Maria. I give the noble duke respective thanks.
Balurdo. Respective, truly a very pretty word indeed. Indeed, Madam, I have the most respective fiddle. Did you ever smell a more sweet sound? My ditty must go thus; very witty, I assure you: I myself in an humorous passion made it, to the tune of ‘My mistress Nutriche’s beauty’. Indeed, very pretty, very retort and obtuse, I’ll assure you. ’Tis this:
My mistress’ eye doth oil my joints,
30 And makes my fingers nimble:
O love, come on, untruss your points,
My fiddlestick wants rosin.
My lady’s dugs are all so smooth,
That no flesh must them handle.
Her eyes do shine, for to say sooth
Like a new-snuffed candle.
Maria. Truly, very pathetical and unvulgar.
40 Balurdo. Pathetical and unvulgar, words of worth, excellent words. In sooth, Madam, I have taken a murr, which makes my nose run most pathetically, and unvulgarly. Have you any tobacco?
Maria. Good signior, your song.
Balurdo. Instantly, most unvulgarly, at your service
Truly, here’s the most pathetical rosin. Umh.
[Song.]
Maria. In sooth, most knightly sung, and like Sir Geoffrey.
Balurdo. Why, look you lady, I was made a knight only for my voice, and a councillor only for my wit.
Maria. I believe it. Good night, gentle sir, good night.
50 Balurdo. You will give me leave to take my leave of my mistress, and I will do it most famously in rhyme.
Farewell, adieu: sayeth thy love true,
As to part loath,
Time bids us part, mine own sweet heart,
God bless us both. Exit Balurdo.
Maria. Good night, Nutriche. Pages, leave the room,
The life of night grows short, ’tis almost dead.
Exeunt pages and Nutriche.
O thou cold widow bed, sometime thrice blest
By the warm pressure of my sleeping lord,
Open thy leaves, and whilst on thee I tread,
60 Groan out: alas my dear Andrugio’s dead.
Maria draweth the curtains, and the ghost of Andrugio is displayed, sitting on the bed.
Amazing terror, what portent is this?
Act 3
Scene 5
Andrugio. Disloyal to our hymeneal rites,
What raging heat reigns in thy strumpet blood?
Hast thou so soon forgot Andrugio?
Are our love-bands so quickly cancelled?
Where lives thy plighted faith unto this breast?
O weak Maria! Go to, calm thy tears.
I pardon thee, poor soul, O shed no tears.
Thy sex is weak. That black incarnate fiend
May trip thy faith, that hath o’erthrown my life.
10 I was empoisoned by Piero’s hand.
Join with my son, to bend up strained revenge,
Maintain a seeming favour to his suit.
Till time may form our vengeance absolute.
Enter Antonio, his arms bloody, [with] a torch and a poniard.
Antonio. See, unamazed, I will behold thy face,
Outstare the terror of thy grim aspect,
Daring the horridest object of the night.
Look how I smoke in blood, reeking the steam
Of foaming vengeance! O, my soul’s enthroned
In the triumphant chariot of revenge.
20 Methinks I am all air, and feel no weight
Of human dirt clog. This is Julio’s blood.
Rich music, father: this is Julio’s blood.
Why lives that mother?
Andrugio. Pardon ignorance. Fly dear Antonio:
Once more assume disguise, and dog the court
In feigned habit, till Piero’s blood
May even o’erflow the brim of full revenge.
Exit Antonio.
Peace, and all blessed fortunes to you both.
Fly thou from court, be peerless in revenge:
30 Sleep thou in rest, lo, here I close thy couch.
Exit Maria to her bed, Andrugio drawing the curtains.
And now ye sooty coursers of the night,
Hurry your chariot into hell’s black womb.
Darkness, make flight; graves, eat your dead again:
Let’s repossess our shrouds. Why lags delay?
Mount sparking brightness, give the world his day.
Exit Andrugio.
Act 4
Scene 1
Enter Antonio in a fool’s habit, with a little toy of a walnut shell, and soap, to make bubbles; Maria and Alberto.
Maria. Away with this disguise in any hand!
Alberto. Fie, ’tis unsuiting to your elate spirit:
Rather put on some trans-shaped cavalier,
Some habit of a spitting critic, whose mouth
Voids nothing but gentle and unvulgar
Rheum of censure; rather, assume –
Antonio. Why then should I put on the very flesh
Of solid folly. No, this coxcomb is a crown
Which I affect, even with unbounded zeal.
10 Alberto. ’Twill thwart your plot, disgrace your high resolve.
Antonio. By wisdom’s heart there is no essence mortal
That I can envy, but a plump-cheeked fool:
O, he hath a patent of immunities
Confirmed by custom, sealed by policy,
As large as spacious thought.
Alberto. You cannot press among the courtiers
And have access to –
Antonio. What? not a fool? why friend, a golden ass,
A babbled fool are sole canonical,
20 Whilst pale-cheeked wisdom, and lean-ribb’d art
Are kept in distance at the halberd’s point.
All held apocrypha, not worth survey.
Why, by the genius of that Florentine,
Deep, deep-observing, sound-brained Machiavel,
He is not wise that strives not to seem fool.
When will the duke hold fee’d intelligence,
Keep wary observation in large pay,
To dog a fool’s act?
Maria. Ay, but such feigning, known, disgraceth much.
30 Antonio. Pish, most things that morally adhere to souls,
Wholly exist in drunk opinion:
Whose reeling censure, if I value not,
It values naught.
Maria. You are transported with too slight a thought,
If you but meditate of what is past.
And what you plot to pass.
Antonio. Even in that, note a fool’s beatitude:
He is not capable of passion,
Wanting the power of distinction;
40 He bears an unturned sail with every wind:
Blow east, blow west, he stirs his course alike.
I never saw a fool lean: the chub-faced fop
Shines sleek with full-crammed fat of happiness,
Whilst studious contemplation sucks the juice
From wizards’ cheeks, who, making curious search
For nature’s secrets, the first innating cause
Laughs them to scorn, as man doth busy apes
When they will zany men. Had heaven been kind,
Creating me an honest senseless dolt,
50 A good poor fool, I should want sense to feel
The stings of anguish shoot through every vein.
I should not know what ’twere to lose a father.
I should be dead of sense, to view defame
Blur my bright love. I could not thus run mad,
As one confounded in a maze of mischief,
Staggered, stark felled with bruising stroke of chance.
I should not shoot mine eyes into the earth,
Poring for mischief, that might counterpoise
Enter lucio.
Mischief, murder and – how now, lucio?
60 Lucio. My lord, the duke, with the Vene
tian states,
Approach the great hall to judge Mellida.
Antonio. Asked he for Julio yet?
Lucio. No motion of him. Dare you trust this habit?
Antonio. Alberto, see you straight rumour me dead.
Leave me, good mother, leave me lucio,
Forsake me all. Now patience hoop my sides
Exeunt omnes, saving Antonio.
With steeled ribs, lest I do burst my breast
With struggling passions. Now disguise, stand bold.
Poor scorned habits, oft choice souls enfold.
Act 4
Scene 2
The cornets sound a sennet.
Enter Castilio, Forobosco, Balurdo, and Alberto, with poleaxes; lucio bare; Piero and Maria talking together; two senators; Galeatzo and Matzagente, Nutriche.
Piero. Entreat me not: there’s not a beauty lives,
Hath that imperial predominance
O’er my affects, as your enchanting graces.
Yet give me leave to be myself.
Antonio. [Aside] A villain.
Piero. Just.
Antonio. [Aside] Most just.
Piero. Most just and upright in our judgement seat.
Were Mellida mine eye, with such a blemish
10 Of most loathed looseness, I would scratch it out.
Produce the strumpet in her bridal robes,
That she may blush t’appear so white in show,
And black in inward substance. Bring her in.
Exeunt Forobosco and Castilio.
I hold Antonio, for his father’s sake,
So very dearly, so entirely choice,
That knew I but a thought of prejudice,
Imagined ’gainst his high ennobled blood,
I would maintain a mortal feud, undying hate
’Gainst the conceiver’s life. And shall justice sleep
20 In fleshly lethargy, for mine own blood’s favour,
When the sweet prince hath so apparent scorn
By my – I will not call her – daughter. Go,
Conduct in the loved youth, Antonio.
Exit Alberto to fetch Antonio.
He shall behold me spurn my private good.
Piero loves his honour more than’s blood.
Antonio. [Aside] The devil he does more than both.
Balurdo. Stand back there, fool; I do hate a fool most, most pathetically. O these that have no sap of retort and obtuse wit in them, faugh!
30 Antonio. [Blowing bubbles.] Puff, hold world! puff, hold bubble! puff, hold world! puff, break not behind! puff, thou art full of wind! puff, keep up by wind! puff, ’tis broke; and now I laugh like a good fool at the breath of mine own lips, he, he, he, he, he!
Balurdo. You fool!
Antonio. You fool. Puff!
Balurdo. I cannot digest thee, the unvulgar fool. Go fool!
Piero. Forbear, Balurdo, let the fool along.
Come hither. (Ficto) Is he your fool?
40 Maria. Yes, my loved lord.
Piero. [Aside] Would all the states in Venice were like thee.
O then I were secured.
He that’s a villain, or but meanly souled,
Must still converse, and cling to routs of fools,
That cannot search the leaks of his defects.
O, your unsalted fresh fool is your only man:
The vinegar tart spirits are too piercing,
Too searching in the unglued joints of shaken wits,
Find they a chink, they’ll wriggle in and in,
50 And eat like salt sea in his siddow ribs,
Till they have opened all his rotten parts,
Unto the vaunting surge of base contempt,
And sunk the tossed galleass in depth
Of whirlpool scorn. Give me an honest fop –
Dud-a dud-a? Why lo, sir, this takes he,
As grateful now, as a monopoly.
Act 4
Scene 3
The still flutes sound softly. Enter Forobosco, and Castilio: Mellida supported by two waiting women.
Mellida. All honour to this royal confluence.
Piero. Forbear, impure, to blot bright honour’s name
With thy defiled lips. The flux of sin
Flows from thy tainted body. Thou so foul,
So all dishonoured, can’st no honour give,
No wish of good, that can have good effect
To this grave senate, and illustrate bloods.
Why stays the doom of death?
1 Senator. Who riseth up to manifest her guilt?
10 2 Senator. You must produce apparent proof, my lord.
Piero. Why, where is Strotzo? he that swore he saw
The very act, and vowed that Feliche fled
Upon his sight, on which, I brake the breast
Of the adulterous lecher with five stabs.
Go fetch in Strotzo. Now thou impudent,
If thou hast any drop of modest blood
Shrouded within thy cheeks; blush, blush for shame,
That rumour yet may say, thou felt’st defame.
Mellida. Produce the devil. let your Strotzo come:
20 I can defeat his strongest argument
Piero. With what?
Mellida. With tears, with blushes, sighs, and clasped hands,
With innocent upreared arms to heaven:
With my unnooked simplicity. These, these
Must, will, can only quit my heart of guilt.
Heaven permits not taintless blood be spilt.
If no remorse live in your savage breast –
Piero. Then thou must die.
Mellida. Yet dying, I’ll be blest.
30 Piero. Accursed by me.
Mellida. Yet blest, in that I strove,
To live, and die –
Piero. My hate.
Mellida. Antonio’s love.
Antonio. [Aside] Antonio’s love!
Enter Strotzo, a cord about his neck.
Strotzo. O what vast ocean of repentant tears
Can cleanse my breast from the polluting filth
Of ulcerous sin! Supreme efficient,
Why cleav’st thou not my breast with thunderbolts
40 Of winged revenge?
Piero. What means this passion?
Antonio. [Aside] What villainy are they decocting now? Umh.
Strotzo. In me convertite ferrum, o proceres.
Nihil iste, nec ista.
Piero. lay hold on him. What strange portent is this?
Strotzo. I will not flinch. Death, hell, more grimly stare
Within my heart, than in your threatening brows.
Record, thou threefold guard of dreadest power;
What I here speak is forced from my lips
50 By the pulsive strain of conscience.
I have a mount of mischief clogs my soul,
As weighty as the high-knolled Appennine,
Which I must straight disgorge, or breast will burst.
I have defamed this lady wrongfully,
By instigation of Antonio,
Whose reeling love, tossed on each fancy’s surge,
Began to loathe before it fully enjoyed.
Piero.Go, seize Antonio, guard him strongly in.
Exit Forobosco.
Strotzo. By his ambition, being only bribed,
60 Fee’d by his impious hand, I poisoned
His aged father: that his thirsty hope
Might quench their dropsy of aspiring drought,
With full unbounded quaff.
Piero. Seize me Antonio!
Strotzo. O, why permit you now such scum of filth
As Strotzo is, to live, and taint the air
With his infectious breath?
Piero. Myself will be thy strangler, unmatched slave.
Piero comes from his chair, snatcheth the cord’s end, and Castilio aideth him; both strangle Strotzo.
Strotzo. Now change your –
70 Piero. Ay, pluck, Castilio! I change my hum
our: pluck, Castilio.
Die, with thy death’s entreats even in thy jaws. [Strotzo dies.]
Now, now, now, now, now, my plot begins to work.
Why, thus should statesmen do,
That cleave through knots of craggy policies,
Use men like wedges, one strike out another
Till by degrees the tough and gnarly trunk
Be rived in sunder. Where’s Antonio?
Enter Alberto, running.
Alberto. O black accursed fate! Antonio’s drowned!
Piero. Speak, on thy faith! on thy allegiance speak.
80 Alberto. As I do love Piero, he is drowned.
Antonio. [Aside] In an inundation of amazement.
Mellida. Ay, is this the close of all my strains in love?
O me, most wretched maid!
Piero. Antonio drowned? how? how? Antonio drowned?
Alberto. Distraught and raving, from a turret’s top
He threw his body into the high swollen sea,
And as he headlong topsyturvy dinged down,
He still cried Mellida.
Antonio. [Aside] My love’s bright crown.
90 Mellida. He still cried Mellida?
Piero. Daughter, methinks your eyes should sparkle joy,
Your bosom rise on tiptoe at this news.
Mellida. Ay me!
Piero. How now? Ay me? why, art not great of thanks
To gracious heaven, for the just revenge
Upon the author of thy obloquies?
Maria. [Aside] Sweet beauty, I could sigh as fast as you,
But that I know that, which I weep to know:
His fortunes should be such he dare not show
100 His open presence.
Mellida. I know he loved me dearly, dearly, ay.
And since I cannot live with him, I die.
Piero. ’Fore heaven, her speech falters: look, she swoons!
Convey her up into her private bed.
Maria, Nutriche and the ladies bear out Mellida, as being swooned.
I hope she’ll live. If not –
Antonio. [Aside] Antonio’s dead, the fool will follow too, he, he, he!
Now works the scene; quick observations scud
To cote the plot, or else the path is lost;
My very self am gone, my way is fled;
110 Ay, all is lost, if Mellida is dead. Exit Antonio.
Piero. Alberto, I am kind, Alberto, kind.
I am sorry for thy coz, i’faith I am.
Go, take him down, and bear him to his father:
Let him be buried, look ye, I’ll pay the priest.
Alberto. Please you to admit his father to the court?
Five Revenge Tragedies: The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, Antonio's Revenge, The Tragedy of Hoffman, The Revenger's Tragedy (Penguin Classics) Page 22