MARINA.
No, nor of any shores:
Yet I was mortally brought forth, and am
No other than I appear.
PERICLES.
I am great with woe, and shall deliver weeping.
My dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one
My daughter might have been: my queen’s square brows;
Her stature to an inch; as wand-like straight;
As silver-voiced; her eyes as jewel-like
And cased as richly; in pace another Juno;
Who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry,
The more she gives them speech. Where do you live?
MARINA.
Where I am but a stranger: from the deck
You may discern the place.
PERICLES.
Where were you bred?
And how achieved you these endowments, which
You make more rich to owe?
MARINA.
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 look’st
Modest as Justice, and thou seem’st 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; for thou look’st
Like one I loved indeed. What were thy friends?
Didst thou not say, when I did push thee back—
Which was when I perceived thee—that thou cam’st
From good descending?
MARINA.
So indeed I did.
PERICLES.
Report thy parentage. I think thou said’st
Thou hadst been toss’d from wrong to injury,
And that thou thought’st thy griefs might equal mine,
If both were open’d.
MARINA.
Some such thing,
I said, and said no more but what my thoughts
Did warrant me was likely.
PERICLES.
Tell thy story;
If thine consider’d prove the thousand part
Of my endurance, thou art a man, and I
Have suffer’d like a girl: yet thou dost look
Like Patience gazing on kings’ graves, and smiling
Extremity out of act. What were thy friends?
How lost thou them? Thy name, my most kind virgin?
Recount, I do beseech thee: come, sit by me.