OTHELLO
Soft you, a word or two before you go.
I have done the state some service, and they know’t:
No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,
340
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
345
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees
350
Their medicinable gum. Set you down this,
And say besides that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turbanned Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog
355
And smote him – thus! [He stabs himself.]
LODOVICO O bloody period!
GRATIANO All that’s spoke is marred.
OTHELLO
I kissed thee ere I killed thee: no way but this,
Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.
[Kisses Desdemona, and dies.]
CASSIO
This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon,
360
For he was great of heart.
LODOVICO [to Iago] O Spartan dog,
More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea,
Look on the tragic loading of this bed:
This is thy work. The object poisons sight,
Let it be hid. Gratiano, keep the house
365
And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor
For they succeed to you. To you, lord governor,
Remains the censure of this hellish villain,
The time, the place, the torture: O, enforce it!
Myself will straight aboard, and to the state
370
This heavy act with heavy heart relate. Exeunt.
Pericles
Pericles, Prince of Tyre had been performed before 20 May 1608, when Edward Blount entered it for publication in the Register of the Stationers’ Company. The earliest two known Quartos are both dated 1609 and it reached a sixth edition by 1635. It remains unclear why Pericles was not included in the First Folio in 1623: perhaps it was known to be of collaborative authorship (favoured candidates as part-author include George Wilkins); perhaps no better text was readily available to replace the unsatisfactory and in places garbled text printed in 1609. In 1664, Pericles was the first of seven plays attributed to Shakespeare which were added as a supplement to a reissue of the 1663 Third Folio. Alone of the seven, it was gradually accepted into the Shakespeare canon, because of unmistakable signs of Shakespeare’s late style in acts 3–5, but also because of other resemblances to the late romances, especially The Winter’s Tale. Apparently a great success in its own time (Ben Jonson could complain, as late as 1629, of the continued popularity of such a ‘mouldy tale’), Pericles is now the least performed of the romances.
In his opening speech, the Chorus, in the person of the fourteenth-century poet John Gower, introduces the story with the claim that ‘bonum quo antiquius eo melius’, the older a good thing is the better it is. The romance of Apollonius of Tyre is indeed old, originating in the eastern Mediterranean in the fifth century AD. Its many English retellings stretch from a fragmentary Old English translation, by way of Gower’s Confessio Amantis (late 1380s), to a prose novel by Laurence Twyne, The Pattern of Painful Adventures … that Befell unto Prince Apollonius, written in the 1570s. In the play – and in a prose narrative by George Wilkins published in 1608 and apparently influenced by seeing the play in performance – the protagonist becomes Pericles, a name which may recall the great Athenian statesman but which is more directly derived from ‘Pyrocles’, one of the two heroes of Sir Philip Sidney’s vastly popular and much imitated romance, Arcadia (1590).
Pericles tells its old story with great directness and with remarkable fidelity to the sequence of events in Gower and Twyne. The travels and tribulations of Pericles are echoed, fourteen years later, by those of his lost (and supposedly dead) daughter, Marina, so named because she was born in a storm at sea in which her mother Thaisa died. The name Marina also originates in the play, and strikingly resembles those of other heroines of late Shakespearean romance – Perdita, ‘the lost one’, and Miranda, ‘wonderful’. The Job-like despair and catatonic withdrawal of Pericles are cured, in the play’s climactic scene, by reunion with his daughter, a cure effected both by the example of her patience in extremity and by their discovery of each other’s identity. As a bonus, a vision of the goddess Diana leads Pericles and Marina to Ephesus where the family reunion is completed by the discovery of Thaisa, long supposed dead but providentially resuscitated by the sage Cerimon and preserved as a nun in the temple of Diana (circumstances which recall the dénouement of The Comedy of Errors, written some fourteen years earlier).
The Arden text is based on the 1609 First Quarto.
LIST OF ROLES
ANTIOCHUS
King of Antioch
PERICLES
Prince of Tyre
SIMONIDES
King of Pentapolis
CLEON
governor of Tharsus
LYSIMACHUS
governor of Mytilene
CERIMON
a lord of Ephesus
THALIARD
a lord of Antioch
PHILEMON
a servant to Cerimon
LEONINE
a servant to Dionyza
MARSHAL
PANDAR
BOULT
his servant
DAUGHTER
of Antiochus
DIONYZA
wife to Cleon
THAISA
daughter to Simonides
MARINA
daughter to Pericles and Thaisa
LYCHORIDA
nurse to Marina
BAWD
Lords, Ladies, Knights, Gentlemen, Sailors, Pirates, Fishermen and Messengers
DIANA
GOWER
as Chorus
1.Ch. Enter GOWER.
GOWER To sing a song that old was sung,
From ashes ancient Gower is come,
Assuming man’s infirmities,
To glad your ear, and please your eyes.
It hath been sung at festivals,
5
On ember-eves and holy-ales;
And lords and ladies in their lives
Have read it for restoratives:
The purchase is to make men glorious,
Et bonum quo antiquius eo melius.
10
If you, born in these latter times,
When wit’s more ripe, accept my rimes,
And that to hear an old man sing
May to your wishes pleasure bring,
I life would wish, and that I might
15
Waste it for you like taper-light.
This Antioch, then, Antiochus the Great
Built up, this city, for his chiefest seat,
The fairest in all Syria –
I tell you what mine authors say.
20
This king unto him took a peer,
Who died and left a female heir,
So buxom, blithe and full of face
As heaven had lent her all his grace;
With whom the father liking took,
25
And her to incest did provoke.
Bad child, worse father, to entice his own
To evil should be done by none.
But custom what they did begin
Was with long use account’d no sin.
30
; The beauty of this sinful dame
Made many princes thither frame,
To seek her as a bed-fellow,
In marriage-pleasures play-fellow;
Which to prevent he made a law,
35
To keep her still, and men in awe;
That whoso ask’d her for his wife,
His riddle told not, lost his life.
So for her many a wight did die,
As yon grim looks do testify.
40
[pointing to the heads]
What now ensues, to the judgement of your eye
I give my cause, who best can justify. Exit.
1.1 Enter ANTIOCHUS, PRINCE PERICLES and attendants.
ANTIOCHUS
Young prince of Tyre, you have at large receiv’d
The danger of the task you undertake.
PERICLES I have, Antiochus, and, with a soul
Embolden’d with the glory of her praise,
5
Think death no hazard in this enterprise.
ANTIOCHUS Music! [Music.]
Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride,
For the embracements even of Jove himself;
At whose conception, till Lucina reign’d,
Nature this dowry gave: to glad her presence,
10
The senate-house of planets all did sit
To knit in her their best perfections.
Enter Antiochus’ Daughter.
PERICLES
See, where she comes apparell’d like the spring,
Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king
Of every virtue gives renown to men!
15
Her face the book of praises, where is read
Nothing but curious pleasures, as from thence
Sorrow were ever raz’d, and testy wrath
Could never be her mild companion.
You gods, that made me man, and sway in love,
20
That have inflam’d desire in my breast
To taste the fruit of yon celestial tree
Or die in the adventure, be my helps,
As I am son and servant to your will,
To compass such a boundless happiness!
25
ANTIOCHUS Prince Pericles –
PERICLES That would be son to great Antiochus.
ANTIOCHUS Before thee stands this fair Hesperides,
With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touch’d;
For death-like dragons here affright thee hard.
30
Her face, like heaven, enticeth thee to view
Her countless glory, which desert must gain;
And which, without desert because thine eye
Presumes to reach, all the whole heap must die.
Yon sometimes famous princes, like thyself,
35
Drawn by report, advent’rous by desire,
Tell thee, with speechless tongues and semblance
pale,
That without covering save yon field of stars,
Here they stand martyrs slain in Cupid’s wars;
And with dead cheeks advise thee to desist
40
For going on death’s net, whom none resist.
PERICLES Antiochus, I thank thee, who hath taught
My frail mortality to know itself,
And by those fearful objects to prepare
This body, like to them, to what I must;
45
For death remember’d should be like a mirror,
Who tells us life’s but breath, to trust it error.
I’ll make my will then; and, as sick men do,
Who know the world, see heaven, but feeling woe
Gripe not at earthly joys as erst they did:
50
So I bequeath a happy peace to you
And all good men, as every prince should do;
My riches to the earth from whence they came;
[to the Princess] But my unspotted fire of love to you.
Thus ready for the way of life or death,
55
I wait the sharpest blow, Antiochus.
ANTIOCHUS Scorning advice, read the conclusion then:
[Angrily throws down the riddle.]
Which read and not expounded, ’tis decreed,
As these before thee thou thyself shalt bleed.
DAUGHTER
Of all, ’say’d yet, may’st thou prove prosperous!
60
Of all, ’say’d yet, I wish thee happiness.
PERICLES Like a bold champion I assume the lists,
Nor ask advice of any other thought
But faithfulness and courage. [He reads the riddle.]
I am no viper, yet I feed
65
On mother’s flesh which did me breed.
I sought a husband, in which labour
I found that kindness in a father.
He’s father, son, and husband mild;
I mother, wife, and yet his child:
70
How they may be, and yet in two,
As you will live, resolve it you.
[aside] Sharp physic is the last: but, O you powers
That gives heaven countless eyes to view men’s acts:
Why cloud they not their sights perpetually,
75
If this be true, which makes me pale to read it?
Fair glass of light, I lov’d you, and could still,
Were not this glorious casket stor’d with ill.
But I must tell you, now my thoughts revolt;
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 429
