Were not one better make it smiling, thus,
Than in deep groans and terrible ghastly looks
As if the gifts we parted with procur’d
That violent distraction?
ANTONIO: O, much better.
DUCHESS: If I had a husband now, this care were quit;
But I intend to make you overseer.
What good deed shall we first remember? Say.
ANTONIO: Begin with that first good deed begun i’th’world
After man’s creation, the sacrament of marriage:
I’d have you first provide for a good husband;
Give him all.
DUCHESS: All?
ANTONIO: Yes, your excellent self.
DUCHESS: In a winding sheet?
ANTONIO: In a couple.
DUCHESS: St. Winifred, that were a strange will!
ANTONIO: ‘Twere strange if there were no will in you
To marry again.
DUCHESS: What do you think of marriage?
ANTONIO: I take’t, as those that deny purgatory,
It locally contains or heaven, or hell;
There’s no third place in’t.
DUCHESS: How do you affect it?
ANTONIO: My banishment, feeding my melancholy,
Would often reason thus.
DUCHESS: Pray, let’s hear it.
ANTONIO: Say a man never marry, nor have children,
What takes that from him? Only the bare name
Of being a father, or the weak delight
To see the little wanton ride a cock-horse
Upon a painted stick, or hear him chatter
Like a taught starling.
DUCHESS: Fie, fie, what’s all this?
One of your eyes is blood-shot. Use my ring to’t,
They say ’tis very sovereign. ’Twas my wedding ring,
And I did vow never to part with it
But to my second husband.
ANTONIO: You have parted with it now.
DUCHESS: Yes, to help your eye-sight.
ANTONIO: You have made me stark blind.
DUCHESS: How?
ANTONIO: There is a saucy and ambitious devil,
Is dancing in this circle.
DUCHESS: Remove him.
ANTONIO: How?
DUCHESS: There needs small conjuration, when your finger
May do it, thus; is it fit?
He kneels
ANTONIO: What said you?
DUCHESS: Sir, this goodly roof of yours, is too low built;
I cannot stand upright in’t nor discourse,
Without I raise it higher. Raise yourself,
Or, if you please, my hand to help you: so.
ANTONIO: Ambition, madam, is a great man’s madness,
That is not kept in chains and close-pent rooms
But in fair lightsome lodgings and is girt
With the wild noise of prattling visitants
Which makes it lunatic beyond all cure.
Conceive not I am so stupid but I aim
Whereto your favors tend: but he’s a fool,
That being a-cold, would thrust his hands i’th’ fire
To warm them.
DUCHESS: So now the ground’s broke,
You may discover what a wealthy mine
I make you lord of.
ANTONIO: O, my unworthiness!
DUCHESS: You were ill to sell yourself.
This darkening of your worth is not like that
Which tradesmen use i’th’ city; their false lights
Are to rid bad wares off. And I must tell you,
If you will know where breathes a complete man
(I speak it without flattery) turn your eyes,
And progress through yourself.
ANTONIO: Were there nor heaven nor hell,
I should be honest: I have long serv’d virtue,
And ne’er ta’en wages of her.
DUCHESS: Now she pays it.
The misery of us that are born great!
We are forc’d to woo, because none dare woo us.
And as a tyrant doubles with his words
And fearfully equivocates, so we
Are forc’d to express our violent passions
In riddles, and in dreams, and leave the path
Of simple virtue, which was never made
To seem the thing it is not. Go, go brag
You have left me heartless; mine is in your bosom:
I hope ‘twill multiply love there. You do tremble:
Make not your heart so dead a piece of flesh,
To fear more than to love me. Sir, be confident:
What is’t distracts you? This is flesh and blood, sir;
’Tis not the figure cut in alabaster
Kneels at my husbands tomb. Awake, awake, man!
I do here put off all vain ceremony,
And only do appear to you a young widow
That claims you for her husband, and like a widow,
I use but half a blush in’t.
ANTONIO: Truth speak for me:
I will remain the constant sanctuary
Of your good name.
DUCHESS: I thank you, gentle love.
And ‘cause you shall not come to me in debt,
Being now my steward, here upon your lips
I sign your Quietus est. This you should have begg’d now;
I have seen children oft eat sweetmeats thus,
As fearful to devour them too soon.
ANTONIO: But for your brothers?
DUCHESS: Do not think of them:
All discord without this circumference
Is only to be pitied, and not fear’d.
Yet, should they know it, time will easily
Scatter the tempest.
ANTONIO: These words should be mine,
And all the parts you have spoke, if some part of it
Would not have savour’d flattery.
DUCHESS: Kneel.
Enter CARIOLA
ANTONIO: Ha!
DUCHESS: Be not amaz’d, this woman’s of my counsel.
I have heard lawyers say a contract in a chamber
Per verba presenti is absolute marriage.
Bless, heaven, this sacred gordian, which let violence
Never untwine.
ANTONIO: And may our sweet affections, like the spheres,
Be still in motion.
DUCHESS: Quickening and make
The like soft music.
ANTONIO: That we may imitate the loving palms,
Best emblem of a peaceful marriage
That never bore fruit divided.
DUCHESS: What can the church force more?
ANTONIO: That fortune may not know an accident
Either of joy, or sorrow, to divide
Our fixed wishes.
DUCHESS: How can the church build faster?
We now are man and wife, and ’tis the church
That must but echo this. Maid, stand apart:
I now am blind.
ANTONIO: What’s your conceit in this?
DUCHESS: I would have you lead your fortune by the hand
Unto your marriage bed
(You speak in me this, for we now are one).
We’ll only lie, and talk together, and plot
T’appease my humourous kindred; and if you please,
Like the old tale in Alexander and Lodowick,
Lay a naked sword between us, keep us chaste.
O, let me shroud my blushes in your bosom,
Since ’tis the treasury of all my secrets!
They exit
CARIOLA: Whether the spirit of greatness or of woman
Reign most in her, I know not, but it shows
A fearful madness. I owe her much of pity.
Exit
ACT II, SCENE I
The Court at Malfi, a few months later
Enter BOSOLA and CASTRUCHIO
BOSOLA: You say you would fain be taken for an emin
ent courtier?
CASTRUCHIO: ’Tis the very main of my ambition.
BOSOLA: Let me see. You have a reasonable good face for’t already,
And your night-cap expresses your ears sufficient largely.
I would have you learn to twirl the strings of your band
With a good grace, and in a set speech at th’end of every sentence
To hum three or four times, or blow your nose till it smart again,
To recover your memory. When you come to be a president
In criminal causes, if you smile upon a prisoner, hang him, but if
You frown upon him, and threaten him, let him be sure to ‘scape
The gallows.
CASTRUCHIO: I would be a very merry president.
BOSOLA: Do not sup a’ nights; ‘twill beget you
An admirable wit.
CASTRUCHIO: Rather it would make me have a good stomach to quarrel;
For they say, your roaring boys eat meat seldom,
And that makes them so valiant.
But how shall I know whether the people take me
For an eminent fellow?
BOSOLA: I will teach a trick to know it.
Give out you lie a-dying, and if you
Hear the common people curse you,
Be sure you are taken for one of the prime night-caps.
Enter an OLD LADY
You come from painting now?
OLD LADY: From what?
BOSOLA: Why, from your scurvy face-physic.
To behold thee not painted inclines somewhat near
A miracle. These in thy face here were deep ruts
And foul sloughs the last progress.
There was a lady in France that, having the small-pox,
Flay’d the skin off her face to make it more level;
And whereas before she looked like a nutmeg grater,
After she resembled an abortive hedgehog.
OLD LADY: Do you call this painting?
BOSOLA: No, no, but you call’t careening of an old
Morphew’d lady, to make her disembogue again.
There’s rough-cast phrase to your plastic.
OLD LADY: It seems you are well acquainted with my closet.
BOSOLA: One would suspect it for a shop of witchcraft,
To find in it the fat of serpents, spawn of snakes, Jews’ spittle,
And their young childrens’ ordure, and all these for the face.
I would sooner eat a dead pigeon taken from the soles of the feet
Of one sick of the plague than kiss one of you fasting.
Here are two of you, whose sin of your youth is the very
Patrimony of the physician; makes him renew
His foot-cloth with the spring, and change his
High-priced courtesan with the fall of the leaf.
I do wonder you do not loathe yourselves.
Observe my meditation now:
What thing is in this outward form of man
To be belov’d? We account it ominous
If nature do produce a colt, or lamb,
A fawn, or goat, in any limb resembling
A man, and fly from’t as a prodigy.
Man stands amaz’d to see his deformity
In any other creature but himself.
But in our own flesh, though we bear diseases
Which have their true names only ta’en from beasts,
As the most ulcerous wolf and swinish measle;
Though we are eaten up of lice and worms,
And though continually we bear about us
A rotten and dead body, we delight
To hide it in rich tissue; all our fear,
Nay all our terror, is, lest our physician
Should put us in the ground, to be made sweet.
Your wife’s gone to Rome. You two couple, and get you
To the wells at Lucca to recover your aches.
Exit CASTRUCHIO and OLD LADY
I have other work on foot. I observe our Duchess
Is sick a-days: she pukes, her stomach seethes,
The fins of her eyelids look most teeming blue,
She wanes i’th’ cheek, and waxes fat i’th’flank,
And, contrary to our Italian fashion,
Wears a loose-bodied gown. There’s somewhat in’t.
I have a trick may chance discover it,
A pretty one: I have bought some apricocks,
The first our spring yields.
Enter ANTONIO and DELIO
DELIO: And so long since married?
You amaze me.
ANTONIO: Let me seal your lips forever,
For did I think that anything but th’ air
Could carry these words from you, I should wish
You had no breath at all.
[to BOSOLA] Now, sir, in your contemplation?
You are studying to become a great wise fellow?
BOSOLA: O, sir, the opinion of wisdom
Is a foul tetter that runs
All over a man’s body. If simplicity
Direct us to have no evil,
It directs us to a happy being, for the subtlest folly
Proceeds from the subtlest wisdom.
Let me be simply honest.
ANTONIO: I do understand your inside.
BOSOLA: Do you so?
ANTONIO: Because you would not seem to appear to th’ world
Puff’d up with your preferment, you continue
This out-of-fashion melancholy. Leave it, leave it.
BOSOLA: Give me leave to be honest in any phrase, in any
Compliment whatsoever. Shall I confess myself to you?
I look no higher than I can reach.
They are the gods that must ride on winged horses.
A lawyer’s mule of a slow pace will both suit
My disposition and business, for mark me,
When a man’s mind rides faster than his horse can gallop,
They quickly both tire.
ANTONIO: You would look up to heaven, but I think
The devil, that rules i’th’air stands in your light.
BOSOLA: O, sir, you are lord of the ascendant,
Chief man with the duchess; a duke was your
Cousin-german, removed. Say you were lineally
Descended from King Pepin, or he himself,
What of this? Search the heads of the greatest rivers
In the world, you shall find them
But bubbles of water. Some would think
The souls of princes were brought forth
By some more weighty cause than those of meaner persons.
They are deceived, there’s the same hand to them;
The like passions sway them; the same reason
That makes a vicar to go to law for a tithe-pig,
And undo his neighbors, makes them spoil
A whole province, and batter down
Goodly cities with the cannon.
Enter DUCHESS and LADIES
DUCHESS: Your arm, Antonio: do I not grow fat?
I am exceeding short-winded. Bosola,
I would have you, sir, provide for me a litter,
Such a one as the Duchess of Florence rode in.
BOSOLA: The duchess us’d one when she was great with child.
DUCHESS: I think she did. Come hither, mend my ruff,
Here; when? Thou art such a tedious lady, and
Thy breath smells of lemon peels. Would thou hadst done!
Shall I sound under thy fingers? I am
So troubled with the mother.
BOSOLA: [aside] I fear too much.
DUCHESS: I have heard you say that the French courtiers
Wear their hats on ‘fore the king.
ANTONIO: I have seen it.
DUCHESS: In the presence?
ANTONIO: Yes.
DUCHESS: Why should not we bring up that fashion?
’Tis ceremony more than duty that consists
In the removing of a piece of
felt.
Be you the example to the rest o’th’ court;
Put on your hat first.
ANTONIO: You must pardon me.
I have seen, in colder countries than in France,
Nobles stand bare to th’ prince, and the distinction
Methought show’d reverently.
BOSOLA: I have a present for your grace.
DUCHESS: For me, sir?
BOSOLA: Apricocks, madam.
DUCHESS: O, sir, where are they?
I have heard of none to-year.
BOSOLA: [aside] Good, her colour rises.
DUCHESS: Indeed I thank you. They are wondrous fair ones.
What an unskillful fellow is our gardener!
We shall have none this month.
BOSOLA: Will not your grace pare them?
DUCHESS: No, they taste of musk, methinks; indeed they do.
BOSOLA: I know not: yet I wish your grace had par’d ‘em.
DUCHESS: Why?
BOSOLA: I forgot to tell you, the knave gardener,
Only to raise his profit by them the sooner,
Did ripen them in horse-dung.
DUCHESS: O, you jest.
You shall judge. Pray, taste one.
ANTONIO: Indeed, madam,
I do not love the fruit.
DUCHESS: Sir, you are loath
To rob us of our dainties. ’Tis a delicate fruit;
They say they are restorative.
BOSOLA: ’Tis a pretty art,
This grafting.
DUCHESS: ’Tis so, a bettering of nature.
BOSOLA: To make a pippin grow upon a crab,
A damson on a black-thorn. [aside] How greedily she eats them!
A whirlwind strike off these bawd farthingales!
For, but for that, and the loose-bodied gown,
I should have discover’d apparently
The young springal cutting a caper in her belly.
DUCHESS: I thank you, Bosola, they were right good ones,
If they do not make me sick.
ANTONIO: How now, madam?
DUCHESS: This green fruit and my stomach are not friends.
How they swell me!
BOSOLA: [aside] Nay, you are too much swell’d already.
DUCHESS: O, I am in an extreme cold sweat!
BOSOLA: I am very sorry.
Exit BOSOLA
DUCHESS: Lights to my chamber. O, good Antonio,
I fear I am undone!
DELIO: Lights there, lights!
Exit DUCHESS
ANTONIO: O my most trusty Delio, we are lost!
I fear she’s fallen in labour, and there’s left
No time for her remove.
DELIO: Have you prepar’d
Those ladies to attend her? And procur’d
That politic safe conveyance for the midwife
Your duchess plotted?
ANTONIO: I have.
DELIO: Make use then of this forc’d occasion:
Give out that Bosola hath poison’d her
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