Act 4 — Scene IV.[2749]
Reading edition
Scene IV.[2749]
Enter Malevole and Pietro, still disguised, at several doors.
Mal. How do you? How dost duke? Pietro. O, let The last day fall! drop, drop on our curs’d heads! Let heaven unclasp itself, vomit forth flames.
Mal. O, do not rave, do not turn player;5 there’s more of them than can well live one by another already. What, art an infidel still?
Pietro. I am amazed, struck in a swoon with wonder: I am commanded to poison thee—
Mal. I am commanded to poison thee at10 supper—
Pietro. At supper—
Mal. In the citadel—
Pietro. In the citadel.
Mal. Cross capers! tricks! Truth o’15 heaven! he would discharge us as boys do eldern guns one pellet to strike out another. Of what faith art now?
Pietro. All is damnation; wickedness extreme: There is no faith in man.20
Mal. In none but usurers and brokers; they deceive no man: men take ’em for blood-suckers, and so they are. Now, God deliver me from my friends!
Pietro. Thy friends!25
Mal. Yes, from my friends; for from mine enemies I’ll deliver myself. O, cut-throat friendship is the rankest villainy! Mark this Mendoza; mark him for a villain: but heaven will send a plague upon him for a rogue.30
Pietro. O world!
Mal. World! ’tis the only region of death, the greatest shop of the devil; the cruelest prison of men, out of the which none pass without paying their dearest breath for a fee;35 there’s nothing perfect in it but extreme, extreme calamity, such as comes yonder.