Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb (epub ebook reader .TXT) 📖

I must charge your charity with her. I leave her the infant of your care, beseeching you to give her princely training.’ And then turning to Cleon’s wife, Dionysia, he said: ‘Good madam, make me blessed in your care in bringing up my child’: and she answered: ‘I have a child myself who shall not be more dear to my respect than yours, my lord’; and Cleon made the like promise, saying: ‘Your noble services, prince Pericles, in feeding my whole people with your corn (for which in their prayers they daily remember you) must in your child be thought on. If I should neglect your child, my whole people that were by you relieved would force me to my duty; but if to that I need a spur, the gods revenge it on me and mine to the end of generation.’ Pericles being thus assured that his child would be carefully attended to, left her to the protection of Cleon and his wife Dionysia, and with her he left the nurse Lychorida. When he went away, the little Marina knew not her loss, but Lychorida wept sadly at parting with her royal master. ‘O, no tears, Lychorida,’ said Pericles: ‘no tears; look to your little mistress, on whose grace you may depend hereafter.’

Pericles arrived in safety at Tyre, and was once more settled in the quiet possession of his throne, while his woeful queen, whom he thought dead, remained at Ephesus. Her little babe Marina, whom this hapless mother had never seen, was brought up by Cleon in a manner suitable to her high birth. He gave her the most careful education, so that by the time Marina attained the age of fourteen years, the most deeply-learned men were not more studied in the learning of those times than was Marina. She sang like one immortal, and danced as goddesslike, and with her needle she was so skilful that she seemed to compose nature’s own shapes, in birds, fruits, or flowers, the natural roses being scarcely more like to each other than they were to Marina’s silken flowers. But when she had gained from education all these graces, which made her the general wonder, Dionysia, the wife of Cleon, became her mortal enemy from jealousy, by reason that her own daughter, from the slowness of her mind, was not able to attain to that perfection wherein Marina excelled: and finding that all praise was bestowed on Marina, whilst her daughter, who was of the same age, and had been educated with the same care as Marina, though not with the same success, was in comparison disregarded, she formed a project to remove Marina out of the way, vainly imagining that her untoward daughter would be more respected when Marina was no more seen. To encompass this she employed a man to murder Marina, and she well timed her wicked design, when Lychorida, the faithful nurse, had just died. Dionysia was discoursing with the man she had commanded to commit this murder, when the young Marina was weeping over the dead Lychorida. Leonine, the man she employed to do this bad deed, though he was a very wicked man, could hardly be persuaded to undertake it, so had Marina won all hearts to love her.

He said: ‘She is a goodly creature!’ ‘The tatter then the gods should have her,’ replied her merciless enemy: ‘here she comes weeping for the death of her nurse Lychorida: are you resolved to obey me?’

Leonine, fearing to disobey her, replied: ‘I am resolved.’ And so, in that one short sentence, was the matchless Marina doomed to an untimely death. She now approached, with a basket of flowers in her hand, which she said she would daily strew over the grave of good Lychorida. The purple violet and the marigold should as a carpet hang upon her grave, while summer days did last. ‘Alas, for me!’ she said, ‘poor unhappy maid, born in a tempest, when my mother died. This world to me is like a lasting storm, hurrying me from my friends.’

‘How now, Marina,’ said the dissembling Dionysia, ‘do you weep alone? How does it chance my daughter is not with you? Do not sorrow for Lychorida, you have a nurse in me. Your beauty is quite changed with this unprofitable woe. Come, give me your flowers, the sea-air will spoil them; and walk with Leonine: the air is fine, and will enliven you. Come, Leonine, take her by the arm, and walk with her.’

‘No, madam,’ said Marina, ‘I pray you let me not deprive you of your servant’: for Leonine was one of Dionysia’s attendants. ‘Come, come,’

said this artful woman, who wished for a presence to leave her alone with Leonine, ‘I love the prince, your father, and I love you. We every day expect your father here; and when he comes, and finds you so changed by grief from the paragon of beauty we reported you, he will think we have taken no care of you. Go, I pray you, walk, and be cheerful once again. Be careful of that excellent complexion, which stole the hearts of old and young.’ Marina, being thus importuned, said: ‘Well, I will go, but yet I have no desire to it.’ As Dionysia walked away, she said to Leonine: ‘Remember what I have said!’—

shocking words, for their meaning was that he should remember to kill Marina.

Marina looked towards the sea, her birthplace, and said: ‘Is the wind westerly that blows?’ ‘South-west,’ replied Leonine. ‘When I was born the wind was north,’ said she: and then the storm and tempest, and all her father’s sorrows, and her mother’s death, came full into her mind; and she said: ‘My father, as Lychorida told me, did never fear, but cried, Courage, good seamen, to the sailors, galling his princely hands with the ropes, and, clasping to the masts, he endured a sea that almost split the deck.’ ‘When was this?’ said Leonine. ‘When I was born,’ replied Marina: ‘never were wind and waves more violent’; and then she described the storm, the action of the sailors, the boatswain’s whistle, and the loud call of the master, ‘which,’ said she, ‘trebled the confusion of the ship.’ Lychorida had so often recounted to Marina the story of her hapless birth that these things seemed ever present to her imagination. But here Leonine interrupted her with desiring her to say her prayers. ‘What mean you?’ said Marina, who began to fear, she knew not why. ‘If you require a little space for prayer, I grant it,’ said Leonine; ‘but be not tedious, the gods are quick of ear, and I am sworn to do my work in haste.’ ‘Will you kill me?’ said Marina: ‘alas! why?’

‘To satisfy my lady,’ replied Leonine. ‘Why would she have me killed?’

said Marina: ‘now, as I can remember, I never hurt her in all my life. I never spake bad word, nor did any ill turn to any living creature.

Believe me now, I never killed a mouse, nor hurt a fly. I trod upon a worm once against my will, but I wept for it. How have I offended?’

The murderer replied: ‘My commission is not to reason on the deed, but to do it.’ And he was just going to kill her, when certain pirates happened to land at that very moment, who seeing Marina, bore her off as a prize to their ship.

The pirate who had made Marina his prize carried her to Mitylene, and sold her for a slave, where, though in that humble condition, Marina soon became known throughout the whole city of Mitylene for her beauty and her virtues; and the person to whom she was sold became rich by the money she earned for him. She taught music, dancing, and fine needleworks, and the money she got by her scholars she gave to her master and mistress; and the fame of her learning and her great industry came to the knowledge of Lysimachus, a young nobleman who was governor of Mitylene, and Lysimachus went himself to the house where Marina dwelt, to see this paragon of excellence, whom all the city praised so highly. Her conversation delighted Lysimachus beyond measure, for though he had heard much of this admired maiden, he did not expect to find her so sensible a lady, so virtuous, and so good, as he perceived Marina to be; and he left her, saying, he hoped she would persevere in her industrious and virtuous course, and that if ever she heard from him again it should be for her good. Lysimachus thought Marina such a miracle for sense, fine breeding, and excellent qualities, as well as for beauty and all outward graces, that he wished to marry her, and notwithstanding her humble situation, he hoped to find that her birth was noble; but ever when they asked her parentage she would sit still and weep.

Meantime, at Tarsus, Leonine, fearing the anger of Dionysia, told her he had killed Marina; and that wicked woman gave out that she was dead, and made a pretended funeral for her, and erected a stately monument; and shortly after Pericles, accompanied by his royal minister Helicanus, made a voyage from Tyre to Tarsus, on purpose to see his daughter, intending to take her home with him: and he never having beheld her since he left her an infant in the care of Cleon and his wife, how did this good prince rejoice at the thought of seeing this dear child of his buried queen! but when they told him Marina was dead, and showed the monument they had erected for her, great was the misery this most wretched father endured, and not being able to bear the sight of that country where his last hope and only memory of his dear Thaisa was entombed, he took ship, and hastily departed from Tarsus. From the day he entered the ship a dull and heavy melancholy seized him. He never spoke, and seemed totally insensible to everything around him.

Sailing from Tarsus to Tyre, the ship in its course passed by Mitylene, where Marina dwelt; the governor of which place, Lysimachus, observing this royal vessel from the shore, and desirous of knowing who was on board, went in a barge to the side of the ship, to satisfy his curiosity. Helicanus received him very courteously and told him that the ship came from Tyre, and that they were conducting thither Pericles, their prince; ‘A man, sir,’ said Helicanus, ‘who has not spoken to any one these three months, nor taken any sustenance, but just to prolong his grief; it would be tedious to repeat the whole ground of his distemper, but the main springs from the loss of a beloved daughter and a wife.’ Lysimachus begged to see this afflicted prince, and when he beheld Pericles, he saw he had been once a goodly person, and he said to him: ‘Sir king, all hail, the gods preserve you, hail, royal sir!’ But in vain Lysimachus spoke to him; Pericles made no answer, nor did he appear to perceive any stranger approached. And then Lysimachus bethought him of the peerless maid Marina, that haply with her sweet tongue she might win some answer from the silent prince: and with the consent of Helicanus he sent for Marina, and when she entered the ship in which her own father sat motionless with grief, they welcomed her on board as if they had known she was their princess; and they cried: ‘She is a gallant lady.’ Lysimachus was well pleased to hear their commendations, and he said: ‘She is such a one, that were I well assured she came of noble birth, I would wish no better choice, and think me rarely blessed in a wife.’ And then he addressed her in courtly terms, as if the lowly-seeming maid had been the high-born lady he wished