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

has here spoken holy words to the Lord Lysimachus" (131-137) exclaim in pious, comic horror. Marina's situation is not comic, nor is the savage tirade she launches at Boult and his profession. He defends himself with "What would you have me do? Go to the wars, would you? Where a man may serve seven years for the loss of a leg, and have not money enough in the end to buy him a wooden one?" (169-171) but gives in when Marina claims she can earn as much by teaching as by prostitution and agrees to find her a place among honest women.

Marina's outburst is surprising because until now she has defended her chastity by preaching "divinity" rather than defiance; one imagines she is protected by what she inherently is, like Perdita of whom Polixenes says "nothing she does or seems / But smacks of something greater than herself / Too noble for this place" (The Winter's Tale 4.4.157-9). The presence of a romance heroine in a realistic brothel is a juxtaposition that sometimes challenges the idealism of the genre to which Marina belongs:

"Marina:
The gods defend me!

Bawd:
If it please the gods to defend you by men, then men must comfort you, men must feed you, men stir you up" (4.2.86-9).

However, this picture is too simple because, as Marina's attack on Boult shows, she can be as real as she is ideal.