by Thomas Otway
Your name extinct, no more Priuli heard of.
You may remember, scarce five years are past
Since in your brigantine you sailed to see
The Adriatic wedded by our Duke,
And I was with you: your unskilful pilot
Dashed us upon a rock, when to your boat
You made for safety; entered first yourself:
The affrighted Belvidera, following next,
As she stood trembling on the vessel’s side,
Was by a wave washed off into the deep;
When instantly I plunged into the sea,
And, buffeting the billows to her rescue,
Redeemed her life with half the loss of mine.
Like a rich conquest, in one hand I bore her,
And with the other dashed the saucy waves,
That thronged and pressed to rob me of my prize:
I brought her, gave her to your despairing arms.
Indeed you thanked me; but a nobler gratitude
Rose in her soul; for from that hour she loved me,
Till for her life she paid me with herself.
Priu. You stole her from me; like a thief you stole her,
At dead of night, that cursèd hour you chose
To rifle me of all my heart held dear.
May all your joys in her prove false like mine!
A sterile fortune, and a barren bed,
Attend you both! continual discord make
Your days and nights bitter and grievous! still
May the hard hand of a vexatious need
Oppress and grind you, till at last you find
The curse of disobedience all your portion!
Jaff. Half of your curse you have bestowed in vain;
Heaven has already crowned our faithful loves
With a young boy, sweet as his mother’s beauty:
May he live to prove more gentle than his grandsire,
And happier than his father!
Priu. Rather live
To bait thee for his bread, and din your ears
With hungry cries; whilst his unhappy mother
Sits down and weeps in bitterness of want.
Jaff. You talk as if ’twould please you.
Priu. ’Twould, by Heaven!
Once she was dear indeed; the drops that fell
From my sad heart when she forgot her duty,
The fountain of my life, were not so precious!
But she is gone, and if I am a man
I will forget her.
Jaff. Would I were in my grave!
Priu. And she too with thee;
For, living here, you’re but my curst remembrancers
I once was happy.
Jaff. You use me thus, because you know my soul
Is fond of Belvidera: you perceive
My life feeds on her, therefore thus you treat me.
Oh! could my soul ever have known satiety,
Were I that thief, the doer of such wrongs
As you upbraid me with, what hinders me,
But I might send her back to you with contumely,
And court my fortune where she would be kinder?
Priu. You dare not do’t.
Jaff. Indeed, my lord, I dare not.
My heart, that awes me, is too much my master:
Three years are past since first our vows were plighted,
During which time, the world must bear me witness,
I’ve treated Belvidera like your daughter,
The daughter of a senator of Venice:
Distinction, place, attendance, and observance,
Due to her birth, she always has commanded;
Out of my little fortune I have done this,
Because (though hopeless e’er to win your nature)
The world might see I loved her for herself,
Not as the heiress of the great Priuli —
Priu. No more!
Jaff. Yes, all! and then adieu for ever.
There’s not a wretch that lives on common charity
But’s happier than me: for I have known
The luscious sweets of plenty; every night
Have slept with soft content about my head,
And never waked but to a joyful morning;
Yet now must fall, like a full ear of corn,
Whose blossom ‘scaped, yet’s withered in the ripening.
Priu. Home, and be humble, study to retrench;
Discharge the lazy vermin of thy hall,
Those pageants of thy folly;
Reduce the glittering trappings of thy wife
To humble weeds, fit for thy little state;
Then to some suburb-cottage both retire;
Drudge, to feed loathsome life; get brats, and starve.
Home, home, I say. [Exit.
Jaff. Yes, if my heart would let me —
This proud, this swelling heart: home I would go,
But that my doors are hateful to mine eyes,
Filled and dammed up with gaping creditors,
Watchful as fowlers when their game will spring;
I have now not fifty ducats in the world,
Yet still I am in love, and pleased with ruin.
O, Belvidera! oh! she is my wife —
And we will bear our wayward fate together,
But ne’er know comfort more.
Enter Pierre.
Pier. My friend, good-morrow!
How fares the honest partner of my heart?
What, melancholy! not a word to spare me?
Jaff. I’m thinking, Pierre, how that damned starving quality
Called honesty got footing in the world.
Pier. Why, powerful villany first set it up,
For its own ease and safety: honest men
Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves
Repose and fatten. Were all mankind villains,
They’d starve each other; lawyers would want practice,
Cut-throats rewards; each man would kill his brother
Himself, none would be paid or hanged for murder.
Honesty was a cheat invented first
To bind the hands of bold deserving rogues,
That fools and cowards might sit safe in power,
And lord it uncontrolled above their betters.
Jaff. Then honesty’s but a notion?
Pier. Nothing else:
Like wit, much talked of, not to be defined,
He that pretends to most, too, has least share in’t;
’Tis a ragged virtue: honesty! no more on’t.
Jaff. Sure thou art honest?
Pier. So indeed men think me;
But they’re mistaken, Jaffier: I am a rogue
As well as they;
A fine, gay, bold-faced villain, as thou seest me:
’Tis true, I pay my debts when they’re contracted;
I steal from no man; would not cut a throat
To gain admission to a great man’s purse,
Or a whore’s bed; I’d not betray my friend,
To get his place or fortune: I scorn to flatter
A blown-up fool above, or crush the wretch
Beneath me. —
Yet, Jaffier, for all this, I am a villain.
Jaff. A villain!
Pier. Yes, a most notorious villain:
To see the sufferings of my fellow-creatures,
And own myself a man; to see our senators
Cheat the deluded people with a show
Of liberty, which yet they ne’er must taste of.
They say, by them our hands are free from fetters,
Yet whom they please they lay in basest bonds;
Bring whom they please to infamy and sorrow;
Drive us like wrecks down the rough tide of power,
Whilst no hold’s left to save us from destruction:
All that bear this are villains, and I one,
Not to rouse up at the great call of nature,
And check the growth of
these domestic spoilers,
That make us slaves, and tell us ’tis our charter.
Jaff. O Aquilina! friend, to lose such beauty,
The dearest purchase of thy noble labours!
She was thy right by conquest, as by love.
Pier. O Jaffier! I’d so fixed my heart upon her,
That wheresoe’er I framed a scheme of life
For time to come, she was my only joy,
With which I wished to sweeten future cares;
I fancied pleasures, none but one that loves
And dotes as I did can imagine like them:
When in the extremity of all these hopes,
In the most charming hour of expectation,
Then when our eager wishes soar the highest,
Ready to stoop and grasp the lovely game,
A haggard owl, a worthless kite of prey,
With his foul wings sailed in, and spoiled my quarry.
Jaff. I know the wretch, and scorn him as thou hat’st him.
Pier. Curse on the common good that’s so protected,
Where every slave that heaps up wealth enough
To do much wrong becomes a lord of right!
I, who believed no ill could e’er come near me,
Found in the embraces of my Aquilina
A wretched, old, but itching senator;
A wealthy fool, that had bought out my title;
A rogue, that uses beauty like a lamb-skin,
Barely to keep him warm: that filthy cuckoo, too,
Was in my absence crept into my nest,
And spoiling all my brood of noble pleasure.
Jaff. Didst thou not chase him thence?
Pier. I did; and drove
The rank, old, bearded Hirco stinking home:
The matter was complained of in the senate,
I summoned to appear, and censured basely,
For violating something they call privilege.
This was the recompense of all my service;
Would I’d been rather beaten by a coward!
A soldier’s mistress, Jaffier, ‘s his religion;
When that’s profaned, all other ties are broken;
That even dissolves all former bonds of service,
And from that hour I think myself as free
To be the foe as e’er the friend of Venice —
Nay, dear Revenge! whene’er thou call’st I’m ready.
Jaff. I think no safety can be here for virtue,
And grieve, my friend, as much as thou, to live
In such a wretched state as this of Venice,
Where all agree to spoil the public good,
And villains fatten with the brave man’s labours.
Pier. We’ve neither safety, unity, nor peace,
For the foundation’s lost of common good;
Justice is lame as well as blind amongst us;
The laws (corrupted to their ends that make them)
Serve but for instruments of some new tyranny,
That every day starts up to enslave us deeper:
Now could this glorious cause but find out friends
To do it right — O Jaffier! then mightst thou
Not wear these seals of woe upon thy face:
The proud Priuli should be taught humanity,
And learn to value such a son as thou art.
I dare not speak; but my heart bleeds this moment!
Jaff. Curst be the cause, though I thy friend be part on’t!
Let me partake the troubles of thy bosom,
For I am used to misery, and perhaps
May find a way to sweeten it to thy spirit.
Pier. Too soon it will reach thy knowledge —
Jaff. Then from thee
Let it proceed. There’s virtue in thy friendship
Would make the saddest tale of sorrow pleasing,
Strengthen my constancy, and welcome ruin.
Pier. Then thou art ruined!
Jaff. That I long since knew;
I and ill fortune have been long acquainted.
Pier. I passed this very moment by thy doors,
And found them guarded by a troop of villains;
The sons of public rapine were destroying:
They told me, by the sentence of the law
They had commission to seize all thy fortune:
Nay, more; Priuli’s cruel hand hath signed it.
Here stood a ruffian, with a horrid face,
Lording it o’er a pile of massy plate,
Tumbled into a heap for public sale:
There was another making villanous jests
At thy undoing; he had ta’en possession
Of all thy ancient most domestic ornaments,
Rich hangings, intermixed and wrought with gold;
The very bed which on thy wedding-night
Received thee to the arms of Belvidera,
The scene of all thy joys, was violated
By the coarse hands of filthy dungeon-villains,
And thrown amongst the common lumber.
Jaff. Now, thank Heaven —
Pier. Thank Heaven! for what?
Jaff. That I’m not worth a ducat.
Pier. Curse thy dull stars, and the worse fate of Venice,
Where brothers, friends, and fathers, all are false;
Where there’s no trust, no truth; where innocence
Stoops under vile oppression, and vice lords it.
Hadst thou but seen, as I did, how at last
Thy beauteous Belvidera, like a wretch
That’s doomed to banishment, came weeping forth,
Shining through tears, like April-suns in showers,
That labour to o’ercome the cloud that loads ’em,
Whilst two young virgins, on whose arms she leaned,
Kindly looked up, and at her grief grew sad,
As if they catched the sorrows that fell from her!
Even the lewd rabble that were gathered round
To see the sight, stood mute when they beheld her;
Governed their roaring throats, and grumbled pity:
I could have hugged the greasy rogues; they pleased me.
Jaff. I thank thee for this story, from my soul,
Since now I know the worst that can befall me.
Ah, Pierre! I have a heart that could have borne
The roughest wrong my fortune could have done me;
But when I think what Belvidera feels,
The bitterness her tender spirit tastes of,
I own myself a coward: bear my weakness,
If, throwing thus my arms about thy neck,
I play the boy, and blubber in thy bosom.
Oh, I shall drown thee with my sorrows!
Pier. Burn!
First burn, and level Venice to thy ruin.
What, starve like beggars’ brats in frosty weather,
Under a hedge, and whine ourselves to death!
Thou, or thy cause, shall never want assistance,
Whilst I have blood or fortune fit to serve thee.
Command my heart: thou’rt every way its master.
Jaff. No; there’s a secret pride in bravely dying.
Pier. Rats die in holes and corners, dogs run mad;
Man knows a braver remedy for sorrow:
Revenge! the attribute of gods; they stamped it
With their great image on our natures. Die!
Consider well the cause that calls upon thee,
And, if thou’rt base enough, die then. Remember
Thy Belvidera suffers; Belvidera!
Die! — damn first! — what! be decently interred
In a church-yard, and mingle thy brave dust
With stinking rogues that rot in dirty winding-sheets,
Surfeit-slain fools, the common dung of the soil?
Jaff. Oh!
Pier. Well said, out with it, swear a little —
Jaff. Swear!
By sea and air, by earth, by Heaven and hell,
Hark thee, my friend: Priuli — is — a senator!
Pier. A dog!
Jaff. Agreed.
Pier. Shoot him.
Jaff. With all my heart.
No more. Where shall we meet at night?
Pier. I’ll tell thee;
On the Rialto every night at twelve
I take my evening’s walk of meditation:
There we will meet, and talk of precious mischief.
Jaff. Farewell.
Pier. At twelve.
Jaff. At any hour: my plagues
Will keep me waking. — [Exit Pierre.
Tell me why, good Heaven,
Thou madest me what I am, with all the spirit,
Aspiring thoughts, and elegant desires,
That fill the happiest man? Ah! rather why
Didst thou not form me sordid as my fate,
Base-minded, dull, and fit to carry burdens?
Why have I sense to know the curse that’s on me?
Is this just dealing, Nature? — Belvidera!
Enter Belvidera, attended.
Poor Belvidera!
Belv. Lead me, lead me, my virgins,
To that kind voice. My lord, my love, my refuge!
Happy my eyes, when they behold thy face:
My heavy heart will leave its doleful beating
At sight of thee, and bound with sprightful joys.
Oh, smile, as when our loves were in their spring,
And cheer my fainting soul.
Jaff. As when our loves
Were in their spring? has then my fortune changed?
Art thou not Belvidera, still the same,
Kind, good, and tender, as my arms first found thee?
If thou art altered, where shall I have harbour?
Where ease my loaded heart? oh! where complain?
Belv. Does this appear like change, or love decaying
When thus I throw myself into thy bosom,
With all the resolution of strong truth?
Beats not my heart, as ’twould alarum thine
To a new charge of bliss? I joy more in thee
Than did thy mother when she hugged thee first,
And blessed the gods for all her travail past.
Jaff. Can there in woman be such glorious faith?
Sure all ill stories of thy sex are false.
O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee
To temper man: we had been brutes without you;
Angels are painted fair, to look like you:
There’s in you all that we believe of Heaven,
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love.
Belv. If love be treasure, we’ll be wondrous rich:
I have so much, my heart will surely break with’t;
Vows can’t express it: when I would declare
How great’s my joy, I’m dumb with the big thought;
I swell, and sigh, and labour with my longing.