Chapter 13

Enter Gower.

GOWER. Now sleep yslaked hath the rouse; No din but snores about the house, Made louder by the o’erfed breast Of this most pompous marriage feast. The cat, with eyne of burning coal, Now couches fore the mouse’s hole; And crickets sing at the oven’s mouth, Are the blither for their drouth. Hymen hath brought the bride to bed, Where, by the loss of maidenhead, A babe is moulded. Be attent, And time that is so briefly spent With your fine fancies quaintly eche: What’s dumb in show I’ll plain with speech.

Dumb-show. Enter, Pericles and Simonides at one door with Attendants; a Messenger meets them, kneels, and gives Pericles a letter: Pericles shows it Simonides; the Lords kneel to him. Then enter Thaisa with child, with Lychorida, a nurse. The King shows her the letter; she rejoices: she and Pericles take leave of her father, and depart, with Lychorida and their Attendants. Then exeunt Simonides and the rest.

By many a dern and painful perch Of Pericles the careful search, By the four opposing coigns Which the world together joins, Is made with all due diligence That horse and sail and high expense Can stead the quest. At last from Tyre, Fame answering the most strange enquire, To th’ court of King Simonides Are letters brought, the tenour these: Antiochus and his daughter dead; The men of Tyrus on the head Of Helicanus would set on The crown of Tyre, but he will none: The mutiny he there hastes t’oppress; Says to ’em, if King Pericles Come not home in twice six moons, He, obedient to their dooms, Will take the crown. The sum of this, Brought hither to Pentapolis Y-ravished the regions round, And everyone with claps can sound, ‘Our heir apparent is a king! Who dreamt, who thought of such a thing?’ Brief, he must hence depart to Tyre: His queen with child makes her desire— Which who shall cross?—along to go: Omit we all their dole and woe: Lychorida, her nurse, she takes, And so to sea. Their vessel shakes On Neptune’s billow; half the flood Hath their keel cut: but fortune’s mood Varies again; the grisled north Disgorges such a tempest forth, That, as a duck for life that dives, So up and down the poor ship drives: The lady shrieks, and well-a-near Does fall in travail with her fear: And what ensues in this fell storm Shall for itself itself perform. I nill relate, action may Conveniently the rest convey; Which might not what by me is told. In your imagination hold This stage the ship, upon whose deck The sea-tost Pericles appears to speak.

[_Exit._]