PERICLES PRINCE OF TYRE
Page: 13

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 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 subjec of the sea
These fishers tell the infirmities of men;
And from their watery empire recollect