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Summary
Gower enters, explaining that fourteen years have passed. Pericles is back on the throne in Tyre, Thaisa is a priestess in Ephesus, and Marina has grown into a young woman in Tarsus. Cleon and Dionyza have a daughter who spends all her time with Marina. She is of marriageable age, but she doesn’t hold up next to the nearly perfect young Marina, who receives all the praise. This situation has made Dionyza wildly envious, and she plans to have Marina murdered so her own daughter will have no competition. When Marina’s nurse Lychorida dies, Dionyza is ready, and she hires the assassin Leonine.
With Gower’s monologue finished, Dionyza makes Leonine swear never to tell who ordered Marina’s death. Marina enters to strew flowers on Lychorida’s grave. Dionyza notes how pale she is and suggests she takes a walk along the sea with Leonine. Marina reluctantly agrees. As they walk, Marina speaks of how she was born in a tempest, and she recounts what her nurse has told her about her father. Leonine tells her to say her prayers, indicating his plan to kill her. Marina asks why Dionyza would have her killed when she has never done a bad thing to anyone. Leonine says he doesn’t know the reason; he’s just doing his duty. Marina begs him to spare her life, but Leonine lunges at her. Just then, a band of pirates enter and scare Leonine off. The pirates take Marina, and Leonine decides to tell Dionyza that he killed Marina and threw her in the sea.
In Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, Pander runs a brothel with Bawd. Along with their servant, Bolt, they discuss their need to acquire new women for the brothel, having already raised several girls in the profession. Bolt goes to look in the market, and Pander and Bawd discuss retiring, since prostitution is a bad vocation. Bolt soon reenters with the pirates and Marina. Pander decides to buy her, and Bawd and Marina talk. Marina wishes that Leonine had succeeded in killing her. Bawd says that she will be content to live in pleasure, with gifts from all the gentlemen. Since she is a virgin, Bawd has Bolt advertise Marina in the marketplace, assuming many men will line up for the opportunity to take her virginity. Bawd encourages Marina to weep and perform shame with her customers, even if she feels none. Her sadness will win her pity, and with pity comes greater profits. Bolt returns, and Bawd promises him that he will be allowed to sleep with Marina, then she sends him off to advertise the young woman more thoroughly. Marina swears to Diana that she will remain a virgin.
Back in Tarsus, Cleon is furious with Dionyza for hiring an assassin to murder Marina then poisoning the assassin to keep it a secret. He asks what they’ll say to Pericles when he comes looking for his daughter, and Dionyza says they should tell him Marina died by foul play; no one needs to know the truth of what happened. Dionyza justifies her actions by insisting that Marina endangered their daughter’s prospects. As for Pericles, she insists that he will see they have honored Marina by mourning her and building a monument to her memory. Cleon calls Dionyza a harpy, smiling while she digs her talons in deeper, and Dionyza scorns him for being so afraid of the gods.
Analysis
The opening scenes of act 4 set up several parallels with events that have already transpired in the play. For example, Dionyza’s plan to have an assassin kill Marina parallels Antiochus’s earlier plan to have Thaliard kill Pericles. In both cases, the target manages to escape, partly due to circumstance and partly because the hired assassin expresses some reluctance to perform their duty. In both cases, the assassin also decides to lie about his failure and tell his employer that the victim-to-be died at sea. Marina’s apparent death marks another key parallel, in this case echoing the apparent death of her mother. She is swept away to a remote location, where she must now face a new life cut off from all the ties she has ever known. Alone in a new world, her fate resembles that of both her father, who had previously accepted a new life in Pentapolis, and her mother, who has accepted her new life as a priestess. Finally, Marina’s closing appeal to Diana on behalf of her virginity recalls Thaisa’s commitment to this goddess at the Temple of Diana in Ephesus.
As the play moves along and its pattern of misfortune and dispersal continues, it’s worth noting that the previous division between good and bad characters becomes slightly less obvious. Pericles opened with the obviously sinful Antiochus and his daughter, whose crimes against nature were punished by fire. Against the model of Antiochus, Shakespeare has marshalled a series of well-meaning leaders, including Pericles himself as well as Helicanus, Cleon and Dionyza, Simonides, and Cerimon. Shakespeare has also given us examples of good and bad commoners, including fishermen (good) and pirates (bad). Previously, the only figure who blurred the boundary between good and bad was the reluctant assassin, Thaliard. Now we have another reluctant assassin, Leonine, who is fated to die even though he didn’t perform the fatal deed. But more importantly, we witness the shocking transformation of Dionyza. Despite her promise to raise and protect Marina on Pericles’s behalf, her heart is now corroded with envy and hate. She may do what she does for the sake of her daughter, but her husband is horrified by her cruelty, and he worries that the gods will punish them both for his wife’s crime.
The brothel at Mytilene offers another example in which the play’s black-and-white moral framework is subtly challenged. This brothel is owned and operated by people who recognize that their business is morally questionable. This, after all, is the reason Pander suggests to Bawd that they cut their losses and close up shop: “the sore terms we stand upon with the gods will be strong with us for giving o’er” (4.2.35–36). Bawd insists that they aren’t the only ones who offend the gods in their work, but Pander says he thinks their offense is worse. Pander further emphasizes this claim by pointing out that Bawd’s supposed “charity” in raising eleven orphans is no such thing, since she just ended up bringing them into the business. But even though Pander acknowledges that the service his brothel provides is problematic, he’s quick to jump at the opportunity to buy Marina from the pirates. Ultimately, he will choose survival over destitution. So, if Marina can save his ailing business, he will accept the salvation.
