Page 142 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

And if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill? [105]
It is enough you know, and it is fit,
What being more known grows worse, to smother it.
All love the womb that their first being bred;

Then give my tongue like leave to love my head.

ANTIOCHUS
(aside)
Heaven, that I had thy head! He has found the meaning. [110]
But I will gloze with him. − Young Prince of Tyre,

Though by the tenor of our strict edict,
Your exposition misinterpreting,
We might proceed to cancel of your days,
Yet hope, succeeding from so fair a tree [115]
As your fair self, doth tune us otherwise.

Forty days longer we do respite you,
If by which time our secret be undone,
This mercy shows we’ll joy in such a son.

And until then your entertain shall be [120]
As doth befit our honour and your worth.
Exeunt. Pericles remains alone.

PERICLES
How courtesy would seem to cover sin,
When what is done is like an hypocrite,

The which is good in nothing but in sight!
If it be true that I interpret false, [125]
Then were it certain you were not so bad
As with foul incest to abuse your soul;

Where now you’re both a father and a son
By your untimely claspings with your child,
Which pleasures fits a husband, not a father, [130]
And she an eater of her mother’s flesh

By the defiling of her parents’ bed;
And both like serpents are, who, though they feed
On sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed.
Antioch, farewell, for wisdom sees those men [135]

Blush not in actions blacker than the night