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No, I will rob Tellus of her weed
To strew thy green with flowers. The yellows, blues,
The purple violets and marigolds
Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave
While summer days doth last. Ay me, poor maid,
Born in a tempest when my mother died,
This world to me is as a lasting storm,
Whirring me from my friends. (4.1.15–22)
These are Marina’s first words in the play, which she speaks as she places flowers over the grave of Lychorida. The mood of this moment is very melancholy. Not only is Marina mourning the loss of her beloved nurse, but she is also reflecting on the larger misfortune of her life that has left her an orphan. She was born in a tempest, and as she indicates here, she feels as though she’s never escaped the storm. But though she is grieving in this moment, the fact that she is strewing flowers also marks Marina as a symbol of vitality and renewal. The act connects her to key pastoral figures in other Shakespeare plays, such as Perdita in the near-contemporary play The Winter’s Tale. Though Dionyza will soon send an assassin after her, Marina’s association with summer flowers suggests that she will survive.
FIRST GENTLEMAN Did you ever hear the like?
SECOND GENTLEMAN No, nor never shall do in such a place as this, she being once gone.
FIRST GENTLEMAN But to have divinity preached there! Did you ever dream of such a thing?
SECOND GENTLEMAN No, no. Come, I am for no more bawdy houses. Shall ’s go hear the vestals sing?
FIRST GENTLEMAN I’ll do anything now that is virtuous, but I am out of the road of rutting forever. (4.5.1–9)
This exchange between two unnamed gentlemen constitutes the entirety of act 4, scene 4. Standing outside the brothel where Marina has been forced into servitude, these men marvel at how this virtuous young woman has converted them both to chastity. We will see how she accomplishes this feat in the following scene, when Mytilene’s governor, Lysimachus comes to Marina as a client. She radiates honor, addressing the governor in a way that shifts the dialogue from prose to verse. This shift signals the conversion of Lysimachus, who is quick to conclude, “Thou art a piece of virtue” (4.6.117). Marina will repeat this accomplishment later in the same scene, when she convinces Bolt not to rape her and instead help her escape.
I am a maid, my lord,
That ne’er before invited eyes, but have
Been gazed on like a comet. She speaks,
My lord, that may be hath endured a grief
Might equal yours, if both were justly weighed.
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. (5.1.95–105)
Marina addresses these words to a silent Pericles as she attempts to engage him in discussion. Lysimachus has summoned Marina to come to Pericles, who hasn’t spoken a word since he learned of his daughter’s supposed death. Miraculously, the riddle-like lines she speaks here spark his curiosity and get him talking: “My fortunes—parentage—good parentage, / To equal mine! Was it not thus? What say you?” (5.1.110–11). Awoken by a sense of familiarity, but not yet able to solve the puzzle of her words, Pericles tries to make sense of what he’s just heard. The stirring nature of Marina’s speech here is significant. On the one hand, though she has not been summoned as a consort, there is nonetheless an erotic charge in the expectation that she will arouse Pericles’s faculty of speech. There is thus a subtle suggestion of potential incest. However, Marina’s virtue ensures that the scene resolves honorably, with their eventual—and nonsexual—embrace as father and daughter.
