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

the first house

being combust in the ascendant, signifies short life;

and Mars being in a human sign, joined to the tail of the

Dragon, in the eighth house, doth threaten a violent death.

Caetera non scrutantur.’<57>

 

Why, now ‘tis most apparent; this precise fellow

Is the duchess’ bawd:—I have it to my wish!

This is a parcel of intelligency<58>

Our courtiers were cas’d up for: it needs must follow

That I must be committed on pretence

Of poisoning her; which I ‘ll endure, and laugh at.

If one could find the father now! but that

Time will discover. Old Castruccio

I’ th’ morning posts to Rome: by him I ‘ll send

A letter that shall make her brothers’ galls

O’erflow their livers. This was a thrifty<59> way!

Though lust do mask in ne’er so strange disguise,

She ‘s oft found witty, but is never wise.

[Exit.]

 

Scene IV<60>

 

[Enter] CARDINAL and JULIA

 

CARDINAL. Sit: thou art my best of wishes. Prithee, tell me

What trick didst thou invent to come to Rome

Without thy husband?

 

JULIA. Why, my lord, I told him

I came to visit an old anchorite<61>

Here for devotion.

 

CARDINAL. Thou art a witty false one,—

I mean, to him.

 

JULIA. You have prevail’d with me

Beyond my strongest thoughts; I would not now

Find you inconstant.

 

CARDINAL. Do not put thyself

To such a voluntary torture, which proceeds

Out of your own guilt.

 

JULIA. How, my lord!

 

CARDINAL. You fear

My constancy, because you have approv’d<62>

Those giddy and wild turnings in yourself.

 

JULIA. Did you e’er find them?

 

CARDINAL. Sooth, generally for women,

A man might strive to make glass malleable,

Ere he should make them fixed.

 

JULIA. So, my lord.

 

CARDINAL. We had need go borrow that fantastic glass

Invented by Galileo the Florentine

To view another spacious world i’ th’ moon,

And look to find a constant woman there.

 

JULIA. This is very well, my lord.

 

CARDINAL. Why do you weep?

Are tears your justification? The selfsame tears

Will fall into your husband’s bosom, lady,

With a loud protestation that you love him

Above the world. Come, I ‘ll love you wisely,

That ‘s jealously; since I am very certain

You cannot make me cuckold.

 

JULIA. I ‘ll go home

To my husband.

 

CARDINAL. You may thank me, lady,

I have taken you off your melancholy perch,

Bore you upon my fist, and show’d you game,

And let you fly at it.—I pray thee, kiss me.—

When thou wast with thy husband, thou wast watch’d

Like a tame elephant:—still you are to thank me:—

Thou hadst only kisses from him and high feeding;

But what delight was that? ‘Twas just like one

That hath a little fing’ring on the lute,

Yet cannot tune it:—still you are to thank me.

 

JULIA. You told me of a piteous wound i’ th’ heart,

And a sick liver, when you woo’d me first,

And spake like one in physic.<63>

 

CARDINAL. Who ‘s that?–-

[Enter Servant]

Rest firm, for my affection to thee,

Lightning moves slow to ‘t.

 

SERVANT. Madam, a gentleman,

That ‘s come post from Malfi, desires to see you.

 

CARDINAL. Let him enter: I ‘ll withdraw.

Exit.

 

SERVANT. He says

Your husband, old Castruccio, is come to Rome,

Most pitifully tir’d with riding post.

[Exit.]

 

[Enter DELIO]

 

JULIA. [Aside.] Signior Delio! ‘tis one of my old suitors.

 

DELIO. I was bold to come and see you.

 

JULIA. Sir, you are welcome.

 

DELIO. Do you lie here?

 

JULIA. Sure, your own experience

Will satisfy you no: our Roman prelates

Do not keep lodging for ladies.

 

DELIO. Very well:

I have brought you no commendations from your husband,

For I know none by him.

 

JULIA. I hear he ‘s come to Rome.

 

DELIO. I never knew man and beast, of a horse and a knight,

So weary of each other. If he had had a good back,

He would have undertook to have borne his horse,

His breech was so pitifully sore.

 

JULIA. Your laughter

Is my pity.

 

DELIO. Lady, I know not whether

You want money, but I have brought you some.

 

JULIA. From my husband?

 

DELIO. No, from mine own allowance.

 

JULIA. I must hear the condition, ere I be bound to take it.

 

DELIO. Look on ‘t, ‘tis gold; hath it not a fine colour?

 

JULIA. I have a bird more beautiful.

 

DELIO. Try the sound on ‘t.

 

JULIA. A lute-string far exceeds it.

It hath no smell, like cassia or civet;

Nor is it physical,<64> though some fond doctors

Persuade us seethe ‘t in cullises.<65> I ‘ll tell you,

This is a creature bred by–-

 

[Re-enter Servant]

 

SERVANT. Your husband ‘s come,

Hath deliver’d a letter to the Duke of Calabria

That, to my thinking, hath put him out of his wits.

[Exit.]

 

JULIA. Sir, you hear:

Pray, let me know your business and your suit

As briefly as can be.

 

DELIO. With good speed: I would wish you,

At such time as you are non-resident

With your husband, my mistress.

 

JULIA. Sir, I ‘ll go ask my husband if I shall,

And straight return your answer.

Exit.

 

DELIO. Very fine!

Is this her wit, or honesty, that speaks thus?

I heard one say the duke was highly mov’d

With a letter sent from Malfi. I do fear

Antonio is betray’d. How fearfully

Shows his ambition now! Unfortunate fortune!

They pass through whirl-pools, and deep woes do shun,

Who the event weigh ere the action ‘s done.

Exit.

 

Scene V<66>

 

[Enter] CARDINAL and FERDINAND with a letter

 

FERDINAND. I have this night digg’d up a mandrake.<67>

 

CARDINAL. Say you?

 

FERDINAND. And I am grown mad with ‘t.

 

CARDINAL. What ‘s the prodigy<?>

 

FERDINAND.

Read there,—a sister damn’d: she ‘s loose i’ the hilts;<68>

Grown a notorious strumpet.

 

CARDINAL. Speak lower.

 

FERDINAND. Lower!

Rogues do not whisper ‘t now, but seek to publish ‘t

(As servants do the bounty of their lords)

Aloud; and with a covetous searching eye,

To mark who note them. O, confusion seize her!

She hath had most cunning bawds to serve her turn,

And more secure conveyances for lust

Than towns of garrison for service.

 

CARDINAL. Is ‘t possible?

Can this be certain?

 

FERDINAND. Rhubarb, O, for rhubarb

To purge this choler! Here ‘s the cursed day

To prompt my memory; and here ‘t shall stick

Till of her bleeding heart I make a sponge

To wipe it out.

 

CARDINAL. Why do you make yourself

So wild a tempest?

 

FERDINAND. Would I could be one,

That I might toss her palace ‘bout her ears,

Root up her goodly forests, blast her meads,

And lay her general territory as waste

As she hath done her honours.

 

CARDINAL. Shall our blood,

The royal blood of Arragon and Castile,

Be thus attainted?

 

FERDINAND. Apply desperate physic:

We must not now use balsamum, but fire,

The smarting cupping-glass, for that ‘s the mean

To purge infected blood, such blood as hers.

There is a kind of pity in mine eye,—

I ‘ll give it to my handkercher; and now ‘tis here,

I ‘ll bequeath this to her bastard.

 

CARDINAL. What to do?

 

FERDINAND. Why, to make soft lint for his mother’s wounds,

When I have hew’d her to pieces.

 

CARDINAL. Curs’d creature!

Unequal nature, to place women’s hearts

So far upon the left side!<69>

 

FERDINAND. Foolish men,

That e’er will trust their honour in a bark

Made of so slight weak bulrush as is woman,

Apt every minute to sink it!

 

CARDINAL. Thus ignorance, when it hath purchas’d honour,

It cannot wield it.

 

FERDINAND. Methinks I see her laughing,—

Excellent hyena! Talk to me somewhat quickly,

Or my imagination will carry me

To see her in the shameful act of sin.

 

CARDINAL. With whom?

 

FERDINAND. Happily with some strong-thigh’d bargeman,

Or one o’ th’ wood-yard that can quoit the sledge<70>

Or toss the bar, or else some lovely squire

That carries coals up to her privy lodgings.

 

CARDINAL. You fly beyond your reason.

 

FERDINAND. Go to, mistress!

‘Tis not your whore’s milk that shall quench my wild-fire,

But your whore’s blood.

 

CARDINAL. How idly shows this rage, which carries you,

As men convey’d by witches through the air,

On violent whirlwinds! This intemperate noise

Fitly resembles deaf men’s shrill discourse,

Who talk aloud, thinking all other men

To have their imperfection.

 

FERDINAND. Have not you

My palsy?

 

CARDINAL. Yes, [but] I can be angry

Without this rupture. There is not in nature

A thing that makes man so deform’d, so beastly,

As doth intemperate anger. Chide yourself.

You have divers men who never yet express’d

Their strong desire of rest but by unrest,

By vexing of themselves. Come, put yourself

In tune.

 

FERDINAND. So I will only study to seem

The thing I am not. I could kill her now,

In you, or in myself; for I do think

It is some sin in us heaven doth revenge

By her.

 

CARDINAL. Are you stark mad?

 

FERDINAND. I would have their bodies

Burnt in a coal-pit with the ventage stopp’d,

That their curs’d smoke might not ascend to heaven;

Or dip the sheets they lie in in pitch or sulphur,

Wrap them in ‘t, and then light them like a match;

Or else to-boil<71> their bastard to a cullis,

And give ‘t his lecherous father to renew

The sin of his back.

 

CARDINAL. I ‘ll leave you.

 

FERDINAND. Nay, I have done.

I am confident, had I been damn’d in hell,

And should have heard of this, it would have put me

Into a cold sweat. In, in; I ‘ll go sleep.

Till I know who [loves] my sister, I ‘ll not stir:

That known, I ‘ll find scorpions to string my whips,

And fix her in a general eclipse.

Exeunt.

 

Act III

 

Scene I<72>

 

[Enter] ANTONIO and DELIO

 

ANTONIO. Our noble friend, my most beloved Delio!

O, you have been a stranger long at court:

Came you along with the Lord Ferdinand?

 

DELIO. I did, sir: and how fares your noble duchess?

 

ANTONIO. Right fortunately well: she ‘s an excellent

Feeder of pedigrees; since you last saw her,

She hath had two children more, a son and daughter.

 

DELIO. Methinks ‘twas yesterday. Let me but wink,

And not behold your face, which to mine eye

Is somewhat leaner, verily I should dream

It were within this half hour.

 

ANTONIO. You have not been in law, friend Delio,

Nor in prison, nor a suitor at the court,

Nor begg’d the reversion of some great man’s place,

Nor troubled with an old wife, which doth make

Your time so insensibly hasten.

 

DELIO. Pray, sir, tell me,

Hath not this news arriv’d yet to the ear

Of the lord cardinal?

 

ANTONIO. I fear it hath:

The Lord Ferdinand, that ‘s newly come to court,

Doth bear himself right dangerously.

 

DELIO. Pray, why?

 

ANTONIO. He is so quiet that he seems to sleep

The tempest out, as dormice do in winter.

Those houses that are haunted are most still

Till the devil be up.

 

DELIO. What say the common people?

 

ANTONIO. The common rabble do directly say

She is a strumpet.

 

DELIO. And your graver heads

Which would be politic, what censure they?

 

ANTONIO. They do observe I grow to infinite purchase,<73>

The left hand way; and all suppose the duchess

Would amend it, if she could; for, say they,

Great princes, though they grudge their officers

Should have