More Ways Than One

Barkwell. You shan’t have her at all. Fifteen thousand pounds! – if I thought my Niece would ever think of thee as a Husband now, I’d put one half of her fortune into each pocket, drive to Dover, and leap into the Sea to disappoint thee.

Evergreen. Why we’d fish thee up again, like a pearl oyster, for the sake of your riches. Neither Earth, Sea, or Air, in this happy age, can keep Curiosities from us now.

Hannah Cowley, More Ways Than One (1783), Act V Scene i, extract

Hannah Cowley (1743-1809) was a British playwright and poet. More Ways Than One is loosely based on Moliere’s L’école des femmes (The School for Wives).

Comus

But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway
Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream,
Took in by lot, ’twixt high and nether Jove,
Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep;
Which he, to grace his tributary gods,
By course commits to several government,
And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns
And wield their little tridents.

John Milton, Comus (1634), extract from opening lines

Diving for Pearls

Barbara: Anyway it’s all in the past. Put it all behind me. Would never have worked. Certainly not for me. There’s a bloody great world out there. I was just thinking about these ferry trips we used to get taken on to Manly. When we were little. I like boats. And how at the end of the wharf there used to be these boys, teenage boys, diving off the high part for coins. Silver coins. Sixpences and shillings. And how sometimes someone’d trick them. You know throw in a penny. And one of them’d go in. Just as if it was a shilling. [To Den] Not me. I won’t. Diving for dirty old pennies.

Den: We’ve both done a bit of that.

[Pause]

Barbara: When you think how we could have been … diving for anything … pearls …

Katherine Thomson, Diving for Pearls (1992).

Katherine Thomson’s Australian play is about ‘two ordinary people’ (Barbara and Den) ‘discarded by the lean, mean 90s world’. The lines come from the end of the play. It was first performed in 1991.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Proteus: Then let her alone.

Valentine: Not for the world: why, man, she is mine own,
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were
The water nectar and the rocks pure gold.
Forgive me that I do not dream on thee,
Because thou see’st me dote upon my
My foolish rival, that her father likes
Only for his possessions are so huge,
Is gone with her along, and I must after,
For love, thou know’st, is full of jealousy.

William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1592-93), Act II Scene iv

Troilus and Cressida

Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl:
Between our Ilium and where she resides,
Let it be call’d the wild and wandering flood,
Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar
Our doubtful hope, our convoy and our bark.

William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act I Scene i.

The words are spoken by Troilus.

Pauline Pavlona

Ah! then you know! I thought to tell you first.
Not here, beneath these hundred curious eyes,
In all this glare of light; but in some place
Where I could throw me at your feet and weep.
In what shape came the story to your ear?
Decked in the teller’s colors, I’ll be sworn;
The truth, but in the livery of a lie,
And so must wrong me. Only this is true:
The Tsar, because I risked my wretched life
To shield a life as wretched as my own,
Bestows upon me, as supreme reward -
O irony – the hand of this poor girl.
“Here, I have the pearl of pearls for you,
Such as was never plucked from out of the deep
By Indian diver, for a Sultan’s crown.
Your joy’s decreed,” and stabs me with a smile.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, ‘Pauline Pavlona’ (1891), extract.

‘Pauline Pavlona’ is a one-act drama set in contemporary St Petersburg, included in Aldrich’s collection The Sister’s Tragedy, with Other Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic (1891). The words are spoken to Pauline by Count Sergius Pavlovich Panshine.

Amoret and the River-God

God. What powerful charms my streams do bring
Back again unto their spring,
With such force, that I their god,
Three times striking with my rod,
Could not keep them in their ranks?
My fishes shoot into the banks;
There’s not one that stays and feeds,
All have hid them in the weeds.
Here’s a mortal almost dead,
Faln into my river-head,
Hallowed so with many a spell,
That till now none ever fell.
‘Tis a female young and clear,
Cast in by some ravisher:
See upon her breast a wound,
On which there is no plaster bound.
Yet she’s warm, her pulses beat,
‘Tis a sign of life and heat. -
If thou be’st a virgin pure,
I can give a present cure:
Take a drop into thy wound,
From my watery locks, more round
That orient pearl, and far more pure
Than unchaste flesh may endure. -
See, she pants, and from her flesh
The warm blood gusheth out afresh.
She is an unpolluted maid;
I must have this bleeding staid.
From my banks I pluck this flower
With holy hand, whose virtuous power
Is at once to heal and draw. -
The blood returns. I never saw
A fairer mortal. Now doth break
Her deadly slumber. Virgin, speak.

Amoret. Who hath restored my sense, given me new breath,
And brought me back out of the arms of death?

God. I have healed thy wounds.

Amoret. Aye me!

God. Fear not him that succoured thee.
I am this fountain’s god. Below
My waters to a river grow,
And ‘twixt two banks with osiers set,
That only prosper in the wet,
Through the meadows do they glide,
Wheeling still on every side,
Sometimes winding round about,
To find the evenest channel out.
And if thou wilt go with me,
Leaving mortal company,
In the cool streams shalt thou lie,
Free from harm as well as I:
I will give thee for thy food
No fish that useth in the mud;
But trout and pike, that love to swim
Where the gravel from the brim
Through the pure streams may be seen:
Orient pearl for for a queen
Will I give, thy love to win,
And a shell to keep them in …

John Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess (1609-10).

The Faithful Shepherdess is a pastoral tragi-comedy set in Thessaly. The shepherdess is Clorin. Among the several characters involved involved in the play’s romantic complications is Amoret, loved by Thenot, who in turn loves Clorin, but who is loved by Amarillis. The God of the River also features.

Comus

There is a gentle Nymph not far from hence,
That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream,
Sabrina is her name, a Virgin pure,
Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine,
That had the Scepter from his father Brute.
That guiltless damsel flying the mad pursuit
Of her enraged stepdam Guendolen,
Commenced her fair innocence to the flood
That stay’d her flight with his cross-flowing course,
The water Nymphs that in the bottom plaid,
Held up their pearled wrists and took her in …

SONG

Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lillies knitting
The loose train of they amber-dropping hair,
Listen for dear honour’s sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save …

… Rise, rise, and heave thy rosie head
From thy coral-pav’n bed,
And bridle in thy headlong wave,
Till thou our summons answered have.
Listen and save.

By the rushy-fringed bank
Where grows the Willow and the Osier dank,
My sliding Chariot stayes,
Thick set with Agat, and the azum sheen
Of Turkis blew, and Emrauld green
That in the channell strayes,
Whilst from off the waters fleet
Thus I set my printless feet
O’er the Cowslips Velvet head,
That bends not as I tread,
Gentle swain at thy request
I am here.

John Milton, Comus (1637), extracts.

In Milton’s masque, Sabrina is the nymph of the River Severn.

A Dialogue Betwixt Venus, Thetis, and Phoebus

Venus. I’ll woo thee with a kiss to come away.

Thetis. And I with forty for to stay.

Venus. I’ll give to thee the fair Adonis’ spear,
So thou wilt rise.

Thetis. And I, to keep thee here,
Will give a wreath of pearl as fair
As ever sea-nymph yet did wear.
‘Tis Thetis woos thee stay: O stay, O stay!

Venus. ‘Tis Venus woos thee rise: O come away!

Phoebus. To which of these shall I mine ear incline?

Peter Hausted, The Rival Friends (1631).

Peter Hausted was at Queen’s College, Cambridge when his only play in English, The Rival Friends, was performed before the King and Queen in March 1931. In classical mythology Thetis is a sea-nymph, one of the Nereids, and the mother of Achilles.

Doctor Faustus

How am I glutted with conceit of this!
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
Resolve me of all ambiguities,
Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I’ll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.

Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1592?), Act I, Scene i.

Words spoken by Faustus. The play was not published until 1604. Its earliest known peformance is 1594, but Marlowe was killed in 1593 and there is disagreement over the year in which the play is likely to have been written.