Act 1 — Scene V.[2666]
Reading edition
Scene V.[2666]
Enter Mendoza with three or four Suitors.
Men. Leave your suits with me; I can and will. Attend my secretary; leave me.
[Exeunt Suitors.]
Mal. Mendoza, hark ye, hark ye. You are a treacherous villain: God b’ wi’ ye!
Men. Out, you base-born rascal! 5
Mal. We are all the sons of heaven, though a tripe-wife were our mother: ah, you whoreson, hot-rein’d he-marmoset! Aegisthus! didst ever hear of one Aegisthus?
Men. Gisthus? 10
Mal. Ay, Aegisthus: he was a filthy incontinent flesh-monger, such a one as thou art.
Men. Out, grumbling rogue!
Mal. Orestes, beware Orestes!
Men. Out, beggar! 15
Mal. I once shall rise!
Men. Thou rise!
Mal. At the resurrection. No vulgar seed but once may rise and shall; No king so huge but ’fore he die may fall.20 Exit.
Men. Now, good Elysium! what a delicious heaven is it for a man to be in a prince’s favour! O sweet God! O pleasure! O fortune! O all thou best of life! What should I think, what say, what do to be a favourite, a minion? 25 to have a general timorous respect observe[2667] a man, a stateful silence in his presence, solitariness in his absence, a confused hum and busy murmur of obsequious suitors training[2668] him; the cloth held up, and way proclaim’d before 30 him; petitionary vassels licking the pavement with their slavish knees, whilst some odd palace-lampreels[2669] that engender with snakes, and are full of eyes on both sides, with a kind of insinuating humbleness, fix all 35 their delights upon his brow. O blessed state! what a ravishing prospect doth the Olympus of favour yield! Death, I cornute the duke! Sweet women! most sweet ladies! nay, angels! by heaven, he is more accursed than a devil 40 that hates you, or is hated by you; and happier than a god that loves you, or is beloved by you. You preservers of mankind, life-blood of society, who would live, nay, who can live without you? O paradise! how majestical is your 45 austerer presence! how imperiously chaste is your more modest face! but, O, how full of ravishing attraction is your pretty, petulant, languishing, lasciviously-composed countenance! these amorous smiles, those soul-warming 50 sparkling glances, ardent as those flames that singed the world by heedless Phaeton! in body how delicate, in soul how witty, in discourse how pregnant, in life, how wary, in favours how judicious, in day how sociable, and 55 in night how—O pleasure unutterable! indeed, it is most certain, one man cannot deserve only to enjoy a beauteous woman: but a duchess! In despite of Phoebus, I’ll write a sonnet instantly in praise of her.60
Exit.