Act 2, Scene I

SCENE I. Pentapolis. An open place by the sea-side.

Enter PERICLES, wet
PERICLES
Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven!
Wind, rain, and thunder, remember, earthly man
Is but a substance that must yield to you;
And I, as fits my nature, do obey you:
Alas, the sea hath cast me on the rocks,
Wash'd me from shore to shore, and left me breath
Nothing to think on but ensuing death:
Let it suffice the greatness of your powers
To have bereft a prince of all his fortunes;
And having thrown him from your watery grave,
Here to have death in peace is all he'll crave.

Enter three FISHERMEN

First Fisherman
What, ho, Pilch!

Second Fisherman
Ha, come and bring away the nets!

First Fisherman
What, Patch-breech, I say!

Third Fisherman
What say you, master?

First Fisherman
Look how thou stirrest now! come away, or I'll
fetch thee with a wanion.

Third Fisherman
Faith, master, I am thinking of the poor men that
were cast away before us even now.

First Fisherman
Alas, poor souls, it grieved my heart to hear what
pitiful cries they made to us to help them, when,
well-a-day, we could scarce help ourselves.

Third Fisherman
Nay, master, said not I as much when I saw the
porpus how he bounced and tumbled? they say
they're half fish, half flesh: a plague on them,
they ne'er come but I look to be washed. Master, I
marvel how the fishes live in the sea.

First Fisherman
Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the
little ones: I can compare our rich misers to
nothing so fitly as to a whale; a' plays and
tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at
last devours them all at a mouthful: such whales
have I heard on o' the land, who never leave gaping
till they've swallowed the whole parish, church,
steeple, bells, and all.

PERICLES
[Aside] A pretty moral.

Third Fisherman
But, master, if I had been the sexton, I would have
been that day in the belfry.

Second Fisherman
Why, man?

Third Fisherman
Because he should have swallowed me too: and when I
had been in his belly, I would have kept such a
jangling of the bells, that he should never have
left, till he cast bells, steeple, church, and
parish up again. But if the good King Simonides
were of my mind,--

PERICLES
[Aside] Simonides!

Third Fisherman
We would purge the land of these drones, that rob
the bee of her honey.

PERICLES
[Aside] How from the finny subject of the sea
These fishers tell the infirmities of men;
And from their watery empire recollect
All that may men approve or men detect!
Peace be at