Document: All > Shakespeare > Comedies > Pericles, Prince of Tyre > Act IV, scene III
[Enter CLEON and DIONYZA]
DIONYZA: Why, are you foolish? Can it be undone?
CLEON: O Dionyza, such a piece of slaughter
The sun and moon ne'er look'd upon!
DIONYZA: I think
You'll turn a child again.
CLEON: Were I chief lord of all this spacious world,
I'ld give it to undo the deed. O lady,
Much less in blood than virtue, yet a princess
To equal any single crown o' the earth
I' the justice of compare! O villain Leonine!
Whom thou hast poison'd too:
If thou hadst drunk to him, 't had been a kindness
Becoming well thy fact: what canst thou say
When noble Pericles shall demand his child?
DIONYZA: That she is dead. Nurses are not the fates,
To foster it, nor ever to preserve.
She died at night; I'll say so. Who can cross it?
Unless you play the pious innocent,
And for an honest attribute cry out
'She died by foul play.'
CLEON: O, go to. Well, well,
Of all the faults beneath the heavens, the gods
Do like this worst.
DIONYZA: Be one of those that think
The petty wrens of Tarsus will fly hence,
And open this to Pericles. I do shame
To think of what a noble strain you are,
And of how coward a spirit.
CLEON: To such proceeding
Who ever but his approbation added,
Though not his prime consent, he did not flow
From honourable sources.
DIONYZA: Be it so, then:
Yet none does know, but you, how she came dead,
Nor none can know, Leonine being gone.
She did disdain my child, and stood between
Her and her fortunes: none would look on her,
But cast their gazes on Marina's face;
Whilst ours was blurted at and held a malkin
Not worth the time of day. It pierced me through;
And though you call my course unnatural,
You not your child well loving, yet I find
It greets me as an enterprise of kindness
Perform'd to your sole daughter.
CLEON: Heavens forgive it!
DIONYZA: And as for Pericles,
What should he say? We wept after her hearse,
And yet we mourn: her monument
Is almost finish'd, and her epitaphs
In glittering golden characters express
A general praise to her, and care in us
At whose expense 'tis done.
CLEON: Thou art like the harpy,
Which, to betray, dost, with thine angel's face,
Seize with thine eagle's talons.
DIONYZA: You are like one that superstitiously
Doth swear to the gods that winter kills the flies:
But yet I know you'll do as I advise.
[Exeunt]
PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE
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