Pericles

Roles

• Cleon
• Dionyza

About this piece

Cleon and his wife Dionyza discuss Marina's murder

Summary

In the city of Antiochus, in Syria, King Antiochus rules the city. We learn in the prologue that he is committing incest with his beautiful daughter and is keeping all her suitors away by forcing them to answer a riddle or die. One of the suitors is Pericles who in the first scene of the play is in King's Antiochus court, determined to try and answer his riddle. When he reads the riddle he realizes that it is about the incest going on with his daughter. He then refuses to answer it saying that he knows the truth but rather not tell it. The king, who realizes Pericles knows about the incest, tells him he will be executed in 40 days. Pericles decides to flee and goes back to Tyre. Back in Tyre one of his councilors, Helicanus, for fear that Antioch might invade Tyre to kill Pericles, advices him to flee to Tarsus, a neighboring city ruled by King Cleon and his wife Dionyza. When he is called back to Tyre Pericles is shipwrecked in a place called Pentapolis. There he learns of a king, King Simonides, who is giving his daughter's hand (Thaisa) to whoever wins a jousting tournament the following day. Pericles decides to enter the tournament and wins. On the way back to Tyre, however, Thaisa dies giving birth to their child Marina. Considering the trip to Tyre too dangerous for his daughter, Pericles lands in Tarsus and gives his child to Cleon and Dionyza. When Marina grows up, however, Dionyza gets jealous of her and decides to hire a murderer to kill her. She hires an assassin, Leonine, who she later poisons in order to keep her plot secret. In this monologue Cleon and Dionyza discuss Marina's murder and Cleon wonders what they will tell Pericles when he comes back. Dioniza argues nobody will ever find out about their plot, they will tell him she died "by foul play" and that they will erect a monument for her. She then confesses that she had Marina killed because she out shined their daughter and Dioniza felt jealous of her.

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