Chapter Act III of Pericles Prince of Tyre - Study Guide by William Shakespeare

Pericles leaves Tharsus, unable to stay any longer because of the situation in Tyre. Dionyza and Cleon comfort him, but he sounds stoic: "we cannot but obey / The powers above us. Could I rage and roar / As doth the sea she lies in, yet the end / Must be as tis" (9-12). He leaves Marina in their care, and rejects their vows: "Your honour and your goodness teach me to't, / Without your vows" (26-7, see 1.2 above).

Act 3.4

In Ephesus, Thaisa has recovered her health. When she is shown the jewels and Pericles' letter that with her in her coffin she remembers being in labour but not whether her baby lived, "But whether there deliver'd, by the holy gods, / I cannot righly say" (6-7). The phrasing is suggestive because it is possible to (mis)read Thaisa herself as the object of "delivered", leaving her uncertain as to whether she has been rescued after all. Because she has lost her husband she becomes a votaress of Diana and intends to spend the rest of her life in Diana's temple. Having hovered between life and death before being rescued by Cerimon, she now remains in a chaste limbo until the end of the play, when her rescue is complete, and the other members of her family are delivered too.