Pericles Prince of Tyre
Written: c. 1607; Texts: Quarto 1609 (Romance), not in the First Folio but was included in the Third Folio
Source: Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri as translated by John Gower in his Confessio Amantis, c.1390, and The Patterne of Painful Adventures (1607) by Laurence Twine.
Characters: Pericles, Gower, Marina, Simonides, Helicanus, Cleon, Cerimon
Setting: Tyre, Antioch, Tharsus, Pentapolis, Mytilene
Time: Undetermined
This play may have been excluded from the First Folio because it is a collaboration in which Shakespeare is believed to have written only acts III, IV & V. The author of acts I & II is unknown and clearly inferior to Shakespeare. Or it may have been excluded because the publishers could not obtain the rights. Or, finally, it may have be excluded because the 1609 quarto edition was replete with errors. The ending is similar to Comedy of Errors. In both, a married couple is reunited after many years during which one or both think the spouse has died at sea. The Winter's Tale also ends with the reuniting of a husband to his wife who died years before, but not at sea and her revivication is miraculous, mystical, or at least ambiguous.
Notes on Pericles Prince of Tyre
Quotes from Pericles Prince of Tyre
Few love to hear the sins they love to act
Read the QuoteFew love to hear the sins they love to act
… continue reading this quote
‘Tis time to fear when tyrants seems to kiss
Read the Quote‘Tis time to fear when tyrants seems to kiss.
… continue reading this quote
Who makes the fairest show means most deceit
Read the QuoteWho makes the fairest show means most deceit.
… continue reading this quote
But I much marvel that your lordship
Read the QuoteFirst Gentleman of Ephesus
But I much marvel that your lordship, having
Rich tire about you, should at these early hours
Shake off the golden slumber of repose.
‘Tis most strange
Nature should be so conversant with pain,
Being thereto not compelled.
Cerimon
I hold it ever
Virtue and cunning were endowments greater
Than nobleness and riches.
… continue reading this quote
My recompense is thanks, that’s all
Read the QuoteMy recompense is thanks, that’s all,
Yet my good will is great, though the gift small.
… continue reading this quote
No visor does become black villainy
Read the QuoteNo visor does become black villainy
So well as soft and tender flattery.
… continue reading this quote
O, here’s The lady that I sent for
Read the QuoteLysimachus
O, here’s
The lady that I sent for. Welcome, fair one!
—Is’t not a goodly presence?
Helicanus
She’s a gallant lady.
Lysimachus
She’s such a one that were I well assur’d
Came of a gentle kind and noble stock,
I’d wish no better choice, and think me rarely to wed.
… continue reading this quote
I am a maid, My lord, that ne’er before invited eyes
Read the QuoteMarina
I am a maid,
My lord, that ne’er before invited eyes,
But have been gaz’d on like a comet. She speaks,
My lord, that, may be, hath endur’d a grief
Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh’d.
Though wayward fortune did malign my state,
My derivation was from ancestors
Who stood equivalent with mighty kings,
… continue reading this quote
If I should tell my history
Read the QuoteMarina
If I should tell my history, it would seem
Like lies disdain’d in the reporting.
Pericles
Prithee speak.
Falseness cannot come from thee, for thou lookest
Modest as Justice, and thou seemest a palace
For the crown’d Truth to dwell in. I will believe thee,
And make my senses credit thy relation
To points that seem impossible,
… continue reading this quote
O Helicanus, strike me, honored sir
Read the QuoteO Helicanus, strike me, honored sir,
Give me a gash, put me to present pain,
Lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me
O’erbear the shores of my mortality,
And drown me with their sweetness. O, come hither,
Thou that beget’st him that did thee beget;
Thou that wast born at sea, buried at Tharsus,
And found at sea again!
… continue reading this quote