Much outward gauds, slight inward grace discovers.
I care not to seem fair but to my lord.
Those that strive most to please most strangers’ sight,
Follies may judge most fair, wisdom most light.
Music sounds a short strain.
But hark, soft music gently moves the air:
I think the bridegroom’s up. lucio, stand close.
O now Maria, challenge grief to stay
Thy joy’s encounter. look lucio, ’tis clear day.
Act 1
Scene 3
[Maria, lucio and Nutriche remain on stage.]
Enter Antonio, Galeatzo, Matzagente, Balurdo, Pandulpho Feliche, Alberto, Castilio, and a Page.
Antonio. Darkness is fled: look, infant morn hath drawn
Bright silver curtains ’bout the couch of night,
And now Aurora’s horse trots azure rings,
Breathing fair light about the firmament.
Stand, what’s that?
Matzagente. And if a horned devil should burst forth,
I would pass on him with a mortal stock.
Alberto. Oh, a horned devil would prove ominous
Unto a bridegroom’s eyes.
10 Matzagente. A horned devil? good, good; ha, ha, ha, very good.
Alberto. Good tanned prince, laugh not. By the joys of love,
When thou dost girn, thy rusty face doth look
Like the head of a roasted rabbit: fie upon’t!
Balurdo. By my troth, methinks his nose is just colour-de-roy.
Matzagente. I tell thee fool, my nose will abide no jest.
20 Balurdo. No, in truth, I do not jest, I speak truth. Truth is the touchstone of all things: and if your nose will not abide the truth, your nose will not abide the touch: and if your nose will not abide the touch, your nose is a copper nose, and must be nailed up for a slip.
Matzagente. I scorn to retort the obtuse jest of a fool.
Balurdo draws out his writing tables, and writes.
Balurdo. Retort and obtuse, good words, very good words.
Galeatzo. Young prince, look sprightly; fie, a bridegroom sad!
Balurdo. In truth, if he were retort and obtuse, no question, he would be merry, but and please my genius, I will be most retort and obtuse ere night. I’ll tell you, what I’ll bear soon at night in my shield, for my device.
Galeatzo. What, good Balurdo?
30 Balurdo. O, do me right: Sir Geoffrey Balurdo: sir, sir, as long as ye live, sir.
Galeatzo. What, good Sir Geoffrey Balurdo?
Balurdo. Marry forsooth, I’ll carry for my device my grandfather’s great stone-horse, flinging up his head, and jerking out his left leg. The word: ‘Wighy purt’. As I am a true knight, will’t not be most retort and obtuse, ha?
Antonio. Blow hence these hapless jests. I tell you bloods,
My spirit’s heavy, and the juice of life
Creeps slowly through my stiffened arteries.
Last sleep, my sense was steeped in horrid dreams:
40 Three parts of night were swallowed in the gulf
Of ravenous time, when to my slumbering powers,
Two meagre ghosts made apparition:
The one’s breast seemed fresh paunched with bleeding wounds,
Whose bubbling gore sprang in frighted eyes;
The other ghost assumed my father’s shape.
Both cried ‘Revenge!’, at which my trembling joints,
Iced quite over with a frozed cold sweat,
Leaped forth the sheets. Three times I gasped at shades,
And thrice, deluded by erroneous sense
50 I forced my thoughts make stand, when lo, I oped
A large bay window, through which the night
Struck terror to my soul. The verge of heaven
Was ringed with flames, and all the upper vault
Thick-laced with flakes of fire; in midst whereof
A blazing comet shot his threatening train
Just on my face. Viewing these prodigies,
I bowed my naked knee, and pierced the star
With an outfacing eye; pronouncing thus:
Deus imperat astris. At which, my nose straight bled.
60 Then doubled I my word, so slunk to bed.
70 Balurdo. Verily, Sir Geoffrey had a monstrous strange dream the last night. For methought I dreamt I was asleep, and methought the ground yawned and belked up the abominable ghost of a misshapen Simile, with two ugly pages – the one called Master Even-as going before, and the other Monsieur Even-so following after – whilst Signior Simile stalked most prodigiously in the midst. At which I bewrayed the fearfulness of my nature: and being ready to forsake the fortress of my wit, start up, call for a clean shirt, eat a mess of broth, and with that I awaked.
Antonio. I prithee peace. I tell you gentlemen,
The frightful shades of night yet shake my brain.
My jellied blood’s not thawed; the sulphur damps
That flow in winged lightning ’bout my couch
Yet stick within my sense; my soul is great,
In expectation of dire prodigies.
Pandulpho. Tut, my young prince, let not thy fortunes see
Their lord a coward. He that’s nobly born
Abhors to fear. Base fear’s the brand of slaves:
80 He that observes, pursues, slinks back for fright,
Was never cast in mould of noble spright.
Galeatzo. Tush, there’s a sun will straight exhale these damps
Of chilling fear. Come, shall’s salute the bride?
Antonio. Castilio, I prithee mix thy breath with his.
Sing one of Signior Renaldo’s airs,
To rouse the slumbering bride from gluttoning
In surfeit of superfluous sleep. Good signior, sing.
[They sing.]
What means this silence and unmoved calm!
Boy, wind thy cornet: force the leaden gates
90 Of lazy sleep fly open, with thy breath,
My Mellida not up? not stirring yet? umh!
Maria. That voice should be my son’s Antonio’s.
Antonio?
Antonio. Here, who calls? Here stands Antonio.
Maria. Sweet son.
Antonio. Dear mother.
Maria. Fair honour of a chaste and loyal bed,
Thy father’s beauty, thy sad mother’s love:
Were I as powerful as the voice of fate,
100 Felicity complete should sweet thy state:
But all the blessings that a poor banished wretch
Can pour upon thy head, take, gentle son:
Live, gracious youth, to close thy mother’s eyes,
Loved of thy parents, till their latest hour.
How cheers my lord, thy father? O sweet boy,
Part of him thus I clip, my dear, dear joy.
Antonio. Madam, last night I kissed his princely hand,
And took a treasured blessing from his lips.
O mother, you arrive in jubilee
110 And firm atonement of all boisterous rage.
Pleasure, united love, protested faith,
Guard my loved father, as sworn pensioners.
The dukes are leagued in firmest bond of love,
And you arrive even in the solsticy
And highest point of sunshine happiness.
One winds a cornet within.
Hark, madam, how yon cornet jerketh up
His strained shrill accents in the capering air;
As proud to summon up my bright-cheeked love.
Now, mother, ope wide expectation:
120 Let loose your amplest sense, to entertain
Th’impression of an object of such worth,
That life’s too poor to –
Galeatzo. Nay, leave hyperboles.
Antonio. I tell thee prince, that presence straight appears,
Of which thou canst not form hyperboles:
The trophy of triumphing excellence,<
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The heart of beauty. Mellida appears.
See, look, the curtain stirs: shine nature’s pride,
Love’s vital spirit, dear Antonio’s bride.
The curtain’s drawn, and the body of Feliche, stabbed thick with wounds, appears hung up.
130 What villain bloods the window of my love?
What slave hath hung yon gory ensign up.
In flat defiance of humanity?
Awake thou fair unspotted purity.
Death’s at thy window, awake bright Mellida:
Antonio calls.
Act 1
Scene 4
Enter Piero as at first, with Forobosco.
Piero. Who gives these ill-befitting attributes
Of chaste, unspotted, bright, to Mellida?
He lies as loud as thunder: she’s unchaste,
Tainted, impure, black as the soul of hell.
[Antonio] draws his rapier, offers to run at Piero, but Maria holds his arm and stays him.
Antonio. Dog, I will make thee eat thy vomit up,
Which thou hast belked ’gainst taintless Mellida.
[Piero.] Ram’t quickly down, that it may not rise up
To imbraid my thoughts. Behold my stomach’s –
Strike me quite through with the relentless edge
10 Of raging fury. Boy, I’ll kill thy love.
Pandulph Feliche, I have stabbed thy son:
Look, yet his life-blood reeks upon this steel.
Albert, yon hangs thy friend. Have none of you
Courage of vengeance? Forget I am your duke.
Think Mellida is not Piero’s blood.
Imagine on slight ground I’ll blast his honour.
Suppose I saw not that incestuous slave
Clipping the strumpet with luxurious twines!
O, numb my sense of anguish, cast my life
20 In a dead sleep, whilst law cuts off yon main,
Yon putrid ulcer of my royal blood.
Forobosco. Keep league with reason, gracious sovereign.
Piero. There glow no sparks of reason in the world;
All are raked up in ashy beastliness.
The bulk of man’s as dark as Erebus,
No branch of reason’s light hangs in his trunk.
There lives no reason to keep league withal,
I ha’ no reason to be reasonable.
Her wedding eve, linked to the noble blood
30 Of my most firmly-reconciled friend,
And found even clinged in sensuality!
O heaven! O heaven! were she as near my heart
As is my liver, I would rend her off.
Act 1
Scene 5
Enter Strotzo.
Strotzo. Whither, O whither shall I hurl vast grief?
Piero. Here, into my breast: ’tis a place built wide
By fate, to give receipt to boundless woes.
Strotzo. O no; here throb those hearts, which I must cleave
With my keen piercing news: Andrugio’s dead!
Piero. Dead?
Maria. O me, most miserable!
Piero. Dead, alas, how dead?
[Aside] Fut: weep, act, feign. Give seeming passion.
Dead, alas, how dead?
10 Strotzo. The vast delights of his large sudden joys
Opened his powers so wide, that’s native heat
So prodigally flowed t’exterior parts,
That th’inner citadel was left unmanned.
And so surprised on sudden by cold death.
Maria. O fatal, disastrous, cursed, dismal!
Choke breath and life – I breathe, I live too long.
Andrugio my lord, I come, I come!
Piero. Be cheerful princess, help, Castilio:
The lady’s swooned, help to bear her in.
20 Slow comfort to huge cares is swiftest sin.
Balurdo. Courage, courage sweet lady, ’tis Sir Geoffrey Balurdo bids you courage. Truly I am as nimble as an elephant about a lady. [Exeunt all but Antonio, Pandulpho and Alberto.]
Pandulpho. Dead?
Antonio. Dead.
Alberto. Dead!
Antonio. Why now the womb of mischief is delivered,
Of the prodigious issue of the night.
Pandulpho. Ha, ha, ha.
30 Antonio. My father dead, my love attaint of lust.
That’s a large lie, as vast as spacious hell!
Poor guiltless lady, O, accursed lie.
What, whom, whether, which shall I first lament?
A dead father, a dishonoured wife. Stand:
Methinks I feel the frame of nature shake.
Cracks not the joints of earth to bear my woes?
Alberto. Sweet prince, be patient.
Antonio. ’Slid sir, I will not in despite of thee.
Patience is slave to fools: a chain that’s fixed
40 Only to posts and senseless log-like dolts.
Alberto. ’Tis reason’s glory to command affects.
Antonio. lies thy cold father dead, his glossed eyes
New closed up by thy sad mother’s hands?
Hast thou a love as spotless as the brow
Of clearest heaven, blurred with false defames?
Are thy moist entrails crumpled up with grief
Of parching mischiefs? Tell me, does thy heart
With punching anguish spur thy galled ribs?
Then come and let’s sit and weep and wreathe our arms:
50 I’ll hear thy counsel.
Alberto. Take comfort.
Antonio. Confusion to all comfort: I defy it!
Comfort’s a parasite, a flattering Jack,
And melts resolved despair. O boundless woe,
If there be any black yet unknown grief,
If there be any horror yet unfelt,
Unthought of mischief in thy fiendlike power,
Dash it upon my miserable head.
Make me more wretch, more cursed if thou canst –
60 O, now my fate is more than I could fear:
My woes more weighty than my soul can bear. Exit.
Pandulpho. Ha, ha, ha.
Alberto. Why laugh you, uncle? That’s my coz, your son,
Whose breast hangs cased in his cluttered gore.
Pandulpho. True man, true: why, wherefore should I weep?
Come sir, kind nephew: come on: thou and I
Will talk as chorus to this tragedy.
Entreat the music strain their instruments.
With a slight touch whilst we – say on, fair coz.
70 Alberto. He was the very hope of Italy. Music sounds softly.
The blooming honour of your drooping age.
Pandulpho. True, coz, true. They say that men of hope are crushed,
Good are suppressed by base desertless clods,
That stifle gasping virtue. look, sweet youth,
How provident our quick Venetians are,
Least hooves of jades should trample on my boy.
Look how they lift him to eminence,
Heave him, ’bove reach of flesh. Ha, ha, ha.
Alberto. Uncle, this laughter ill becomes your grief.
80 Pandulpho. Would’st have me cry, run raving up and down
For my son’s loss? Would’st have me turn rank mad,
Or wring my face with mimic action,
Stamp, curse, weep, rage, and then my bosom strike?
Away, ’tis apish action, player-like.
If he is guiltless, why should tears be spent?
Thrice-blessed soul that dieth innocent.
If he is lepered with so foul a guilt,
Why should a sigh be lent, a tear be spilt?
The grip of chance is weak to wring a tear
90 From him that knows what fortitude should bear.
Listen, young blood. ’Tis not true valour’s pride,
To swagger, quarrel, swear, stamp, rave, and chide,
To stab in fume of blood, to keep loud coil,
&nbs
p; To bandy factions in domestic broils,
To dare the act of sins, whose filth excels
The blackest customs of blind infidels.
No, my loved youth: he may of valour vaunt,
Whom fortune’s loudest thunder cannot daunt,
Whom fretful gales of chance, stern fortune’s siege,
100 Makes not his reason slink, the soul’s fair liege,
Whose well-peised action ever rests upon
Not giddy humours, but discretion.
This heart in valour even Jove outgoes:
Jove is without, but this ’bove sense of woes:
And such a one eternity. Behold,
Good morrow, son: thou bid’st a fig for cold.
Sound louder music! let my breath exact
You strike sad tones unto this dismal act.
Act 2
Scene 1
The Cornets sound a sennet.
Enter two mourners with torches, two with streamers: Castilio and Forobosco with torches: a Herald bearing Andrugio’s helm and sword, the coffin: Maria supported by lucio and Alberto, Antonio by himself: Piero and Strotzo talking: Galeatzo and Matzagente, Balurdo and Pandulpho: the coffin set down: helm, sword and streamers hung up, placed by the Herald: whilst Antonio and Maria wet their handkerchers with their tears, kiss them, and lay them on the hearse, kneeling: all go out but Piero. Cornets cease, and he speaks.
Piero. Rot there, thou cerecloth that enfolds the flesh
Of my loathed foe; moulder to crumbling dust;
Oblivion choke the passage of thy fame.
Trophies of honoured birth drop quickly down:
Let naught of him, but what was vicious, live.
Though thou art dead, think not my hate is dead:
I have but newly twone my arm in the curled locks
Of snaky vengeance. Pale beetle-browed hate
But newly bustles up. Sweet wrong, I clap thy thoughts.
10 O, let me hug my bosom, rub my breast,
In hope of what may hap. Andrugio rots;
Antonio lives: umh, how long? ha, ha, how long?
Antonio packed hence, I’ll his mother wed,
Then clear my daughter of supposed lust,
Wed her to Florence heir. O, excellent!
Venice, Genoa, Florence, at my beck,
At Piero’s nod. Balurdo, O ho!
O, ’twill be rare, all unsuspected done.
I have been nursed in blood, and still have sucked
20 The steam of reeking gore. Balurdo, ho?
Enter Balurdo with a beard, half off, half on.
Balurdo. When my beard is on, most noble prince, when my beard is on!
Piero. Why, what dost thou with a beard?
Five Revenge Tragedies: The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, Antonio's Revenge, The Tragedy of Hoffman, The Revenger's Tragedy (Penguin Classics) Page 19