Pericles
Act IV

ACT IV

Gower tells us that we are to imagine Pericles at Tyre, Thaisa at Ephesus, and Marina growing up and educated alongside Philoten, the daughter of Cleon and Dionyza.

Be’t when they weaved the sleided silk
With fingers long, small, white as milk,
Or when she would with sharp needle wound
The cambric which she made more sound
By hurting it, or when to th’ lute
She sung, and made the night bird mute
That still records with moan, or when
She would with rich and constant pen
Vail to her mistress Dian; still
This Philoten contends in skill
With absolute Marina. So
With dove of Paphos might the crow
Vie feather white.
(IV.0.21-33)

The long white fingers and the particular skills listed could well be flattering Queen Elizabeth. Marina has always excelled, so like a good cheerleader’s mom, Dionyza has decided to have Marina killed: “the king and queen of this determined wasteland attempt to kill Marina, to kill the child who emblematizes the springtime and the harvest of the land” (Garber 761). Catherine de’ Medici has been identified as the prototype of Dionyza, and of other evil older women such as Lady Macbeth (Ogburn and Ogburn 130, 551).

“Act IV, at its best and worst, reads like a Jacobean Perils of Pauline, with Marina always on the verge of being either murdered or raped” (Bloom 608).

SCENE i

Channeling Lady Macbeth, Dionyza reminds her servant Leonine of his oath of obedience and warns against conscience and “pity, which even women have cast off” (IV.i.5). He must murder Marina. The girl enters with flowers, bemoaning her lot: “Ay me, poor maid, / Born in a tempest when my mother died, / This world to me is as a lasting storm (IV.i.16-18). Philoten is not accompanying her, so step-mom advises she take a restorative stroll along the beach with Leonine lest step-daddy come back and find her looking uncared for.

Marina reports stories she’s heard about her birth night. Leonine suddenly tells her to say her prayers. She doesn’t understand why Dionyza would want her killed: “I never kill’d a mouse, nor hurt a fly; / I trod upon a worm against my will, / But I wept for ‘t” (IV.i.77-79). She sees the good in Leonine, but he is resolved. As he is about to murder Marina, pirates enter. Leonine runs away, and the pirates kidnap Marina. Leonine looks on, assured that he can report her dead. But he’d better wait a minute: if they just rape her and leave her there, he’ll still have to kill her (IV.i.97-98).

SCENE ii

In Mytilene, a whorehouse owner called just “Pander” confides in his servant Boult and a woman called just “Bawd” how difficult is it in this business to get good new whores. But they’re missing out on market opportunities with just the three old worn-out whores.

Boult returns with the pirates who sell Marina to him as a high-priced virgin, and he places Marina under the tutelage of the Bawd, who doesn’t understand why she would want to have been killed earlier given the nice life she could have now. Boult returns from advertising publicly this new attraction at the whorehouse. He shall stir up more interest: “thunder shall not so awake the beds of eels as my giving out her beauty stirs up the lewdly inclin’d” (IV.ii.142-144). Marina is rather dismayed at how commercial it all is and prays to Diana for protection. “On the stage even more than in print Marina is a desperately touching figure as she stands listening to their materialistic assessment of the commercial value of her body” (Wells 335). That doesn’t capture the grossness nearly as much as Boult saying, “if I have bargained for the joint–,” and the Bawd saying, “Thou mayst cut a morsel off the spit” (IV.ii.121-123).

SCENE iii

Cleon rues the decision to have Marina killed and wonders what they’ll tell Pericles. Dionyza calls him a coward: “Why are you so foolish? Can it be undone?” (IV.iii.1) — again echoing Lady Macbeth and already thought by some to represent the vicious Catherine de Medici (Ogburn and Ogburn 130). They never promised she’d live. And they’ll get away with this in front of Pericles if Cleon doesn’t chicken out. This murder is actually a kindness — to their own daughter. Also,

Her monument
Is almost finished, and her epitaphs
In glitt’ring golden characters express
A general praise to her, and care in us
At whose expense ’tis done.
(IV.iii.42-46)

Sounds like the motivation for the monument Burghley erected for his daughter Anne.

The weird allusions to birds reporting crimes (IV.iii.21-23) is traditional (Asimov 197). But Cleon calls his wife a harpy (IV.iii.45). The harpy is one of the supporters of the coat-of-arms of the Earl of Oxford (Clark 73).

SCENE iv

Gower apologizes for the play’s ignoring linguistic diversity between regions and tells us that Pericles and Helicanus are sailing to Tharsus. Old Escanes was left in charge at Tyre (IV.iv.15). A dumb show reveals Pericles being shown the tomb and putting on sackcloth. Gower reports that Pericles has sworn never to wash or cut his hair; he has put to sea and encountered another tempest. Gower recites the monument’s inscription: Dionyza’s doggerel for Marina, including the tender lines, “She was of Tyrus the King’s daughter / Of whom foul death hath made this slaughter” (IV.iv.36-37).

SCENE v

Two gentlemen mention how that new whore keeps reforming all the brothel’s customers with her fine preachings on virtue. “Pericles is a wholly virtuous and largely passive figure, patient under the many tribulations he has to undergo, and in his daughter Marina, child of the sea, passivity becomes an active force after she has been captured by pirates and cast into a brothel, opposing itself to the corruption around her and effecting conversions by its own simple, almost mystic power” (Wells 333).

[Some editions now begin a separate scene vi here.]
The whorehouse staff stew about Marina’s promotion of purity and goodness. The city’s governor, Lysimachus, arrives in disguise and doesn’t especially want v.d.; his initial intent is lecherous: “have you that a man may deal withal, and defy the surgeon?” (IV.v.20-25). “For flesh and blood, sir, white and red, you shall see a rose, and she were a rose indeed, if she had but–” (IV.v.41-42).

The Bawd demands that Marina treat this guy Lysimachus well. But “as the dialogue turns from prose to verse, he suddenly changes, and asserts, or pretends, that he came ‘with no ill intent'” (Smidt 120). It is too much a stretch to insist that Lysimachus was just “making a study of the red-light district” as a “social scientist” (Smidt 121).

Marina cannot answer his questions regarding her “career.” After some confusing discussion at cross-purposes, Marina’s story comes out:

For me,
That am a maid, though most ungentle Fortune
Have placed me in this sty, where since I came
Diseases have been sold dearer than physic–
O, that the gods
Would set me free from this unhallowed place,
Though they did change me to the meanest bird
That flies i’ th’ purer air!
(IV.v.99-106)

Lysimachus hopes she doesn’t think he was there for any vile reason and he gives her some money.

Whorehouse admin. is angry, and Boult is told to rape Marina. He and Marina discuss the relative merits of various occupations. Boult asks, “What would you have me do? Go to the wars, would you? where a man may serve seven years for the loss of a leg, and have not money enough in the end to buy him a wooden one?” (IV.v.173-176). Marina offers Boult all her money if he’ll help her out of the whorehouse and into a teaching job. She doesn’t seem to realize what a lateral move that is, but Boult agrees to the plan.