Boult is the muscle of the Mytilene brothel—enforcer, barker, and middleman between the Bawd’s operations and the clients. He enters the play as a practical functionary of exploitation: sent to scout the market for fresh bodies, to cry Marina’s virginity through the streets to drive up bidders, to promise violence if she won’t comply. He speaks in the rapid, transactional language of a man who has never questioned the morality of what he does. When the Bawd tells him to take Marina and “crack the glass of her virginity,” he accepts the commission without hesitation: “An if she were a thornier piece of ground than she is, she shall be ploughed.”
Yet Boult is not merely a villain; he is a man trapped in a system that offers him no better path. When Marina appeals to his conscience—asking what he would wish his enemy to be—he answers with a kind of bitter honesty: he would wish his enemy to be “my master, or rather, my mistress.” His work is degrading, his position one of servitude disguised as authority. He follows orders because refusal would mean poverty or death. The play never lets us forget that the brothel corrupts everyone it touches, not just those sold into it. Boult’s willingness to enforce Marina’s sexual enslavement is not the mark of an uniquely depraved soul but the predictable outcome of a corrupt institution that normalizes cruelty as business.
When Marina begins to speak—teaching music, needlework, and virtue to potential customers instead of submitting to them—Boult finds himself outmaneuvered not by force but by words and character. He cannot threaten her into compliance because her eloquence and moral clarity have begun to work on those around him, including Lysimachus, the governor himself. By the end of their exchange, Boult capitulates: “I will make them acquainted with your purpose, and I doubt not but I shall find them tractable enough.” Marina’s resistance does not redeem Boult, but it does bend the system enough to let her escape. He remains a creature of the brothel, but for a moment, he glimpses an alternative—and that glimpse, however brief, suggests that even in the depths of commercial vice, human decency has the power to interrupt.
What trade, sir?
What kind of work, sir?
Boult · Act 4, Scene 6
Marina asks this simple question when Lysimachus cannot name the profession of the brothel, caught between decency and desire. The line matters because of what it does not say — Marina refuses to be named or shamed, turning the governor's discomfort back onto him. In three words, she claims the power to define herself rather than accept the labels others impose.
If fires be hot, knives sharp, or waters deep, Untied I still my virgin knot will keep. Diana, aid my purpose!
If fires are hot, knives are sharp, or waters are deep, I will still remain untarnished, keeping my virginity. Diana, help me fulfill my vow!
Boult · Act 4, Scene 2
Marina, sold into a brothel, invokes the goddess Diana and swears that no circumstance will force her into prostitution. The line endures because it shows virtue not as passivity but as an active refusal — Marina's power lies not in her body but in her will to speak and teach. She transforms a place of commodification into one of moral resistance.
