That scarce, without your comment, can I tell
When in those leaves you turn o’er smiles or frowns.
KING
’Tis dimness of your sight, no fault i’the letter.
Medina, you shall find that free from erratas,
And for a proof, if I could breathe my heart
In welcome forth, this hall should ring naught else.
Welcome Medina, Good Marquis Daenia,
Dons of Spain all welcome.
My dearest love and Queen, be it your place
To entertain the bride, and do her grace.
QUEEN
With all the love I can, whose fire is such,
To give her heat, I cannot burn too much.
KING
Contracted bride, and bridegroom sit,
Sweet flowers not plucked in season lose their scent,
So will our pleasures. Father Cardinal,
Methinks this morning new begins our reign.
CARDINAL
Peace had her Sabbath ne’r till now in Spain.
KING
Where is our noble soldier Balthazar?
So close in conference with that Signor?
NO
No.
KING
What think’st thou of this great day Balthazar?
BALTHAZAR Of this day? Why as of a new play, if it ends well, all’s well. All but men are but actors, now if you being the King should be out of your part, or the Queen out of hers, or your Dons out if theirs, here’s No will never be out of his.
NO
No.
BALTHAZAR ‘Twere a lamentable piece of stuff to see great statesmen have vile exits, but I hope there are nothing but plaudities in all your eyes.
KING
Mine I protest are free.
QUEEN
And mine by heaven.
MALATESTE [Aside]
Free from one good look till the blow be given.
KING
Wine. A full cup crowned to Medina’s health.
MEDINA
Your highness this day so much honours me,
That I to pay you what I truly owe,
My life shall venture for it.
DAENIA
So shall mine.
KING
Onaelia, you are sad. Why frowns your brow?
ONAELIA
A foolish memory of my past ills
Folds up my look in furrows of old care,
But my heart’s merry, Sir.
KING
Which mirth to heighten,
Your bridegroom and yourself first pledge this health
Which we begin to our High Constable.
Three cups filled, one to the King, the second to the Bridegroom and the third to Onaelia, with whom the King compliments.
QUEEN
Is’t speeding?
MALATESTE
As all our Spanish figs are.
KING
Here’s to Medina’s heart with all my heart.
MEDINA
My heart shall pledge your heart i’th deepest draught
That ever Spaniard drank.
KING
Medina mocks me,
Because I wrong her with the largest bowl.
I’ll change with thee Onaelia.
Malateste rages.
QUEEN
Sir, you shall not!
KING
Fear you I cannot fetch it off?
QUEEN
Malateste!
KING
This is your scorn to her, because I am doing
This poorest honour to her. Music sound,
It goes were it ten fathoms to the ground.
Cornets play. King drinks, Queen and Malateste storm.
MALATESTE
Fate strikes with the wrong weapon.
QUEEN
Sweet Royal Sir no more, it is too deep.
MALATESTE
Twill hurt your health sir.
KING
Interrupt me in my drink? ’Tis off.
MALATESTE
Alas Sir.
You have drunk your last, that poisoned bowl I filled
Not to be put in your hand, but hers.
KING
Poisoned?
ALL
Descend black speckled soul to hell!
[The faction turn on Malateste and wound him.]
MALATESTE
The Queen has sent me thither.
Malateste dies.
CARDINAL
What new fury shakes now with her snake’s locks?
QUEN
I, I, ’tis I
Whose soul is torn in pieces, till I send
This harlot home.
CARDINAL
More murders! Save the Lady.
BALTHAZAR
Rampant? Let the Constable make a mittimus .
MEDINA
Keep them asunder.
CARDINAL
How is it royal son?
KING
I feel no poison yet, only mine eyes
Are putting out their lights. Me thinks I feel
Death’s icy fingers stroking down my face.
And now I’m in a mortal cold sweat.
QUEEN
Dear my Lord.
KING
Hence, call in my physicians.
MEDINA
Thy physician tyrant,
Dwells yonder, call on him or none.
KING
Bloody Medina, stab’st thou Brutus too?
DAENIA
As he is, so are we all.
KING
I burn,
My brains boil in a cauldron, oh one drop
Of water now to cool me.
ONAELIA
Oh, let him have physicians.
MEDINA
Keep her back.
KING
Physicians for my soul, I need none else.
You’ll not deny me those. Oh holy father,
Is there no mercy hovering in a cloud
For me a miserable King so drenched
In perjury and murder?
CARDINAL
Oh Sir, great store.
KING
Come down, come quickly down.
CARDINAL
I’ll forthwith send
For a grave Friar to be your confessor.
KING
Do, do.
CARDINAL
And he shall cure your wounded soul.
Fetch him good soldier.
BALTHAZAR
So good a work, I’ll hasten.
[Exit Balthazar.]
KING
Onaelia! Oh she’s drowned in tears! Onaelia,
Let me not die unpardoned at thy hands.
Enter Balthazar, Sebastian as a Friar with others.
CARDINAL
Here comes a better surgeon.
SEBASTIAN
Hail my good son
I come to be thy ghostly father.
KING
Ha?
My child! ’Tis my Sebastian, or some spirit
Sent in his shape to fright me.
BALTHAZAR ’Tis no goblin, Sir, feel. Your own flesh and blood, and much younger than you though he be bald, and calls you son. Had I been as ready to have cut his sheep’s throat, as you were to send him to the shambles , he had bleated no more. There’s less chalk upon your score of sins by these round O’es .
KING
Oh my dull soul look up, thou art somewhat lighter.
Noble Medina, see Sebastian lives.
Onaelia cease to weep, Sebastian lives.
Fetch me my crown. My sweetest pretty Friar
Can my hands do’t, I’ll raise thee one step higher.
Thou’st been in heaven’s house all this while sweet boy?
SEBASTIAN
I had but coarse cheer.
KING
Thou could’st n’er fare better.
Religious houses are those hives where bees
Make honey for
men’s souls. I tell thee boy,
A Friary is a cube, which strongly stands,
Fashioned by men, supported by heaven’s hands.
Orders of holy priesthood are as high
I’th eyes of Angels, as a King’s dignity.
Both these unto a Crown give the full weight,
And both are thine. You that our contract know,
See how I seal it with this marriage.
My blessing and Spain’s kingdom both be thine.
ALL
Long live Sebastian.
ONAELIA
Doff that Friar’s coarse grey.
And since he’s crowned a King, clothe him like one.
KING
Oh no. Those are right sovereign ornaments.
Had I been clothed so, I had never filled
Spain’s chronicle with my black calumny.
My work is almost finished. Where’s my Queen?
QUEEN
Here piecemeal, torn by Furies.
KING
Onaelia!
Your hand Paulina too, Onaelia yours.
This hand, the pledge of my twice broken faith,
By you usurped is her inheritance.
My love is turned, see as my fate is turned,
Thus they today laugh, yesterday which mourned.
I pardon thee my death. Let her be sent
Back into Florence with a trebled dowry.
Death comes, oh now I see what late I feared!
A contract broke, though pieced up ne’r so well,
Heaven sees, earth suffers, but it ends in hell.
King Dies.
ONAELIA
Oh, I could die with him.
QUEEN
Since the bright sphere
I moved in falls, alas what make I here?
Exit Queen.
MEDINA
The hammers of black mischief now cease beating,
Yet some irons still are heating. You Sir Bridegroom,
Set all this while up as a mark to shoot at,
We here discharge you of your bedfellow,
She loves no barber’s washing .
COCKADILLIO
My balls are saved then.
MEDINA
Be it your charge, so please you reverend Sir,
To see the late Queen safely to Florence.
My niece Onaelia, and that trusty soldier,
We do appoint to guard the infant King.
Other distractions, time must reconcile.
The State is poisoned like a crocodile.
FINIS
The Whore of Babylon (1607)
CONTENTS
Dramatis Personæ
Lectori
Prologue
A Dumb Show
Act One, Scene One
Act One, Scene Two
Act Two, Scene One
Act Two, Scene Two
Act Three, Scene One
Act Three, Scene Two
Act Three, Scene Three
Act Four, Scene One
Act Four, Scene Two
Act Four, Scene Three
Act Four, Scene Four
Act Five, Scene One
Act Five, Scene Two
Act Five, Scene Three
Act Five, Scene Four
Act Five, Scene Five
Act Five, Scene Six
Dramatis Personæ
TITANIA, the Fairy Queen, under whom is figured our late Queen Elizabeth.
FIDELI.
FLORIMELL.
PARTHENOPHIL.
ELFIRON.
CASTINA.
AURA.
PHILÆMA.
AGATHE.
CAMPEIUS, a Scholar.
PARIDEL, a Doctor.
TIME.
TRUTH.
Plain-Dealing.
TH’EMPRESS OF BABYLON, under whom is figured Rome.
FIRST KING, of France.
SECOND KING, of the Holy Roman Empire.
THIRD KING, SATYRANE of Spain.
CARDINALS FOUR.
RAGAZZONI.
CAMPEGGIO.
ROPUS, a Doctor of Physic.
An Albanois.
PALMIO, a Jesuit.
Gentleman, sworn to kill Titania.
Gentleman, sworn to kill Paridel.
Sailor, attendant on the Three Kings.
Conjurer.
Volunteer.
MILITES.
MINISTRI.
Lectori
THE GENERAL SCOPE of this dramatical poem is to set forth, in tropical and shadowed colours, the greatness, magnanimity, constancy, clemency, and other the incomparable heroically virtues of our late Queen.And, on the contrary part, the inveterate malice, treasons, machinations, underminings, and continual bloody stratagems of that purple whore of Rome, to the taking away of our princes’ lives, and utter extirpation of their kingdoms.Wherein, if according to the dignity of the subject, I have not given it lustre and, to use the painters’ rhetoric, do so fail in my depths and heightening, that it is not to the life, let this excuse me; that the pyramids upon whose top the glorious reign of our deceased sovereign was mounted, stands yet so high, and so sharply pointed into the clouds, that the art of no pen is able to reach it.The stream of her virtues is so immeasurable that the farther they are waded into, the farther is it to the bottom.
In sailing upon which two contrary seas you may observe, on how direct a line I have steered my course, for of such a scantling are my words set down that neither the one party speaks too much nor the other, in opposition, too little in their own defence.
And whereas I may, by some more curious in censure then sound in judgement, be critically taxed, that I falsify the account of time, and set not down occurents, according to their true succession, let such, that are so nice of stomach, know, that I write as a poet, not as an historian, and that these two do not live under one law.How true fortunes dial hath gone whose players, like so many clocks, have struck my lines, and told the world how I have spent my hours, I am not certain, because mine ear stood not within reach of their larums.But of this my knowledge cannot fail, that in such consorts many of the instruments are for the most part out of tune, and no marvel, for let the poet set the note of his numbers, even to Apollo’s own lyre, the player will have his own crochets, and sing false notes, in dispute of all the rules of music.It fares with these two, as it does with good stuff and a bad tailor; it is not marr’d in the wearing, but in the cutting out.The labours therefore of writers are as unhappy as the children of a beautiful woman, being spoil’d by ill nurses, within a month after they come into the world.What a number of throws do we endure ere we be delivered?And yet even then, though that heavenly issue of our brain be never so fair and so well lim’d, is it made lame by the bad handling of them to who it is put to learn to go.If this of mine be made a cripple by such means, yet despise him not for that deformity which struck not upon him at his birth, but fell upon him by misfortune, and in recompense of such favour, you shall, if you patience can suffer so long, bear now how himself can speak.
Prologue
The charms of silence through this square be thrown,
That an unused attention, like a jewel,
May hang at every ear, for we present
Matter above the vulgar argument,
Yet drawn to lively that the weakest eye,
Through those thin veils we hang between your sight,
And this our piece, may reach the mystery.
What in it is most grave, will most delight.
But as in lantskip, towns and woods appear
Small afar off, yet to the optic sense
The mind shows them as great as those more near.
So, winged time that long ago flew hence
You must fetch back, with all those golden years
He stole, and here imagine still he stands,
Thrusting his silver lock into your hands.
There hold it but two hours; it shall from graves
Raise up t
he dead; upon this narrow floor
Swell up an ocean, with an armed fleet,
And lay the dragon at a dove’s soft feet.
These wonders sit and see, sending as guides
Your judgement, not your passions; passion slides
When judgement goes upright; for though the muse,
That’s thus inspir’d, a novel path does tread,
She’s free from foolish boldness, or base dread.
Lo, scorn she scorns and Envy’s rankling tooth,
For this is all she does; she wakens Truth.
A Dumb Show
HE DRAWS A curtain, discovering TRUTH in sad abiliments, uncrown’d, her hair dishevell’d, and sleeping on a rock.TIME, her father, attired likewise in black, and all his properties, a scythe hourglass, and wings, of the same colour, using all means to waken TRUTH, but not being able to do it, he sits by her and mourns.Then enter Friars, Bishops, Cardinals before the hearse of a queen; after it counsellors, pensioners, and ladies; all these last having scarfs before their eyes, the other singing in Latin.TRUTH suddenly awakens, and beholding this sight, shows, with her father, arguments of joy, and exeunt, returning presently.TIME being shifted into light colours, his properties likewise altered into silver, and TRUTH crowned, being clothed in a robe spotted with stars, meet the hearse, and pulling the veils from the counsellors’ eyes, they, wondering awhile, and seeming astonished at her brightness, at length embrace TRUTH and TIME, and depart with them, leaving the rest going on.
This being done, enter TITANIA, the Fairy Queen, attended with those councellors and other persons fitting her estate.TIME and TRUTH, meet her, presenting a book to her, which, kissing it, she receives, and showing it to those about her, they draw out their swords, embracing TRUTH, vowing to defend her and that book.TRUTH then, and TIME are sent in, and return presently, driving before them those Cardinals, Friars, &c., that came in before, with images, crozier staves &c.They gone, certain grave learned men, that had been banished, are brought in, and presented to TITANIA, who shows to them the book, which they receive with great signs of gladness and exeunt Omnes.
Act One, Scene One
EMPRESS OF BABYLON, her canopy supported by four Cardinals: two Persons in Pontifical robes on either hand, the one bearing a sword, the other the keys; before her Three Kings crowned, behind her Friars, &c.
EMPRESS
That we, in pomp, in peace, in god-like splendour,
With adoration of all dazzled eyes,
Should breath thus long, and grow so full of days,
Be fruitful as the vine, in sons and daughters,
All emperors, kings and queens, that, like to cedars
Complete Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker Page 39