[II, i, 1–11] Pericles harangues the storm that has wrecked his ship: it has shown its mastery, now he wishes it would leave him to die in peace:

Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven!

Wind, rain, and thunder, remember earthly man

Is but a substance that must yield to you,

And I, as fits my nature, do obey you.

Alas, the seas hath cast me on the rocks,

Washed me from shore to shore, and left my breath

Nothing to think on but ensuing death.

Let it suffice the greatness of your powers

To have bereft a prince of all his fortunes,

And, having thrown him from your watery grave

Here to have death in peace is all he’ll crave.

Coriolanus

[IV, iv, 12–26] Exiled from Rome himself as an enemy of the people, Coriolanus now finds himself in Antium, an ‘enemy’ state. ‘City, ’tis I who made thy widows,’ he wryly recalls, as he sets off in search of his old adversary, Aufidius:

O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,

Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart,

Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise

Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love

Unseparable, shall within this hour,

On a dissension of a doit, break out

To bitterest enmity. So fellest foes,

Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep

To take the one the other, by some chance,

Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends

And interjoin their issues. So with me.

My birthplace hate I, and my love’s upon

This enemy town. I’ll enter. If he slay me,

He does fair justice: if he give me way,

I’ll do his country service.

The Winter’s Tale

[III, iii, 58–76] King Leontes of Bohemia, having taken it into his head that his queen Hermione has been unfaithful, orders that their infant child – her bastard, he believes – be taken out and abandoned in the wilderness. Fortunately for the baby, an aged shepherd comes bumbling along, pondering as he goes the follies of youth:

I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest: for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting. Hark you now: would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather? They have scared away two of my best sheep, which I fear the wolf will sooner find than the master. If anywhere I have them, ’tis by the sea-side, browsing of ivy. Good luck, an’t be thy will!

He sees the child

What have we here? Mercy on’s, a barne! A very pretty barne. A boy or a child, I wonder? A pretty one, a very pretty one. Sure, some scape. Though I am not bookish, yet I can read waiting gentlewoman in the scape: this has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work. They were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here. I’ll take it up for pity – yet I’ll tarry till my son come: he hallowed but even now. Whoa-ho-hoa!