Pericles
Act IV, Scene 3
Tarsus. A room in Cleon’s house.
O Dionyza, such a piece of slaughter
The sun and moon ne’er look’d upon!
From: The Henry Irving Shakespeare
Henry, Sir Irving; Gordon Browne; 1888
- Enter Cleon and Dionyza.
Dionyza
1- Why are you foolish? Can it be undone?
Cleon
2 - 3- O Dionyza, such a piece of slaughter
- The sun and moon ne’er look’d upon!
Dionyza
4- I think you’ll turn a child again.
Cleon
5 - 13- Were I chief lord of all this spacious world,
- I’d give it to undo the deed. O lady,
- Much less in blood than virtue, yet a princess
- To equal any single crown a’ th’ earth
- I’ th’ justice of compare! O villain Leonine!
- Whom thou hast pois’ned too.
- If thou hadst drunk to him, ’t ’ad been a kindness
- Becoming well thy fact. What canst thou say
- When noble Pericles shall demand his child?
Dionyza
14 - 19- That she is dead. Nurses are not the fates,
- To foster it, not ever to preserve.
- She died at night; I’ll say so. Who can cross it?
- Unless you play the pious innocent,
- And for an honest attribute cry out,
- “She died by foul play.”
Cleon
20 - 22- O, go to. Well, well,
- Of all the faults beneath the heavens, the gods
- Do like this worst.
Dionyza
23 - 27- Be one of those that thinks
- The petty wrens of Tharsus will fly hence
- And open this to Pericles. I do shame
- To think of what a noble strain you are,
- And of how coward a spirit.
Cleon
28 - 31- To such proceeding
- Who ever but his approbation added,
- Though not his prime consent, he did not flow
- From honorable courses.
Dionyza
32 - 43- Be it so then,
- Yet none does know but you how she came dead,
- Nor none can know, Leonine being gone.
- She did distain my child, and stood between
- Her and her fortunes. None would look on her,
- But cast their gazes on Marina’s face;
- Whilest ours was blurted at and held a mawkin
- Not worth the time of day. It pierc’d me thorough,
- And though you call my course unnatural,
- You not your child well loving, yet I find
- It greets me as an enterprise of kindness
- Perform’d to your sole daughter.
Cleon
44- Heavens forgive it!
Dionyza
45 - 51- And as for Pericles,
- What should he say? We wept after her hearse,
- And yet we mourn. 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.
Cleon
52 - 54- Thou art like the harpy,
- Which to betray, dost with thine angel’s face
- Seize with thine eagle’s talents.
Dionyza
55 - 57- Y’ are like one that superstitiously
- Do swear to th’ gods that winter kills the flies,
- But yet I know you’ll do as I advise.
- Exeunt.
Cleon: What canst thou say when noble Pericles shall demand his child?
Dionyza: That she is dead.
From: Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare
Charles Cowden Clarke, Mary Cowden Clarke, 1866