by John Dryden
Mel. Impertinent! Oh I am the most unfortunate person this day breathing: That the princess should thus rompre en visiere, without occasion. Let me die, but I’ll follow her to death, till I make my peace.
Pala. [Holding her.] And let me die, but I’ll follow you to the infernals, till you pity me.
Mel. [Turning towards him angrily.] Ay, ’tis long of you that this malheur is fallen upon me; your impertinence has put me out of the good graces of the princess, and all that, which has ruined me, and all that, and, therefore, let me die, but I’ll be revenged, and all that.
Pala. Façon, façon, you must and shall love me, and all that; for my old man is coming up, and all that; and I am desesperé au dernier, and will not be disinherited, and all that.
Mel. How durst you interrupt me so mal apropos, when you knew I was addressing to the princess?
Pala. But why would you address yourself so much a contretemps then?
Mel. Ah, mal peste!
Pala. Ah, j’enrage!
Phil. Radoucissez vous, de grace, madame; vous étes bien en colere pour peu de chose. Vous n’entendez pas la raillerie gallante.
Mel. Ad autres, ad autres: He mocks himself of me, he abuses me: Ah me unfortunate! [Cries.
Phil. You mistake him, madam, he does but accommodate his phrase to your refined language. Ah qu’il est un cavalier accompli! Pursue your point, sir —
[To him.
Pala. Ah qu’il fait beau dans ces boccages; [Singing.] Ah que le ciet donne un beau jour! There I was with you, with a minuét.
Mel. Let me die now, but this singing is fine, and extremely French in him: [Laughs.] But then, that he should use my own words, as it were in contempt of me, I cannot bear it.
[Crying.
Pala. Ces beaux sejours, ces doux ramages — [Singing.
Mel. Ces beaux sejours, ces doux ramages. [Singing after him.] Ces beaux sejours nous invitent á l’amour! Let me die, but he sings en cavalier, and so humours the cadence!
[Laughing.
Pala. Foy, ma Clymene, voy sous ce chene. [Singing again.] S’entrebaiser ces oiseaux amoreux! Let me die now, but that was fine. Ah, now, for three or four brisk Frenchmen, to be put into masking habits, and to sing it on a theatre, how witty it would be! and then to dance helter skelter to a chanson a boire: Toute la terre, toute la terre est a moi! What’s matter though it were made and sung two or three years ago in cabarets, how it would attract the admiration, especially of every one that’s an eveillé!
Mel. Well; I begin to have a tendre for you; but yet, upon condition, that — when we are married, you —
[Pal. sings, while she speaks.
Phil. You must drown her voice: If she makes her French conditions, you are a slave for ever.
Mel. First, you will engage — that —
Pala. Fa, la, la, la, &c. [Louder.
Mel. Will you hear the conditions?
Pala. No; I will hear no conditions; I am resolved to win you en François: To be very airy, with abundance of noise, and no sense: Fa la, la, la, &c.
Mel. Hold, hold: I am vanquished with your gayeté d’esprit. I am yours, and will be yours, sans nulle reserve, ni condition: And let me die, if I do not think myself the happiest nymph in Sicily — My dear French dear, stay but a minuite, till I raccommode myself with the princess; and then I am yours, jusqu’ a la mort. Allons donc. —
[Exeunt Mel. Phil.
Palu. [Solus, fanning himself with his hat.] I never thought before that wooing was so laborious an exercise; if she were worth a million, I have deserved her; and now, methinks too, with taking all this pains for her, I begin to like her. ’Tis so; I have known many, who never cared for hare nor partridge, but those they caught themselves would eat heartily: The pains, and the story a man tells of the taking them, makes the meat go down more pleasantly. Besides, last night I had a sweet dream of her, and, gad, she I have once dreamed of, I am stark mad till I enjoy her, let her be never so ugly.
Enter Doralice.
Dor. Who’s that you are so mad to enjoy, Palamede?
Pala. You may easily imagine that, sweet Dorarlice.
Dor. More easily than you think I can: I met just now with a certain man, who came to you with letters from a certain old gentleman, y’cleped your father; whereby I am given to understand, that to-morrow you are to take an oath in the church to be grave henceforward, to go ill-dressed and slovenly, to get heirs for your estate, and to dandle them for your diversion; and, in short, that love and courtship are to be no more.
Pala. Now have I so much shame to be thus apprehended in the manner, that I can neither speak nor look upon you; I have abundance of grace in me, that I find: But if you have any spark of true friendship in you, retire with me a little into the next room, that hath a couch or bed in it, and bestow your charity upon a dying man! A little comfort from a mistress, before a man is going to give himself in marriage, is as good as a lusty dose of strong-water to a dying malefactor: it takes away the sense of hell and hanging from him.
Dor. No, good Palamede, I must not be so injurious to your bride: ’Tis ill drawing from the bank to-day, when all your ready money is payable to-morrow.
Pala. A wife is only to have the ripe fruit, that falls of itself; but a wise man will always preserve a shaking for a mistress.
Dor. But a wife for the first quarter is a mistress.
Pala. But when the second comes —
Dor. When it does come, you are so given to variety, that you would make a wife of me in another quarter.
Pala. No, never, except I were married to you: married people can never oblige one another; for all they do is duty, and consequently there can be no thanks: But love is more frank and generous than he is honest; he’s a liberal giver, but a cursed pay-master.
Dor. I declare I will have no gallant; but, if I would, he should never be a married man; a married man is but a mistress’s half-servant, as a clergyman is but the king’s half-subject: For a man to come to me that smells of the wife! ‘Slife, I would as soon wear her old gown after her, as her husband. Pala. Yet ’tis a kind of fashion to wear a princess’s cast shoes; you see the country ladies buy them, to be fine in them.
Dor. Yes, a princess’s shoes may be worn after her, because they keep their fashion, by being so very little used; but generally a married man is the creature of the world the most out of fashion: his behaviour is dumpish; his discourse, his wife and family; his habit so much neglected, it looks as if that were married too; his hat is married, his peruke is married, his breeches are married, — and, if we could look within his breeches, we should find him married there too.
Pala. Am I then to be discarded for ever? pray do but mark how that word sounds: for ever! it has a very damn’d sound, Doralice.
Dor. Ay, for ever! it sounds as hellishly to me, as it can do to you, but there’s no help for it.
Pala. Yet, if we had but once enjoyed one another! — but then once only, is worse than not at all: It leaves a man with such a lingering after it.
Dor. For aught I know, ’tis better that we have not; we might upon trial have liked each other less, as many a man and woman, that have loved as desperately as we, and yet, when they came to possession, have sighed and cried to themselves, Is this all?
Pala. That is only, if the servant were not found a man of this world; but if, upon trial, we had not liked each other, we had certainly left loving; and faith, that’s the greater happiness of the two.
Dor. ’Tis better as ’tis; we have drawn off already as much of our love as would run clear; after possessing, the rest is but jealousies, and disquiets, and quarrelling, and piecing.
Pala. Nay, after one great quarrel, there’s never any sound piecing; the love is apt to break in the same place again.
Dor. I declare I would never renew a love; that’s like him, who trims an old coach for ten years together; he might buy a new one better cheap.
Pala. Well, madam, I am convinced, that ’tis best for us not to have enjoyed; but, gad, th
e strongest reason is, because I can’t help it.
Dor. The only way to keep us new to one another is never to enjoy, as they keep grapes, by hanging them upon a line; they must touch nothing, if you would preserve them fresh.
Pala. But then they wither, and grow dry in the very keeping; however, I shall have a warmth for you, and an eagerness, every time I see you; and, if I chance to out-live Melantha —
Dor. And if I chance to out-live Rhodophil —
Pala. Well, I’ll cherish my body as much as I can, upon that hope. ’Tis true, I would not directly murder the wife of my bosom; but, to kill her civilly, by the way of kindness, I’ll put as fair as another man: I’ll begin to-morrow night, and be very wrathful with her; that’s resolved on.
Dor. Well, Palamede, here’s my hand, I’ll venture to be your second wife, for all your threatenings.
Pala. In the mean time I’ll watch you hourly, as I would the ripeness of a melon; and I hope you’ll give me leave now and then to look on you, and to see if you are not ready to be cut yet.
Dor. No, no, that must not be, Palamede, for fear the gardener should come and catch you taking up the glass.
Enter Rhodophil.
Rho. [Aside.] Billing so sweetly! now I am confirmed in my suspicions; I must put an end to this ere it go farther — [To Doralice.] Cry you mercy, spouse, I fear I have interrupted your recreations.
Dor. What recreations?
Rho. Nay, no excuses, good spouse; I saw fair hand conveyed to lip, and prest, as though you had been squeezing soft wax together for an indenture. Palamede, you and I must clear this reckoning: why would you have seduced my wife?
Pala. Why would you have debauched my mistress?
Rho. What do you think of that civil couple, that played at a game, called Hide and Seek, last evening in the grotto?
Pala. What do you think of that innocent pair, who made it their pretence to seek for others, but came, indeed, to hide themselves there?
Rho. All things considered, I begin vehemently to suspect, that the young gentleman I found in your company last night, was a certain youth of my acquaintance.
Pala. And I have an odd imagination, that you could never have suspected my small gallant, if your little villainous Frenchman had not been a false brother.
Rho. Further arguments are needless; draw off; I shall speak to you now by the way of bilbo.
[Claps his hand to his sword.
Pala. And I shall answer you by the way of Dangerfield. [Claps his hand on his.
Dor. Hold, hold; are not you two a couple of mad fighting fools, to cut one another’s throats for nothing?
Pala. How for nothing? He courts the woman I must marry.
Rho. And he courts you, whom I have married.
Dor. But you can neither of you be jealous of what you love not.
Rho. Faith, I am jealous, and this makes me partly suspect that I love you better than I thought.
Dor. Pish! a mere jealousy of honour.
Rho. Gad, I am afraid there’s something else in’t; for Palamede has wit, and, if he loves you, there’s something more in ye than I have found: Some rich mine, for aught I know, that I have not yet discovered.
Pala. ‘Slife, what’s this? Here’s an argument for me to love Melantha; for he has loved her, and he has wit too, and, for aught I know, there may be a mine; but, if there be, I am resolved I’ll dig for it.
Dor. [To Rhodophil.] Then I have found my account in raising your jealousy. O! ’tis the most delicate sharp sauce to a cloyed stomach; it will give you a new edge, Rhodophil.
Rho. And a new point too, Doralice, if I could be sure thou art honest.
Dor. If you are wise, believe me for your own sake: Love and religion have but one thing to trust to; that’s a good sound faith. Consider, if I have played false, you can never find it out by any experiment you can make upon me.
Rho. No? Why, suppose I had a delicate screwed gun; if I left her clean, and found her foul, I should discover, to my cost, she had been shot in.
Dor. But if you left her clean, and found her only rusty, you would discover, to your shame, she was only so for want of shooting.
Pala. Rhodophil, you know me too well to imagine I speak for fear; and therefore, in consideration of our past friendship, I will tell you, and bind it by all things holy, that Doralice is innocent.
Rho. Friend, I will believe you, and vow the same for your Melantha; but the devil on’t is, how shall we keep them so?
Pala. What dost think of a blessed community betwixt us four, for the solace of the women, and relief of the men? Methinks it would be a pleasant kind of life: Wife and husband for the standing dish, and mistress and gallant for the desert.
Rho. But suppose the wife and mistress should both long for the standing dish, how should they be satisfied together?
Pala. In such a case they must draw lots; and yet that would not do neither, for they would both be wishing for the longest cut.
Rho. Then I think, Palamede, we had as good make a firm league, not to invade each other’s propriety.
Pala. Content, say I. From henceforth let all acts of hostility cease betwixt us; and that, in the usual form of treaties, as well by sea as land, and in all fresh waters.
Dor. I will add but one proviso, that whoever breaks the league, either by war abroad, or neglect at home, both the women shall revenge themselves by the help of the other party.
Rho. That’s but reasonable. Come away, Doralice; I have a great temptation to be sealing articles in private.
Pala. Hast thou so? [Claps him on the shoulder.
“Fall on, Macduff,
And cursed be he that first cries, Hold, enough.”
Enter Polydamas, Palmyra, Artemis, Argaleon: After them Eubulus and Hermogenes, guarded.
Palm. Sir, on my knees I beg you —
Poly. Away, I’ll hear no more.
Palm. For my dead mother’s sake; you say you loved her,
And tell me I resemble her. Thus she
Had begged.
Poly. And thus I had denied her.
Palm. You must be merciful.
Arga. You must be constant.
Poly. Go, bear them to the torture; you have boasted
You have a king to head you; I would know
To whom I must resign.
Eub. This is our recompence For serving thy dead queen.
Herm. And education Of thy daughter.
Arga. You are too modest, in not naming all
His obligations to you: Why did you
Omit his son, the prince Leonidas?
Poly. That imposture
I had forgot; their tortures shall be doubled.
Herm. You please me; I shall die the sooner.
Eub. No; could I live an age, and still be racked,
I still would keep the secret. [As they are going off,
Enter Leonidas, guarded.
Leon. Oh, whither do you hurry innocence!
If you have any justice, spare their lives;
Or, if I cannot make you just, at least
I’ll teach you to more purpose to be cruel.
Palm. Alas, what does he seek!
Leon. Make me the object of your hate and vengeance:
Are these decrepid bodies, worn to ruin,
Just ready of themselves to fall asunder.
And to let drop the soul, —
Are these fit subjects for a rack and tortures?
Where would you fasten any hold upon them?
Place pains on me, — united fix them here, —
I have both youth, and strength, and soul to bear them;
And, if they merit death, then I much more,
Since ’tis for me they suffer.
Herm. Heaven forbid
We should redeem our pains, or worthless lives,
By our exposing yours.
Eub. Away with us. Farewell, sir:
I only suffer in my fears for you.
Arga. So much concerned for him! Then my [Asi
de.
Suspicion’s true. [Whispers the King.
Palm. Hear yet my last request for poor Leonidas,
Or take my life with his.
Arga. Rest satisfied, Leonidas is he. [To the King.
Poly. I am amazed: What must be done?
Arga. Command his execution instantly:
Give him not leisure to discover it;
He may corrupt the soldiers.
Poly. Hence with that traitor, bear him to his death:
Haste there, and see my will performed.
Leon. Nay, then, I’ll die like him the gods have made me.
Hold, gentlemen, I am — [Argaleon stops his mouth.
Arga. Thou art a traitor; ’tis not fit to hear thee.
Leon. I say, I am the — [Getting loose a little.
Arga. So; gag him, and lead him off. [Again stopping his mouth.
[Leonidas, Hermogenes, Eubulus, led off; Polydamas and Argaleon follow.
Palm. Duty and love, by turns, possess my soul
And struggle for a fatal victory.
I will discover he’s the king: — Ah, no!
That will perhaps save him;
But then I’m guilty of a father’s ruin.
What shall I do, or not do? Either way
I must destroy a parent, or a lover.
Break heart; for that’s the least of ills to me,
And death the only cure. [Swoons.
Arte. Help, help the princess.
Rho. Bear her gently hence, where she may
Have more succour. [She is borne off; Arte. follows her.
[Shouts within, and clashing of swords.
Pala. What noise is that?
Enter Amalthea, running.
Amal. Oh, gentlemen, if you have loyalty,
Or courage, show it now! Leonidas,
Broke on the sudden from his guards, and snatching
A sword from one, his back against the scaffold,
Bravely defends himself, and owns aloud
He is our long-lost king; found for this moment,
But, if your valour helps not, lost for ever.
Two of his guards, moved by the sense of virtue,
Are turned for him, and there they stand at bay
Against an host of foes.
Rho. Madam, no more;
We lose time; my command, or my example,