Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Adaptations; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stories, plots, etc. -- Juvenile literature
Sailing from Tarsus to Tyre, the ship in its course passed by
Mitylene, where Marina dwelt; the governor of which place,
Lysimachus, observing this royal vessel from the shore, and
desirous of knowing who was on board, went in a barge to the side
of the ship, to satisfy his curiosity. Helicanus received him
very courteously and told him that the ship came from Tyre, and
that they were conducting thither Pericles, their prince. “A man
sir,” said Helicanus, “who has not spoken to any one these three
months, nor taken any sustenance, but just to prolong his grief;
it would be tedious to repeat the whole ground of his distemper,
but the main springs from the loss of a beloved daughter and a
wife.”
Lysimachus begged to see this afflicted prince, and when he
beheld Pericles he saw he had been once a goodly person, and he
said to him: “Sir king, all hail! The gods preserve you! Hail,
royal sir!”
But in vain Lysimachus spoke to him. Pericles made no answer, nor
did he appear to perceive any stranger approached. And then
Lysimachus bethought him of the peerless maid Marina, that haply
with her sweet tongue she might win some answer from the silent
prince; and with the consent of Helicanus he sent for Marina, and
when she entered the ship in which her own father sat motionless
with grief, they welcomed her on board as if they had known she
was their princess; and they cried:
“She is a gallant lady.”
Lysimachus was well pleased to hear their commendations, and he
said:
“She is such a one that, were I well assured she came of noble
birth, I would wish no better choice and think me rarely blessed
in a wife.” And then he addressed her in courtly terms, as if the
lowly seeming maid had been the high-born lady he wished to find
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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