by John Dryden
Benducar, chief Minister, and favourite to the Emperor.
The Mufti Abdalla.
Muley-Zeydan, brother to the Emperor.
Don Antonio, a young, noble, amorous Portuguese; now a slave.
Don Alvarez, an old counsellor to Don Sebastian; now a slave also.
Mustapha, Captain of the Rabble.
Two Merchants.
Rabble.
A Servant to Benducar.
A Servant to the Mufti.
Almeyda, a captive Queen of Barbary.
Morayma, daughter to the Mufti.
Johayma, chief wife to the Mufti.
SCENE, — In the Castle of Alcazar.
ACT I.
SCENE I.
The scene at Alcazar, representing a market-place under the Castle.
Enter Muley-Zeydan and Benducar.
M. Zey. Now Africa’s long wars are at an end,
And our parched earth is drenched in Christian blood;
My conquering brother will have slaves enow,
To pay his cruel vows for victory. —
What hear you of Sebastian, king of Portugal?
Bend. He fell among a heap of slaughtered Moors,
Though yet his mangled carcase is not found.
The rival of our threatened empire, Mahomet,
Was hot pursued; and, in the general rout,
Mistook a swelling current for a ford,
And in Mucazar’s flood was seen to rise:
Thrice was he seen: At length his courser plunged,
And threw him off; the waves whelmed over him,
And, helpless, in his heavy arms he drowned.
M. Zey. Thus, then, a doubtful title is extinguished;
Thus Moluch, still the favourite of fate,
Swims in a sanguine torrent to the throne,
As if our prophet only worked for him:
The heavens, and all the stars, are his hired servants;
As Muley-Zeydan were not worth their care,
And younger brothers but the draff of nature.
Bend. Be still, and learn the soothing arts of court:
Adore his fortune, mix with flattering crowds;
And, when they praise him most, be you the loudest.
Your brother is luxurious, close, and cruel;
Generous by fits, but permanent in mischief.
The shadow of a discontent would ruin us;
We must be safe, before we can be great.
These things observed, leave me to shape the rest.
M. Zey. You have the key; he opens inward to you.
Bend. So often tried, and ever found so true,
Has given me trust; and trust has given me means
Once to be false for all. I trust not him;
For, now his ends are served, and he grown absolute,
How am I sure to stand, who served those ends?
I know your nature open, mild, and grateful:
In such a prince the people may be blest,
And I be safe.
M. Zey. My father![Embracing him.
Bend. My future king, auspicious Muley-Zeydan!
Shall I adore you? — No, the place is public:
I worship you within; the outward act
Shall be reserved till nations follow me,
And heaven shall envy you the kneeling world. —
You know the alcade of Alcazar, Dorax?
M. Zey. The gallant renegade you mean?
Bend. The same.
That gloomy outside, like a rusty chest,
Contains the shining treasure, of a soul
Resolved and brave: He has the soldiers’ hearts,
And time shall make him ours.
M. Zey. He’s just upon us.
Bend. I know him from afar,
By the long stride, and by the sullen port. —
Retire, my lord.
Wait on your brother’s triumph; yours is next:
His growth is but a wild and fruitless plant;
I’ll cut his barren branches to the stock,
And graft you on to bear.
M. Zey. My oracle![Exit M. Zey.
Bend. Yes, to delude your hopes. — Poor credulous fool!
To think that I would give away the fruit
Of so much toil, such guilt, and such damnation!
If I am damned, it shall be for myself.
This easy fool must be my stale, set up
To catch the people’s eyes: He’s tame and merciful;
Him I can manage, till I make him odious
By some unpopular act; and then dethrone him.
Enter Dorax.
Now, Dorax.
Dor. Well, Benducar.
Bend. Bare Benducar!
Dor. Thou would’st have titles; take them then, — chief minister,
First hangman of the state.
Bend. Some call me, favourite.
Dor. What’s that? — his minion? —
Thou art too old to be a catamite! —
Now pr’ythee tell me, and abate thy pride,
Is not Benducar, bare, a better name
In a friend’s mouth, than all those gaudy titles,
Which I disdain to give the man I love?
Bend. But always out of humour, —
Dor. I have cause:
Though all mankind is cause enough for satire.
Bend. Why, then, thou hast revenged thee on mankind.
They say, in fight, thou hadst a thirsty sword,
And well ’twas glutted there.
Dor. I spitted frogs; I crushed a heap of emmets;
A hundred of them to a single soul,
And that but scanty weight too. The great devil
Scarce thanked me for my pains; he swallows vulgar
Like whipped cream, — feels them not in going down.
Bend. Brave renegade! — Could’st thou not meet Sebastian?
Thy master had been worthy of thy sword.
Dor. My master! — By what title?
Because I happened to be born where he
Happened to be king? — And yet I served him;
Nay, I was fool enough to love him too. —
You know my story, how I was rewarded
For fifteen hard campaigns, still hooped in iron,
And why I turned Mahometan. I’m grateful;
But whosoever dares to injure me,
Let that man know, I dare to be revenged.
Bend. Still you run off from bias: — Say, what moves
Your present spleen?
Dor. You marked not what I told you.
I killed not one that was his maker’s image;
I met with none but vulgar two-legged brutes:
Sebastian was my aim; he was a man:
Nay, — though he hated me, and I hate him,
Yet I must do him right, — he was a man,
Above man’s height, even towering to divinity:
Brave, pious, generous, great, and liberal;
Just as the scales of heaven, that weigh the seasons.
He loved his people; him they idolized;
And thence proceeds my mortal hatred to him;
That, thus unblameable to all besides,
He erred to me alone:
His goodness was diffused to human kind,
And all his cruelty confined to me.
Bend. You could not meet him then?
Dor. No, though I sought
Where ranks fell thickest.— ’Twas indeed the place
To seek Sebastian. — Through a track of death
I followed him, by groans of dying foes;
But still I came too late; for he was flown,
Like lightning, swift before me to new slaughters.
I mowed across, and made irregular harvest,
Defaced the pomp of battle, but in vain;
For he was still supplying death elsewhere.
This mads me, that perhaps ignoble hands
Have overlaid him, — for they could not
conquer:
Murdered by multitudes, whom I alone
Had right to slay. I too would have been slain;
That, catching hold upon his flitting ghost,
I might have robbed him of his opening heaven,
And dragged him down with me, spite of predestination.
Bend. ’Tis of as much import as Africk’s worth,
To know what came of him, and of Almeyda,
The sister of the vanquished Mahomet,
Whose fatal beauty to her brother drew
The land’s third part, as Lucifer did heaven’s.
Dor. I hope she died in her own female calling,
Choked up with man, and gorged with circumcision.
As for Sebastian, we must search the field;
And, where we see a mountain of the slain,
Send one to climb, and, looking down below,
There he shall find him at his manly length,
With his face up to heaven, in the red monument,
Which his true sword has digged.
Bend. Yet we may possibly hear farther news;
For, while our Africans pursued the chace,
The captain of the rabble issued out,
With a black shirtless train, to spoil the dead,
And seize the living.
Dor. Each of them an host,
A million strong of vermin every villain:
No part of government, but lords of anarchy,
Chaos of power, and privileged destruction.
Bend. Yet I must tell you, friend, the great must use them
Sometimes, as necessary tools of tumult.
Dor. I would use them
Like dogs in times of plague; outlaws of nature,
Fit to be shot and brained, without a process,
To stop infection; that’s their proper death.
Bend. No more; —
Behold the emperor coming to survey
The slaves, in order to perform his vow.
Enter Muley-Moluch the Emperor, with Attendants; the Mufti, and Muley-Zeydan.
M. Mol. Our armours now may rust; our idle scymiters
Hang by our sides for ornament, not use:
Children shall beat our atabals and drums,
And all the noisy trades of war no more
Shall wake the peaceful morn; the Xeriff’s blood
No longer in divided channels runs,
The younger house took end in Mahomet:
Nor shall Sebastian’s formidable name
Be longer used to lull the crying babe.
Muf. For this victorious day, our mighty prophet
Expects your gratitude, the sacrifice
Of Christian slaves, devoted, if you won.
M. Mol. The purple present shall be richly paid;
That vow performed, fasting shall be abolished;
None e’er served heaven well with a starved face:
Preach abstinence no more; I tell thee, Mufti,
Good feasting is devout; and thou, our head,
Hast a religious, ruddy countenance.
We will have learned luxury; our lean faith
Gives scandal to the christians; they feed high:
Then look for shoals of converts, when thou hast
Reformed us into feasting.
Muf. Fasting is but the letter of the law,
Yet it shews well to preach it to the vulgar;
Wine is against our law; that’s literal too,
But not denied to kings and to their guides;
Wine is a holy liquor for the great.
Dor. [Aside.] This Mufti, in my conscience, is some English renegado, he talks so savourily of toping.
M. Mol. Bring forth the unhappy relicks of the war.
Enter Mustapha, Captain of the Rabble, with his followers of the Black Guard, &c. and other Moors; With them a Company of Portuguese Slaves, without any of the chief Persons.
M. Mol. These are not fit to pay an emperor’s vow;
Our bulls and rams had been more noble victims:
These are but garbage, not a sacrifice.
Muf. The prophet must not pick and chuse his offerings;
Now he has given the day, ’tis past recalling,
And he must be content with such as these.
M. Mol. But are these all? Speak you, that are their masters.
Must. All, upon my honour; if you will take them as their fathers got them, so; if not, you must stay till they get a better generation. These christians are mere bunglers; they procreate nothing but out of their own wives, and these have all the looks of eldest sons.
M. Mol. Pain of your lives, let none conceal a slave.
Must. Let every man look to his own conscience; I am sure mine shall never hang me.
Bend. Thou speak’st as if thou wert privy to concealments; then thou art an accomplice.
Must. Nay, if accomplices must suffer, it may go hard with me: but here’s the devil on’t, there’s a great man, and a holy man too, concerned with me; now, if I confess, he’ll be sure to escape between his greatness and his holiness, and I shall be murdered, because of my poverty and rascality.
Muf. [Winking at him.]
Then, if thy silence save the great and holy,
’Tis sure thou shalt go straight to paradise.
Must. ’Tis a fine place, they say; but, doctor, I am not worthy on’t. I am contented with this homely world; ’tis good enough for such a poor, rascally Mussulman, as I am; besides, I have learnt so much good manners, doctor, as to let my betters be served before me.
M. Mol. Thou talk’st as if the Mufti were concerned.
Must. Your majesty may lay your soul on’t. But, for my part, though I am a plain fellow, yet I scorn to be tricked into paradise; I would he should know it. The truth on’t is, an’t like you, his reverence bought of me the flower of all the market: these — these are but dogs-meat to them; and a round price he paid me, too, I’ll say that for him; but not enough for me to venture my neck for. If I get paradise when my time comes, I can’t help myself; but I’ll venture nothing before-hand, upon a blind bargain.
M. Mol. Where are those slaves? produce them.
Muf. They are not what he says.
M. Mol. No more excuses. [One goes out to fetch them.
Know, thou may’st better dally
With a dead prophet, than a living king.
Muf. I but reserved them to present thy greatness
An offering worthy thee.
Must. By the same token there was a dainty virgin, (virgin, said I! but I wont be too positive of that, neither) with a roguish leering eye! he paid me down for her upon the nail a thousand golden sultanins, or he had never had her, I can tell him that; now, is it very likely he would pay so dear for such a delicious morsel, and give it away out of his own mouth, when it had such a farewell with it too?
Enter Sebastian, conducted in mean Habit, with Alvarez, Antonio, and Almeyda, her Face veiled with a Barnus.
M. Mol. Ay; these look like the workmanship of heaven;
This is the porcelain clay of human kind,
And therefore cast into these noble moulds.
Dor. By all my wrongs, [Aside, while the Emperor whispers Benducar.
’Tis he! damnation seize me, but ’tis he!
My heart heaves up and swells; he’s poison to me;
My injured honour, and my ravished love,
Bleed at their murderer’s sight.
Ben. [Aside to Dor.]
The emperor would learn these prisoners’ names;
You know them?
Dor. Tell him, no;
And trouble me no more — I will not know them.
Shall I trust heaven, that heaven which I renounced,
With my revenge? Then, where’s my satisfaction?
No; It must be my own, I scorn a proxy.[Aside.
M. Mol. ’Tis decreed;
These of a better aspect, with the rest,
Shall share one common doom, and lots decide it.
> For every numbered captive, put a ball
Into an urn; three only black be there,
The rest, all white, are safe.
Muf. Hold, sir; the woman must not draw.
M. Mol O Mufti,
We know your reason; let her share the danger.
Muf. Our law says plainly, women have no souls.
M, Mol. ’Tis true; their souls are mortal, set her by;
Yet, were Almeyda here, though fame reports her
The fairest of her sex, so much, unseen,
I hate the sister of our rival-house,
Ten thousand such dry notions of our Alcoran
Should not protect her life, if not immortal;
Die as she could, all of a piece, the better
That none of her remain.
[Here an Urn is brought in; the Prisoners approach with great concernment, and among the rest, Sebastian, Alvarez, and Antonio, who come more chearfully.
Dor. Poor abject creatures, how they fear to die!
These never knew one happy hour in life,
Yet shake to lay it down. Is load so pleasant?
Or has heaven hid the happiness of death,
That men may dare to live? — Now for our heroes. [The Three approach.
O, these come up with spirits more resolved.
Old venerable Alvarez; — well I know him,
The favourite once of this Sebastian’s father;
Now minister, (too honest for his trade)
Religion bears him out; a thing taught young,
In age ill practised, yet his prop in death.
O, he has drawn a black; and smiles upon’t,
As who should say, — My faith and soul are white,
Though my lot swarthy: Now, if there be hereafter,
He’s blest; if not, well cheated, and dies pleased.
Anton. [Holding his lot in his clenched hand.]
Here I have thee;
Be what thou wilt, I will not look too soon:
Thou hast a colour; if thou prov’st not right,
I have a minute good ere I behold thee.
Now, let me roll and grubble thee:
Blind men say, white feels smooth, and black feels rough;
Thou hast a rugged skin, I do not like thee.
Dor. There’s the amorous airy spark, Antonio,
The wittiest woman’s toy in Portugal:
Lord, what a loss of treats and serenades!
The whole she-nation will be in mourning for him,
Anton. I’ve a moist sweaty palm; the more’s my sin:
If it be black, yet only dyed, not odious
Damned natural ebony, there’s hope, in rubbing,
To wash this Ethiop white. — [Looks.] Pox o’the proverb!