes—parentage-good parentage-
To equal mine!—was it not thus ? what say you?

Mur. I said, my lord, if you did know my parentage,
You would not do me violence '.
Per.

I do think so.
I pray you, turn your eyes again upon me. -
You are like something that-What countrywoman?
Here of these shores ? ?
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 bim 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 iu 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.

? Here of these shores?] For “shores,” both in this and the next line, the old copies read sheus. Lord Charlemont gave the emendation to Malone.

66

Who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry,
The more she gives them speech.-Where do you live?

Mar. Where I am but a stranger: from the deck
You may discern the place.
Per.

Where were you bred ?
And how achiev'd you these endowments, which
You make more rich to owe: ?
Mar.

Should I tell my history, 'Twould seem like lies, disdain'd in the reporting.

Per. Pr'ythee, speak:
Falseness cannot come from thee, for thou look'st
Modest as justice, and thou seem’st a palace
For the crown'd truth to dwell in. I'll believe thee,
And make my senses credit thy relation,
To points that seem impossible; for thou look'st
Like one I lov'd indeed. What were thy friends ?
Didst thou not say “, when I did push thee back,
(Which was when I perceiv'd thee) that thou cam’st
From good descending ?
Mar.

So indeed I did.
Per. Report thy parentage. I think thou saidst
Thou hadst been toss'd from wrong to injury •,
And that thou thought'st thy griefs might equal mine,
If both were open'd.
Mar.

Some such thing
I said, and said no more but what my thoughts
Did warrant me was likely.
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

Extremity out of act. What were thy friends ?
How lost thou them o? Thy name, my most kind virgin ?
Recount, I do beseech thee. Come, sit by me.

Mar. My name is Marina.
Per.

Oh! I am mock'd,
And thou by some incensed god sent hither
To make the world to laugh at me.
Mar.

Patience, good sir,
Or here I'll cease.
Per.

Nay, I'll be patient.
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.

How! a king's daughter ?
And call'd Marina ?
Mar.

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,
And wherefore call's Marina ?
Mar.

Call's Marina,
For I was born at sea.
Per.

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.

a
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 ?
I'll hear you more, to the bottom of your story,

6 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.

а