Come
your ways.---My masters, you say she’s a virgin?
-Boult
Pericles Act IV, scene ii Line 40
Well we’ve got a few interesting things that we can talk
about this morning. Let’s start with the play we ended up with. Pericles was a
real person in Greek history, a great leader. But this play is not about the
real life of Pericles but rather some made up adventures of Pericles. Also,
this play is generally considered to be only partially (the second half of the
play) written by Shakespeare and the first half written by some other guy.
Finally, I suppose to lend some credence to this latter assumption, this play
is NOT included in the First Folio, and that’s got to mean something.
Okay, let’s go into a few sentences on the First Folio, for
those of you who don’t know what that is. The only publications of Will’s plays
during his lifetime were done surreptitiously, mostly printed as Quatros (sort
of like pamphlets) and without Will or his theater group’s consent. Around
seven years after Will’s death two of his associates from his theater group put
together a definitive collection of Will’s works and published it as a bound
volume (a book). It has become known as the First Folio. Around half of the
plays in the First Folio existed nowhere in print before the First Folio and if
these two guys hadn’t published this book all those plays would have been lost.
So kudos to those two guys (John Heminges and Henry Condell). There are a few
hundred original copies of this book still kicking around today and, as you can
imagine, they’re a bit pricey. If you want one, consider selling your house,
and maybe a few neighbor’s houses. We
could spend a lot of time talking about the First Folio (whole books have been
written about it, and I’ve read at least one of them) but let’s move on for
now.
So there are a handful of plays that show up on various
lists of Shakespeare’s plays that are not in the First Folio. Pericles
is the one play in my complete works compilation that’s not in the First Folio.
There are four or five others that aren’t in my book or the First Folio (and
therefore we obviously won’t be drawing any lines from those). And then one
last note; Today’s line comes from well past the halfway point in the play so,
ostensibly, today’s line was actually written by Will. But who really knows?
Okay, what about the line? Well, I’m not sure about the
‘Come your ways’. I believe that’s just a 1600’s jargon intro’ish type phrase.
Sort of like ‘All rightee then mates.’ But I don’t have any authoritative work
to back that up. Anyway, the meat of the line is exactly what it looks like.
These guys are bartering for Marina (she was born at sea, hence the name; get
it?) to use as a sex slave for profit, and they want to know if she’s a virgin,
which apparently she is. But wait, it’s not all that bad as it turns out.
Marina is sold into slavery, but she manages to convert all the clients sent to
her to more pure ways, and so in the end there is no prostitution taking place,
and then eventually she is reunited with her father Pericles (This is, after
all, a comedy, for whatever that’s worth).
And that’s pretty much the story of today’s Totally Random
Daily Shakespeare line.
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