payment page
Summary
Gower enters and informs the audience that Pericles has again taken to the sea. He has gone to Tarsus to reclaim his daughter, taking Helicanus with him and leaving Escanes behind to govern in his stead. Gower then presents another dumb show, wherein Pericles arrives in Tarsus, and Cleon and Dionyza show him Marina’s tomb. Gower reads aloud the epitaph on Marina’s tomb, which describes her as a virtuous daughter of the sea-goddess Thetis, who will rage against the shores of the earth now that Marina is dead. Pericles dresses himself in sackcloth and swears never again to wash his face or cut his hair.
Meanwhile, in Mytilene, two gentlemen emerge from the brothel, noting their surprise at receiving lectures about chastity in a place of such ill repute. They go off, determined to be virtuous.
Inside the brothel, Pander and Bawd discuss how they wish they had never bought Marina, who has compromised their operation by converting all their customers into virtuous men. Someone must take her virginity, or they’ll be done for. Lysimachus, the governor of Mytilene, arrives at the brothel in disguise, and Bawd offers Marina to him. Bawd assures Marina that Lysimachus is an honorable man; Marina retorts that he can’t be honorable if he’s there to seduce her.
Left alone with Marina, Lysimachus finds her to be a clever conversationalist. He asks how long she’s been in her vocation, but she understands him to mean the vocation of being virtuous, and she declares she has always been at it. He explains that he is the governor, which gives him the power to punish or overlook corruption as he sees fit. Marina asks him to govern himself and not take her honor from her. Comparing her honor to a house, she asks him not to desecrate it. He is impressed by her impassioned plea and admits that his impure intentions have been cleansed by her words. He gives her gold and leaves.
Pander and Bawd return to discover that Marina has also managed to convert Lysimachus. In desperation, they tell Bolt to rape her so that she can at last be useful to the brothel. Alone with him, Marina convinces Bolt that taking her honor is the worst thing anyone could do to her. She tells him that she can become a teacher and make money in other ways. Bolt promises to do what he can to move her to a more honorable house.
Analysis
For the first time in the play, Gower appears in the middle of an act, interrupting the action to present another one of his silent performances, or “dumb shows.” The purpose of this interlude is to recount how Pericles learns the tragic news of his daughter’s (apparent) death. Echoing the mournful lamentation we saw him express after his wife’s (apparent) death, he now performs his grief by donning garments made of coarse sackcloth. His declaration that he will now no longer wash his face or cut his hair (which he was already growing until the projected marriage of Marina) marks Pericles’s symbolic transformation from a king into something like a religious ascetic. He increasingly resembles the biblical figure of Job, who endures misfortunes beyond his control, comprehending it as his assigned lot. However, whereas Job conceives of himself as fitting into some larger religious order, Pericles never voices such a sentiment. He simply endures. Gower underscores this endurance by noting that, having survived two real tempests, Pericles now lives through a tempest of the mind and spirit: “He bears / A tempest which his mortal vessel tears, / And yet he rides it out” (4.4.30–32).
Meanwhile, in Mytilene, Marina is enduring her own trials. Demonstrating the innate virtue that sparked so much envy in Dionyza, Marina is making good on her earlier pledge to Diana that she would maintain her virginity at all costs. As we learn now, she’s done so by taking on the role of a priestess, preaching the gospel of chastity to each of her would-be clients. So convincing is she that every customer leaves the brothel with a new commitment to moral virtue. But her greatest victory comes when Lysimachus pays her a visit. As the governor of Mytilene, Lysimachus represents yet another political leader—but is he a good leader or a bad one? Although he has come to the brothel to partake of its services, he doesn’t act like a selfish rogue. Instead, he has enough sensitivity to perceive that Marina is a special woman, and Shakespeare marks his moment of recognition by having Lysimachus shift from prose to verse mid-conversation. But Marina’s most impressive conversion is arguably that of Bolt, who agrees to set aside his desire for her in order to help find her work that’s better suited to her more virtuous talents.
