payment page
Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven!
Wind, rain, and thunder, remember earthly man
Is but a substance that must yield to you,
And I, as fits my nature, do obey you. (2.1.1–4)
Pericles utters these lines as he steps out of the sea, dripping wet. He has just survived a shipwreck, which has resulted in his symbolic rebirth on the shores near Pentapolis, where he is a complete unknown. Significantly, the first words he speaks as a newly reborn man are words of humility. He addresses the heavenly forces of “wind, rain, and thunder” and insists that as an “earthly man” he has no choice but to “yield” to them. His words don’t quite imply that the event that has just transpired was a matter of divine punishment, and as such he doesn’t ask for anything like forgiveness. Rather, he simply acknowledges the powers that are greater than him and pledges to obey them. In saying this, he echoes the conversation he had with Helicanus in act 1, scene 2, where they discussed the fact that kings are ultimately just men and thus not above the forces of nature.
We cannot but obey the powers above us.
Could I rage and roar as doth the sea
She lies in, yet the end must be as ’tis.
My gentle babe Marina,
Whom, for she was born at sea, I have named so,
Here I charge your charity withal,
Leaving her the infant of your care,
Beseeching you to give her princely training,
That she may be mannered as she is born. (3.3.12–20)
Following his second tempest-driven tragedy, Pericles makes another expression of humility. He has just been forced to submit his late wife, Thaisa, to a sea burial. Now he has come to Tarsus to ask Cleon and Dionyza to foster his newborn daughter, whom he believes won’t survive the rest of the journey home to Tyre. Yet even as his suffering accumulates, Pericles reaffirms that “we cannot but obey the powers above us.” He acknowledges that no amount of cursing would change the course of events already passed. So instead of submitting to the rage he feels inside, he accepts his fate and tries to do the best he can by his daughter.
He swears
Never to wash his face nor cut his hairs.
He puts on sackcloth, and to sea. (4.430–32)
After a “dumb show” that depicts Pericles learning of Marina’s death, Gower explains how the bereaved father makes an outward show of his mourning. When he first left Marina in Tarsus, Pericles pledged not to cut his hair until she was married. Now that Marina is apparently dead, he renews that pledge indefinitely. He also vows never to wash his face, and he also exchanges the royal garb of a king for the coarse sackcloth of a religious ascetic. Though his increasingly disheveled appearance indicates his state of mourning, it also symbolizes his humility. Instead of raging against his fate and cursing the gods, he once again humbly accepts his suffering and allows it to register in his appearance.
