Act 4, Scene 3

Tarsus. A room in Cleon's house.

[Enter Cleon and Dionyza.]
Dionyza
1650 Why, are you foolish? Can it be undone?
Cleon
1651 O, Dionyza, such a piece of slaughter
1652 The sun and moon ne'er look'd upon!
Dionyza
1653 I think
1654 You'll turn a child agan.
Cleon
1655 Were I chief lord of all this spacious world,
1656 I'ld give it to undo the deed. 0 lady,
1657 Much less in blood than virtue, yet a princess
1658 To equal any single crown o' the earth
1659 I' the justice of compare! O villain Leonine!
1660 Whom thou hast poison'd too:
1661 If thou hadst drunk to him, 't had been a kindness
1662 Becoming well thy fact: what canst thou say
1663 When noble Pericles shall demand his child?
Dionyza
1664 That she is dead. Nurses are not the fates,
1665 To foster it, nor ever to preserve.
1666 She died at night; I'11 say so. Who can cross it?
1667 Unless you play the pious innocent,
1668 And for an honest attribute cry out
1669 'She died by foul play.'
Cleon
1670 O, go to. Well, well,
1671 Of all the faults beneath the heavens, the gods
1672 Do like this worst.
Dionyza
1673 Be one of those that think.
1674 The petty wrens of Tarsus will fly hence,
1675 And open this to Pericles. I do shame
1676 To think of what a noble strain you are,
1677 And of how coward a spirit.
Cleon
1678 To such proceeding
1679 Whoever but his approbation added,
1680 Though not his prime consent, he did not flow
1681 From honourable sources,
Dionyza
1682 Be it so, then:
1683 Yet none does know, but you, how she came dead,
1684 Nor none can know, Leonine being gone.
1685 She did distain my child, and stood between
1686 Her and her fortunes: none would look on her,
1687 But cast their gazes on Marina's face;
1688 Whilst ours was blurted at and held a malkin
1689 Not worth the time of day. It pierced me through;
1690 And though you call my course unnatural,
1691 You not your child well loving, yet I find
1692 It greets me as an enterprise of kindness
1693 Perform'd to your sole daughter.
Cleon
1694 Heavens forgive it!
Dionyza
1695 And as for Pericles,
1696 What should he say? We wept after her hearse,
1697 And yet we mourn: her monument
1698 Is almost finish'd, and her epitaphs
1699 In glittering golden characters express
1700 A general praise to her, and care in us
1701 At whose expense 'tis done.
Cleon
1702 Thou art like the harpy,
1703 Which, to betray, dost, with thine angel's face,
1704 Seize with thine eagle's talons.
Dionyza
1705 You are like one that superstitiously
1706 Doth swear to the gods that winter kills the flies:
1707 But yet I know you'll do as I advise.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1657archaic vocab
“Much less in blood than virtue, yet a princess”
'Less in blood' means less distinguished by noble birth. Cleon is saying Marina was perhaps not his equal in rank ('blood' = lineage), yet so great in virtue that she was fit to 'equal any single crown o' the earth' — her moral worth outweighed a deficiency of pedigree. The phrase is compressed and can mislead a modern reader who takes 'less in blood' as a comment on physical wounds.
TLN 1661archaic vocab
“drunk to him, 't had been a kindness / Becoming well thy fact”
'Fact' here means a wicked deed or crime — not a neutral piece of information. Cleon says that poisoning Leonine along with Marina would have been a 'kind' act befitting so foul a crime: it would at least have silenced the only witness. The word carried this criminal sense routinely in Shakespeare's English.
TLN 1664classical allusion
“Nurses are not the fates / To foster it, nor ever to preserve”
Dionyza invokes the Fates — the three goddesses of Greek and Roman myth who spin, measure, and cut the thread of every human life — to deflect blame: nurses have no power to keep a child alive against Fate's decree, so she cannot be held responsible for Marina's death. It is a cynical use of classical fatalism to disguise deliberate murder as natural necessity.
TLN 1685archaic vocab
“She did distain my child, and stood between / Her and her fortunes”
'Distain' means to eclipse, outshine, or put in the shade — it is not 'disdain' (to look down on). Dionyza is saying Marina's superior beauty and accomplishments made Dionyza's own daughter look dull by comparison and blocked her from the social advantages she deserved. The word comes from Old French 'desteindre,' to remove colour, i.e. to make something look colourless by contrast.
TLN 1688archaic vocab
“held a malkin / Not worth the time of day”
A 'malkin' (also spelled 'mawkin') was a contemptuous word for a slatternly, dirty woman of the lowest class — literally a diminutive of the name Maud or Matilda, used as a generic term of abuse for a kitchen drudge or scullery maid. Dionyza is saying that onlookers dismissed her daughter as a worthless slut not deserving a greeting ('the time of day' = a good morning).
TLN 1702classical allusion
“Thou art like the harpy, / Which, to betray, dost, with thine angel's face, / Seize with thine eagle's talons”
Harpies were monsters of Greek and Roman myth — winged creatures with women's faces and birds' talons — who snatched victims without warning. Cleon accuses Dionyza of being exactly like one: she uses an angelic face to gain trust and then strikes with the cold violence of a predatory bird. The image defines the play's moral logic: Dionyza has perverted the beauty of a maternal face into an instrument of murder.
classical The Harpy