To cut in sunder wedlock’s sacred knot
Tied by heaven’s fingers! To make Spain a bonfire
To quench which must a second deluge rain
In showers of blood, no water. If you do this
There is an arm armipotent that can fling you
Into a base grave, and your palaces
With lightening strike, and of their ruins make
A tomb for you, unpitied and abhorred,
Bear witness all you lamps celestial
I wash my hands of this.
KING
Rise my good angel,
Whose holy tunes beat from me that evil spirit
Which jogs mine elbow, hence thou dog of hell.
MEDINA
Bow wow.
KING
Bark out no more thou mastiff, get you all gone,
And let my soul sleep. [Aside to Balthazar] There’s gold, peace, see
it done.
Exit King.
BALTHAZAR
Sirra, you salsa-perilla , rascal, toads-gut, you whorson pockey
French spawn of a butsten-bellyed spider. Do you hear Monsieur?
MEDINA
Why do you bark and snap at my Narcissus, as if I were de French dog?
BALTHAZAR
You cur of Cerberus litter,
[Strikes him]
You’ll poison the honest Lady? Do but once toot into her chamber-pot, and I’ll make thee look worse than a witch does upon a close stool.
CARDINAL
You shall not dare to touch him, stood he here
Single before thee.
BALTHAZAR
I’ll cut the rat into anchovies.
CARDINAL
I’ll make thee kiss his hand, embrace him, love him
And call him …
Medina [reveals his true identity].
BALTHAZAR The perfection of all Spaniards, Mars in little, the best book of the art of war printed in these times. As a French doctor, I would have given you pellets for pills, but as my noblest Lord, rip my heart out in your service.
MEDINA
Thou are the truest Clock
That e’er to time paidst tribute, honest soldier,
I lost mine own shape, and put on a French
Only to try thy truth, and the King’s falsehood,
Both which I find. Now this great Spanish volume
Is opened to me, I read him o’er and o’er,
Oh what black characters are printed in him.
CARDINAL
Nothing but certain ruin threats your niece,
Without prevention. Well this plot was laid
In such disguise to sound him, they that know
How to meet dangers, are the less afraid.
Yet let me counsel you not to text down
These wrongs in red lines.
MEDINA
No, I will not, father.
Now that I have anatomised his thoughts,
I’ll read a lecture on them that shall save
Many men’s lives, and to the kingdom minister
Most wholesome surgery. Here’s our aphorism.
These letters from us in our niece’s name,
You know treat of a marriage.
CARDINAL
There’s the strong anchor
To stay all in this tempest.
MEDINA
Holy sir,
With these works you the King, and so prevail
That all these mischiefs hull with flagging sail.
CARDINAL
My best in this I’ll do.
MEDINA
Soldier, thy breast
I must lock better things in.
BALTHAZAR
’Tis your chest,
With three good keys to keep it from opening an honest heart, a
daring hand, and a pocket which scorns money.
Exeunt.
ACT V SCENE ONE
ENTER KING, CARDINAL with letters, [Valesco and Lopez].
KING
Commend us to Medina, say his letters
Right pleasing are, and that, except himself
Nothing could be more welcome. Counsel him,
To blot the opinion out of factious numbers,
Only to have his ordinary train
Waiting upon him. For, to quit all fears
Upon his side of us, our very court
Shall even but dimly shine with some few Dons,
Freely to prove our longings great to peace.
CARDINAL
The Constable expects some pawn from you,
That in this fairy circle shall rise up
No fury to confound his niece nor him.
KING
A King’s word is engaged.
CARDINAL
It shall be taken.
KING
Valasco, call the Captain of our Guard,
Bid him attend us instantly.
VALASCO
I shall.
Exit Valasco.
KING
Lopez come hither. See,
Letters from Duke Medina, both in the name
Of him and all his faction, offering peace,
And our old love, his niece Onaelia
In marriage with her free and fair consent
To Cockadillio, a Don of Spain.
LOPEZ
Will you refuse this?
KING
My crown as soon. They feel their sinewy plots
Belike to shrink i’the joints. And fearing ruin,
Have found this cement out to piece up all,
Which more endangers all.
LOPEZ
How sir? Endangers!
KING
Lions may hunted be into the snare,
But if they once break loose, woe be to him
That first seized on them. A poor prisoner scorns
To kiss his jailer. And shall a king be choked
With sweet-meats by false traitors! No, I will fawn
On them as they stroke me, till they are fast
But in this paw. And then…
LOPEZ
A brave revenge!
The Captain of your Guard.
Enter Alanzo, the Captain.
KING
Upon thy life
Double our guard this day. Let every man
Bear a charged pistol hid, and, at a watch-word
Given by a musket, when our self sees time,
Rush in, and, if Medina’s faction wrestle
Against your forces, kill, but if yield, save.
Be secret!
ALANZO
I am charmed, Sir.
Exit Alanzo.
KING
Watch Valasco.
If any wear a Cross, feather or glove,
Or such prodigious signs of a knit faction,
Table their names up. At our court-gate plant
Good strength to bar them out, if once they swarm.
Do this upon thy life.
VALASCO
Not death shall fright me.
Exit [Valasco and Lopez,] enter Balthazar.
BALTHAZAR
’Tis done, Sir.
KING
Death! What’s Done?
BALTHAZAR Young cub’s flayed, but the she-fox shifting her hole is fled. The little jackanapes, the boy’s brained.
KING
Sebastian?
BALTHAZAR
He shall ne’r speak more Spanish.
KING
Thou teachest me to curse thee.
BALTHAZAR
For a bargain you set your hand to.
KING
Half my crown I’d lose were it undone.
BALTHAZAR
But half a crown! That’s nothing.
His brains stick in my conscience more than yours.
KING
How lost I the French doctor?
BALTHAZAR
As Frenchmen lose their hair. Here was too hot staying for him.
KING
BALTHAZAR
Your gold, Sir.
KING
Go with Judas and repent.
BALTHAZAR
So men hate whores after lust’s heat is spent.
I’m gone, Sir.
KING
Tell me true, is he dead?
BALTHAZAR
Dead.
KING
No matter. ’Tis but morning of revenge,
The sunset shall be red and tragical.
Exit King.
BALTHAZAR
Sin is a raven croaking her own fall.
Exit Balthazar.
ACT V SCENE TWO
ENTER MEDINA, DAENIA, Alba, Carlo and The Faction with Rosemary in their hats.
MEDINA
Keep locked the door, and let none enter to us
But who shares our fortunes.
DAENIA
Lock the doors.
ALBA
What entertainment did the King bestow
Upon your letters and the Cardinal’s?
MEDINA
With a devouring eye he read them o’er,
Swallowing our offers into his empty bosom,
As gladly as the parched earth drinks healths
Out of the cup of heaven.
CARLO
Little suspecting
What dangers closely lie enambushed.
DAENIA
Let us not trust to that. There’s in his breast
Both fox and lion, and both these beasts can bite.
We must not now behold the narrowest loop-hole,
But presently suspect a winged bullet
Flies whizzing by our ears.
MEDINA
For when I let
The plummet fall to sound his very soul
In his close-chamber, being French-Doctor like,
He to the Cardinal’s ear sung sorcerous notes,
The burden of his song, to mine, was death,
Onaelia’s murder, and Sebastian’s.
And think you his voice alters now? ’Tis strange,
To see how brave this tyrant shows in court,
Throned like a god. Great men are pretty stars,
When his rays shine, wonder fills up all eyes
By sight of him, let him but once check sin,
About him round all cry, oh excellent King!
Oh Saint-like man! But, let this King retire
Into his closet to put off his robes,
He like a player leaves his part too.
Open his breast, and with a sunbeam search it,
There’s no such man. This King of gilded clay,
Within is ugliness, lust, treachery,
And a base soul, though reared Colossus-like.
Balthazar beats to come.
DAENIA
None till he speaks, and that we know his voice.
Who are you?
BALTHAZAR (within) An honest house-keeper in Rosemary Lane too, if you dwell in the same parish.
MEDINA
Oh ’tis our honest soldier, give him entrance.
BALTHAZAR
Men show like coarses, for I meet few but are stuck with Rosemary.
Every one asked me who was married today, and I told them Adultery
and Repentance, and that Shame and a Hangman followed them to church.
MEDINA
There’s but two parts to play, shame has done hers,
But execution must close up the scene,
And for that cause these sprigs are worn by all,
Bags of marriage, now of funeral,
For death this day turns courtier.
BALTHAZAR
Who must dance with him?
MEDINA
The King, and all that are our opposites.
That dart or this must fly into the court
Either to shoot this blazing star from Spain,
Or else so long to wrap him up in clouds,
Till all the fatal fires in him burn out,
Leaving his state and conscience clear from doubt
Of following uproars.
ALBA
Kill not, but surprise him.
CARLO
That’s my voice still.
MEDINA
Thine, soldier?
BALTHAZAR Oh, this colic of a kingdom, when the wind of treason gets amongst the small guts, what a rumbling and a roaring it keeps. And yet, make the best of it you can, it goes on stinking. Kill a King?
DAENIA
Why?
BALTHAZAR If men should pull the sun out of heaven every time ’tis eclipsed, not all the wax nor tallow in Spain would serve to make us candles for one year.
MEDINA
No way to purge
The sick state, but by opening a vein.
BALTHAZAR Is that your French physic? If every one of us should be whipped according to our faults, to be lashed at a cart’s tail would be held but a flea biting.
Enter Signor No.
MEDINA whispers
What are you? Come from the King?
NO
No.
BALTHAZAR
No? More no’s? I know him, let him enter.
MEDINA
Signor, I thank your kind intelligence,
The news long since was sent into our ears,
Yet we embrace your love, so fare you well.
CARLO
Will you smell to a sprig of rosemary?
NO
No.
BALTHAZAR
Will you be hanged?
NO
No.
BALTHAZAR
This is either Signor No, or no Signor.
MEDINA
He makes his love to us a warning piece
To arm ourselves against we come to court,
Because the guard is doubled.
ALL
Tush, we care not.
BALTHAZAR If any here arms his hand to cut off the head, let him first pluck out my throat. In any noble act I’ll wade chin-deep with you. But to kill a King?
MEDINA
No hear me…
BALTHAZAR You were better, my Lord, sail five hundred times to Bantam in the West Indies, that once to Barathrum in the Low Countries. It’s hot going under the line there, the calenture of the soul is a most miserable madness.
MEDINA
Turn then this wheel of fate from shedding blood
Till with her own hand Justice weighs all.
BALTHAZAR
Good.
Exeunt.
ACT V SCENE THREE
Enter Queen, Malateste.
QUEEN
Must then his trul be once more sphered in court
To triumph in my spoils, in my eclipses?
And I like moping Juno sit, whilst Jove
Varies his lust into five hundred shapes
To steal to his whore’s bed! No Malateste,
Italian fires of Jealousy burn my marrow.
For to delude my hopes, the lecherous king
Cuts out this robe of cunning marriage,
To cover his incontinence, which flames
Hot, as my fury, in his black desires.
I am swollen big with child of vengeance now,
And till delivered, feel the throws of hell.
MALATESTE
Just is your imagination, high and noble,
And the brave heat of a true Florentine:
For Spain trumpets abroad her interest
In the King’s heart, and with a black coal draws
On every wall your scoffed at injuries,
As one that has the refuse of her sheets,
And the sick Autumn of the weakened King,
Where she drunk pleasures up in the full spring.
QUEEN
That, Malateste, that, that torrent wracks me.
But Hymen’s torch, held downward, shall drop out,
And for it, the mad Furies swing their brands
MALATESTE
The priest that joins them,
Our twin born malediction.
QUEEN
Loud it may speak.
MALATESTE
The herbs and flowers to strew the wedding way,
Be cypress, eugh, cold colliquintida.
QUEEN
Herbane and poppy, and that magical weed
Which hags at midnight watch to catch the seed.
MALATESTE
To these our execrations, and what mischief
Hell can but hatch in a distracted brain,
I’ll be the executioner, though it look
So horrid it can fright even murder back.
QUEEN
Poison his whore today, for thou shalt wait
On the King’s cup, and when heated with wine
He calls to drink the bride’s health, marry her
Alive to a gaping grave.
MALATESTE
At board?
QUEEN
At board.
MALATESTE
When she being guarded round about with friends,
Like a fairy land, hemmed with rocks and seas,
What rescue shall I find?
QUEEN
Mine arms. Dost faint?
Stood all the Pyrenean hills that part
Spain and our country, on each others shoulders,
Burning with Aetnean flame, yet thou should’st on,
As being my steel of resolution,
First striking sparkles from my flinty breast.
Wert thou to catch the horses of the sun
Fast by their bridles, and to turn back day,
Would’st thou not do it, base coward, to make way
To the Italians second bliss, revenge?
MALATESTE
Were my bones threatened to the wheel of torture
I’ll do it.
Enter Lopez.
QUEEN
A raven’s voice, and it likes me well.
LOPEZ
The King expects your presence.
MALATESTE
So, so we come.
To turn this bride’s day to a day of doom.
Exeunt.
ACT V SCENE FOUR
A BANQUET SET out, cornets sounding; enter at one door, Lopez, Valasco, Alanzo, No. After them King, Cardinal, with Don Cockadillio, Bridegroom, Queen and Malateste after. At the other door, Alba, Carlo, Roderigo, Medina and Daenia leading Onaelia as bride, Cornego, and Juanna after, Balthazar alone. The Bride and Bridegroom kiss, and by the Cardinal are joined hand in hand. The King is very merry, hugging Medina very lovingly.
KING
For half Spain’s weigh in ingots I’d not lose
This little man today.
MEDINA
Not for so much
Twice told Sir, would I miss your Kingly presence.
Mine eyes have lost the acquaintance of your face
So long, and I so little late read o’er
That index of the royal book your mind,
Complete Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker Page 38