Almost to death poor wretches not worth striking,
But fawn with slavish flattery on damned vices
So great men act them. You clap hands at those,
Where the true poet indeed doth scorn to guild
A gaudy tomb with glory of his verse,
Which coffins stinking carrion. No, his lines
Are free as his invention. No base fear
Can shake his pen to temporise even with kings,
The blacker are their crimes, he louder sings.
Go, go, thou canst not write: ’tis but my calling
The muses help, that I may be inspired.
Canst a woman be a poet, Sir?
POET
Yes, Madam, best of all. For poesie
Is but feigning, feigning is to lie,
And women practice lying more than men.
ONAELIA
Nay, but if I should write, I would tell truth.
How might I reach a lofty strain?
POET
Thus Madam:
Books, music, wine, brave company and good cheer
Make poets to soar high and sing most clear.
ONAELIA
Are they born poets?
POET
Yes.
ONAELIA
Die they?
POET
Oh, never die.
ONAELIA
My misery is then a poet sure,
For time has given it an eternity.
What sort of poets are there?
POET
Two sorts lady:
The great poets and the small poets.
ONAELIA
Great and small!
Which do you call the great? The fat ones?
POET
No:
But such as have great heads, which emptied forth,
Fill all the world with wonder at their lines;
Fellows which swell big with the wind of praise.
The small ones are but shrimps of poesie.
ONAELIA
Which in the kingdom now is the best poet?
POET
Emulation.
ONAELIA
Which the next?
POET
Necessity.
ONAELIA
And which the worst?
POET
Self-love.
ONAELIA
Say I turn poet, what should I get?
POET
Opinion.
ONAELIA
Alas, I have got too much of that already,
Opinion is my evidence, judge and jury.
Mine own guilt and opinion now condemn me.
I’ll therefore be no poet, no nor make
Ten muses of your nine. I’ll swear for this;
Verses, though freely born, like slaves are sold,
I crown thy lines with bays, thy love with gold:
So fare thou well.
POET
Our pen shall honour thee.
Exit Poet, enter Cornego.
CORNEGO The poet’s book Madam, has got the inflammation of the liver, it died of a burning fever.
ONAELIA
What shall I do, Cornego? For this poet
Has filled me with a fury. I could write
Strange satires now against adulterers,
And marriage-breakers.
CORNEGO
I believe you Madam - but here comes your uncle.
Enter Medina, Alanzo, Carlo, Alba, Sebastian, Daenia.
MEDINA
Where’s our niece?
Turn your brains round, and recollect your spirits,
And see your noble friends and kinsmen ready
To pay revenge his due.
ONAELIA
That word revenge,
Startles my sleepy soul, now thoroughly wakened
By the fresh object of my hapless child
Whose wrongs reach beyond mine.
SEBASTIAN
How doth my sweet mother?
ONAELIA
How doth my prettiest boy?
ALANZO
Wrongs, like great whirlwinds,
Shake highest battlements. Few for heaven would care,
Should they be ever happy. They are half gods
Who both in good days, and good fortune share.
ONAELIA
I have no part in either.
CARLO
You shall in both,
Can swords but cut the way.
ONAELIA
I care not much, so you but gently strike him,
And that my child escape the lightening.
MEDINA
For that our nerves are knit; is there not here
A promising face of manly princely virtues,
And shall so sweet a plant be rooted out
By him that ought to fix it fast in the ground?
Sebastian, what will you do to him
That hurts your mother?
SEBASTIAN
The King my father shall kill him I trow.
DAENIA
But sweet cousin, the King loves not your mother.
SEBASTIAN
I’ll make him love her when I am a King.
MEDINA
La you, there’s in him a king’s heart already.
As therefore we before together vowed,
Lay all your warlike hands upon my sword,
And swear.
SEBASTIAN
Will you swear to kill me, Uncle?
MEDINA
Oh not for twenty worlds.
SEBASTIAN
Nay then draw and spare not, for I love fighting.
MEDINA
Stand in the midst, sweet coz, we are your guard.
These hammers shall for thee beat out a crown
If all hit right. Swear therefore, noble friends,
By your high bloods, by true nobility,
By what you owe religion, owe to your country,
Owe to the raising your posterity,
By love you bear to virtue, and to arms,
The shield of innocence, swear not to sheath
Your swords, when once drawn forth.
ONAELIA
Oh not to kill him
For twenty thousand worlds.
MEDINA
Will you be quiet?
Your swords when once drawn forth, till they have forced
Yon godless, perjurous, perfidious man…
ONAELIA
Pray rail not at him so.
MEDINA
Art mad? You’re idle
Till they have forced him
To cancel his late lawless bond he sealed
At the high altar to his Florentine strumpet,
And in his bed lay this his troth-plight wife.
ONAELIA
I, I that’s well. Pray swear.
ALL
To this we swear.
SEBASTIAN
Uncle, I swear too.
MEDINA
Our forces let’s unite, be bold and secret,
And lion-like with open eyes let’s sleep,
Streams smooth and slowly running are most deep.
Exeunt.
ACT III SCENE THREE
ENTER KING, QUEEN, Malateste, Valasco, Lopez, [Roderigo and guards].
KING
The presence door be guarded, let none enter
On forfeit of your lives, without our knowledge.
Oh you are false physicians all unto me,
You bring me poison, but no antidotes.
QUEEN
Yourself that poison brews.
KING
Prithee, no more.
QUEEN
I will, I must speak more.
KING
Thunder aloud.
QUEEN
My child, yet newly quickened in my womb,
Is blasted with the fires of bastardy.
KING
Who! Who dares once but think so in his dream?
MALATESTE
Medina’s faction preached it openly.
KING
Be cursed he and his faction. Oh how I labour
For these preventions! But so cross is fate
My ills are ne’r hid from me, but their cures.
What’s to be done?
QUEEN
That which being left undone,
Your life lies at the stake. Let them be breathless
Both brat and mother.
KING
Ha!
MALATESTE
She plays true music Sir.
The mischiefs you are drenched in are so full,
You need not fear to add to them. Since now
No way is left to guard thy rest secure,
But by a means like this.
LOPEZ
All Spain rings forth
Medina’s name, and his confederates.
RODRIGO
All his allies and friends rush into troops
Like raging torrents.
VALESCO
And loud trumpet forth
Your perjuries. Seducing the wild people,
And with rebellious faces threatening all.
KING
I shall be massacred in this their spleen,
Ere I have time to guard myself. I feel
The fire already falling. Where’s our guard?
MALATESTE
Planted at guarded gate, with a strict charge
That none shall enter but by your command.
KING
Let them be doubled. I am full of thoughts,
A thousand wheels toss my incertain fears,
There is a storm in my hot boiling brains,
Which rises without wind. A horrid one.
What clamour’s that?
QUEEN
Some treason. Guard the King.
Enter Balthazar drawn, [he strikes] one of the guards who falls.
BALTHAZAR
Not in?
MALATESTE
One of the guards is slain, keep off the murderer.
BALTHAZAR
I am none, sir.
VALASCO
There’s a man dropped down by thee.
KING
Thou desperate fellow, thus press in upon us!
Is murder all the story we shall read?
What King can stand, when thus his subjects bleed?
What has thou done?
BALTHAZAR
No hurt.
KING
Played even the wolf,
And from a fold committed to my charge,
Stolen and devoured one of the flock.
BALTHAZAR
You have sheep enough for all that, Sir. I have killed none though.
Or if I have, mine own blood, shed in your quarrels, may beg my
pardon. My business was in haste to you.
KING
I would not have thy sin scored on my head
For all the Indian Treasury. I prithee tell me,
Suppose thou had’st our pardon, oh can that cure
Thy wounded conscience, can there my pardon help thee?
Yet having deserved well both of Spain and us,
We will not pay thy worth with loss of life,
But banish thee for ever.
BALTHAZAR
For a groom’s death?
KING
No more. We banish thee our court and Kingdom.
A King that fosters men so dipped in blood,
May be called merciful, but never good.
Be gone upon thy life.
BALTHAZAR
Well, farewell.
Exit Balthazar.
VALASCO
The fellow is not dead, but wounded sir.
QUEEN
After him Malateste. In our lodging
Stay that rough fellow, he’s the man shall do’t.
Haste or my hopes are lost.
Exit Malateste.
Why are you sad, sir?
KING
For thee, Paulina, swell my troubled thoughts
Like billows beaten by two warring winds.
QUEEN
Be you ruled but ruled by me, I’ll make a calm
Smooth as the breast of heaven.
KING
Instruct me how.
QUEEN
You, as your fortunes tie you, are inclined
To have the blow given.
KING
Where’s the instrument?
QUEEN
’Tis found in Balthazar.
KING
He’s banished.
QUEEN
True
But stayed by me for this.
KING
His spirit is hot
And rugged, but so honest that his soul
Will never turn devil to do it.
QUEEN
Put it to trial.
Retire a little, hither I’ll send for him,
Offer repeal and favours if he do it.
But if he deny, you have no finger in’t,
And then his doom of banishment stands good.
KING
Be happy in thy workings, I obey.
Exit King
QUEEN
Stay Lopez.
LOPEZ
Madam.
QUEEN
Step to our lodging, Lopez
And instantly bid Malateste bring
The banished Balthazar to us.
LOPEZ
I shall.
Exit Lopez.
QUEEN
Thrive my black plots, the mischiefs I have set
Must not so die. Ills must new ills beget.
Enter Malateste and Balthazar.
BALTHAZAR
Now! What hot poisoned custard must I put my spoon into now?
QUEEN
None, for mine honour is now thy protection.
MALATESTE
Which, noble soldier, she will pawn for thee
But never forfeit.
BALTHAZAR
’Tis a fair gage , keep it.
QUEEN
Oh Balthazar! I am thy friend, and marked thee.
When the King sentenced thee to banishment
Fire sparkled from thine eyes of rage and grief.
Rage to be doomed so for a groom so base,
And grief to lose thy Country. Thou hast killed none,
The milk-sop is but wounded, thou are not banished.
BALTHAZAR If I were, I lose nothing, I can make any country mine. I have a private coat for Italian Stilettos, I can be treacherous with the Walloon, drunk with the Dutch, a chimney-sweeper with the Irish, a gentleman with the Welsh and true arrant thief with the English. What then is my country to me?
QUEEN
The King, who rap’d with fury, banished thee,
Shall give thee favours, yield but to destroy
What him distempers.
BALTHAZAR
So. And what is the dish I must dress?
QUEEN
Only the cutting off a pair of lives.
BALTHAZAR
I love no red-wine healths.
QUEEN
The King commands it, you are but executioner.
BALTHAZAR The hang-man? An office that will hold so long as hemp lasts. Why do not you beg the office, Sir?
QUEEN
Thy victories in field never did crown thee
As this one Act shall.
BALTHAZAR
Prove but that, ’tis done.
QUEEN
Follow him close, he’s yielding.
MALATESTE
Thou shalt be called thy Country’s Patriot,
For quenching out a fire now newly kindling
In factious bosoms, and shalt thereby save
More Noble Spaniards lives, than thou slew Moors.
QUEEN
Art thou yet converted?
BALTHAZAR
No point.
QUEEN
Read me then:
Medina’s niece, by a contract fro
m the King,
Lays claim to all that’s mine, my crown, my bed.
A son she has by him must fill the throne,
If her great faction can but work that wonder.
Now hear me…
BALTHAZAR
I do with gaping ears.
QUEEN
I swell with hopeful issue to the King.
BALTHAZAR
A brave Don call you mother.
MALATESTE
Of this danger the fear afflicts the King.
BALATAZAR
Cannot much blame him.
QUEEN
If therefore by the riddance of this Dame …
BALTHAZAR
Riddance? Oh! The meaning on’t is murder.
MALATESTE
Stab her, or so, that’s all.
QUEEN
That Spain be free from frights, the King from fears,
And I, now held his infamy, be called Queen,
The treasure of the Kingdom shall lie open
To pay thy noble darings.
BALTHAZAR Come. I’ll do it, provided I hear Jove call to me, though he roars. I must have the King’s hand to this warrant, else I dare not serve it upon my conscience.
QUEEN
Be firm then. Behold the King is come.
Enter King.
BALTHAZAR
Acquaint him.
QUEEN
I found the metal hard, but with oft beating
He’s now so softened, he shall take impression
From any seal you give him.
KING
Balthazar,
Come hither, listen. Whatsoe’er our Queen
Has importuned thee to touching Onaelia
Niece to the Constable, and her young son,
My voice shall second it, and sign her promise.
BALTHAZAR
Their riddance?
KING
That.
BALTHAZAR
What way? By poison?
KING
So.
BALTHAZAR
Starving? Or strangling, stabbing, smothering?
QUEEN
Good.
KING
Any way, so ’tis done.
BALTHAZAR
But I will have, Sir,
This under your own hand, that you desire it,
You plot it, set me on to’t.
KING
Pen, ink and paper.
[King writes and signs document.]
BALTHAZAR
And then as large a pardon as law and wit can engross for me.
KING
Thou shalt have my pardon.
BALTHAZAR
A word more, Sir, pray will you tell me one thing?
KING
Yes, any thing dear Balthazar.
BALTHAZAR Suppose I have your strongest pardon, can that cure my wounded conscience? Can there your pardon help me? You not only knock the ewe on the head, but cut the innocent lamb’s throat too, yet you are no butcher.
QUEEN
Is this thy promised yielding to an act
So wholesome for thy country?
KING
Chide him not.
BALTHAZAR
I would not have this sin scored on my head
For all the Indian Treasury.
KING
That song no more.
Complete Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker Page 36