The Duchess of Malfi - John Webster (books to read now txt) 📗

her silence,

Methinks, expresseth more than if she spake.

 

FERDINAND. Her melancholy seems to be fortified

With a strange disdain.

 

BOSOLA. ‘Tis so; and this restraint,

Like English mastives that grow fierce with tying,

Makes her too passionately apprehend

Those pleasures she is kept from.

 

FERDINAND. Curse upon her!

I will no longer study in the book

Of another’s heart. Inform her what I told you.

Exit.

 

[Enter DUCHESS and Attendants]

 

BOSOLA. All comfort to your grace!

 

DUCHESS. I will have none.

Pray thee, why dost thou wrap thy poison’d pills

In gold and sugar?

 

BOSOLA. Your elder brother, the Lord Ferdinand,

Is come to visit you, and sends you word,

‘Cause once he rashly made a solemn vow

Never to see you more, he comes i’ th’ night;

And prays you gently neither torch nor taper

Shine in your chamber. He will kiss your hand,

And reconcile himself; but for his vow

He dares not see you.

 

DUCHESS. At his pleasure.—

Take hence the lights.—He ‘s come.

[Exeunt Attendants with lights.]

 

[Enter FERDINAND]

 

FERDINAND. Where are you?

 

DUCHESS. Here, sir.

 

FERDINAND. This darkness suits you well.

 

DUCHESS. I would ask you pardon.

 

FERDINAND. You have it;

For I account it the honorabl’st revenge,

Where I may kill, to pardon.—Where are your cubs?

 

DUCHESS. Whom?

 

FERDINAND. Call them your children;

For though our national law distinguish bastards

>From true legitimate issue, compassionate nature

Makes them all equal.

 

DUCHESS. Do you visit me for this?

You violate a sacrament o’ th’ church

Shall make you howl in hell for ‘t.

 

FERDINAND. It had been well,

Could you have liv’d thus always; for, indeed,

You were too much i’ th’ light:—but no more;

I come to seal my peace with you. Here ‘s a hand

Gives her a dead man’s hand.

To which you have vow’d much love; the ring upon ‘t

You gave.

 

DUCHESS. I affectionately kiss it.

 

FERDINAND. Pray, do, and bury the print of it in your heart.

I will leave this ring with you for a love-token;

And the hand as sure as the ring; and do not doubt

But you shall have the heart too. When you need a friend,

Send it to him that ow’d it; you shall see

Whether he can aid you.

 

DUCHESS. You are very cold:

I fear you are not well after your travel.—

Ha! lights!–-O, horrible!

 

FERDINAND. Let her have lights enough.

Exit.

 

DUCHESS. What witchcraft doth he practise, that he hath left

A dead man’s hand here?

[Here is discovered, behind a traverse,<99> the artificial

figures of ANTONIO and his children, appearing as if

they were dead.

 

BOSOLA. Look you, here ‘s the piece from which ‘twas ta’en.

He doth present you this sad spectacle,

That, now you know directly they are dead,

Hereafter you may wisely cease to grieve

For that which cannot be recovered.

 

DUCHESS. There is not between heaven and earth one wish

I stay for after this. It wastes me more

Than were ‘t my picture, fashion’d out of wax,

Stuck with a magical needle, and then buried

In some foul dunghill; and yon ‘s an excellent property

For a tyrant, which I would account mercy.

 

BOSOLA. What ‘s that?

 

DUCHESS. If they would bind me to that lifeless trunk,

And let me freeze to death.

 

BOSOLA. Come, you must live.

 

DUCHESS. That ‘s the greatest torture souls feel in hell,

In hell, that they must live, and cannot die.

Portia,<100> I ‘ll new kindle thy coals again,

And revive the rare and almost dead example

Of a loving wife.

 

BOSOLA. O, fie! despair? Remember

You are a Christian.

 

DUCHESS. The church enjoins fasting:

I ‘ll starve myself to death.

 

BOSOLA. Leave this vain sorrow.

Things being at the worst begin to mend: the bee

When he hath shot his sting into your hand,

May then play with your eye-lid.

 

DUCHESS. Good comfortable fellow,

Persuade a wretch that ‘s broke upon the wheel

To have all his bones new set; entreat him live

To be executed again. Who must despatch me?

I account this world a tedious theatre,

For I do play a part in ‘t ‘gainst my will.

 

BOSOLA. Come, be of comfort; I will save your life.

 

DUCHESS. Indeed, I have not leisure to tend so small a business.

 

BOSOLA. Now, by my life, I pity you.

 

DUCHESS. Thou art a fool, then,

To waste thy pity on a thing so wretched

As cannot pity itself. I am full of daggers.

Puff, let me blow these vipers from me.

[Enter Servant]

What are you?

 

SERVANT. One that wishes you long life.

 

DUCHESS. I would thou wert hang’d for the horrible curse

Thou hast given me: I shall shortly grow one

Of the miracles of pity. I ‘ll go pray;—

[Exit Servant.]

No, I ‘ll go curse.

 

BOSOLA. O, fie!

 

DUCHESS. I could curse the stars.

 

BOSOLA. O, fearful!

 

DUCHESS. And those three smiling seasons of the year

Into a Russian winter; nay, the world

To its first chaos.

 

BOSOLA. Look you, the stars shine still<.>

 

DUCHESS. O, but you must

Remember, my curse hath a great way to go.—

Plagues, that make lanes through largest families,

Consume them!—

 

BOSOLA. Fie, lady!

 

DUCHESS. Let them, like tyrants,

Never be remembered but for the ill they have done;

Let all the zealous prayers of mortified

Churchmen forget them!—

 

BOSOLA. O, uncharitable!

 

DUCHESS. Let heaven a little while cease crowning martyrs,

To punish them!—

Go, howl them this, and say, I long to bleed:

It is some mercy when men kill with speed.

Exit.

 

[Re-enter FERDINAND]

 

FERDINAND. Excellent, as I would wish; she ‘s plagu’d in art.<101>

These presentations are but fram’d in wax

By the curious master in that quality,<102>

Vincentio Lauriola, and she takes them

For true substantial bodies.

 

BOSOLA. Why do you do this?

 

FERDINAND. To bring her to despair.

 

BOSOLA. Faith, end here,

And go no farther in your cruelty:

Send her a penitential garment to put on

Next to her delicate skin, and furnish her

With beads and prayer-books.

 

FERDINAND. Damn her! that body of hers.

While that my blood run pure in ‘t, was more worth

Than that which thou wouldst comfort, call’d a soul.

I will send her masques of common courtezans,

Have her meat serv’d up by bawds and ruffians,

And, ‘cause she ‘ll needs be mad, I am resolv’d

To move forth the common hospital

All the mad-folk, and place them near her lodging;

There let them practise together, sing and dance,

And act their gambols to the full o’ th’ moon:

If she can sleep the better for it, let her.

Your work is almost ended.

 

BOSOLA. Must I see her again?

 

FERDINAND. Yes.

 

BOSOLA. Never.

 

FERDINAND. You must.

 

BOSOLA. Never in mine own shape;

That ‘s forfeited by my intelligence<103>

And this last cruel lie: when you send me next,

The business shall be comfort.

 

FERDINAND. Very likely;

Thy pity is nothing of kin to thee, Antonio

Lurks about Milan: thou shalt shortly thither,

To feed a fire as great as my revenge,

Which nev’r will slack till it hath spent his fuel:

Intemperate agues make physicians cruel.

Exeunt.

 

Scene II<104>

 

[Enter] DUCHESS and CARIOLA

 

DUCHESS. What hideous noise was that?

 

CARIOLA. ‘Tis the wild consort<105>

Of madmen, lady, which your tyrant brother

Hath plac’d about your lodging. This tyranny,

I think, was never practis’d till this hour.

 

DUCHESS. Indeed, I thank him. Nothing but noise and folly

Can keep me in my right wits; whereas reason

And silence make me stark mad. Sit down;

Discourse to me some dismal tragedy.

 

CARIOLA. O, ‘twill increase your melancholy!

 

DUCHESS. Thou art deceiv’d:

To hear of greater grief would lessen mine.

This is a prison?

 

CARIOLA. Yes, but you shall live

To shake this durance off.

 

DUCHESS. Thou art a fool:

The robin-red-breast and the nightingale

Never live long in cages.

 

CARIOLA. Pray, dry your eyes.

What think you of, madam?

 

DUCHESS. Of nothing;

When I muse thus, I sleep.

 

CARIOLA. Like a madman, with your eyes open?

 

DUCHESS. Dost thou think we shall know one another

In th’ other world?

 

CARIOLA. Yes, out of question.

 

DUCHESS. O, that it were possible we might

But hold some two days’ conference with the dead!

>From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,

I never shall know here. I ‘ll tell thee a miracle:

I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow:

Th’ heaven o’er my head seems made of molten brass,

The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.

I am acquainted with sad misery

As the tann’d galley-slave is with his oar;

Necessity makes me suffer constantly,

And custom makes it easy. Who do I look like now?

 

CARIOLA. Like to your picture in the gallery,

A deal of life in show, but none in practice;

Or rather like some reverend monument

Whose ruins are even pitied.

 

DUCHESS. Very proper;

And Fortune seems only to have her eye-sight

To behold my tragedy.—How now!

What noise is that?

 

[Enter Servant]

 

SERVANT. I am come to tell you

Your brother hath intended you some sport.

A great physician, when the Pope was sick

Of a deep melancholy, presented him

With several sorts<106> of madmen, which wild object

Being full of change and sport, forc’d him to laugh,

And so the imposthume<107> broke: the selfsame cure

The duke intends on you.

 

DUCHESS. Let them come in.

 

SERVANT. There ‘s a mad lawyer; and a secular priest;

A doctor that hath forfeited his wits

By jealousy; an astrologian

That in his works said such a day o’ the month

Should be the day of doom, and, failing of ‘t,

Ran mad; an English tailor craz’d i’ the brain

With the study of new fashions; a gentleman-usher

Quite beside himself with care to keep in mind

The number of his lady’s salutations

Or ‘How do you,’ she employ’d him in each morning;

A farmer, too, an excellent knave in grain,<108>

Mad ‘cause he was hind’red transportation:<109>

And let one broker that ‘s mad loose to these,

You’d think the devil were among them.

 

DUCHESS. Sit, Cariola.—Let them loose when you please,

For I am chain’d to endure all your tyranny.

 

[Enter Madman]

 

Here by a Madman this song is sung to a dismal kind of music

 

O, let us howl some heavy note,

Some deadly dogged howl,

Sounding as from the threatening throat

Of beasts and fatal fowl!

As ravens, screech-owls, bulls, and bears,

We ‘ll bell, and bawl our parts,

Till irksome noise have cloy’d your ears

And corrosiv’d your hearts.

At last, whenas our choir wants breath,

Our bodies being blest,

We ‘ll sing, like swans, to welcome death,

And die in love and rest.

 

FIRST MADMAN. Doom’s-day not come yet! I ‘ll draw it nearer by

a perspective,<110> or make a glass that shall set all the world

on fire upon an instant. I cannot sleep; my pillow is stuffed

with a litter of porcupines.

 

SECOND MADMAN. Hell is a mere glass-house, where the devils

are continually blowing up women’s souls on hollow irons,

and the fire never goes out.

 

FIRST MADMAN. I have skill in heraldry.

 

SECOND MADMAN. Hast?

 

FIRST MADMAN. You do give for your crest a woodcock’s head

with the brains picked out on ‘t; you are a very ancient gentleman.

 

THIRD MADMAN. Greek is turned Turk: we are only to be saved by

the Helvetian translation.<111>

 

FIRST