Act 4 — Scene V.[2750]
Reading edition
Scene V.[2750]
Enter Aurelia, two halberts before and two after, supported by Celso and Ferrardo; Aurelia in base mourning attire.
Aur. To banishment! led on to banishment! Pietro. Lady, the blessedness of repentance to you! Aur. Why, why, I can desire nothing but death, Nor deserve anything but hell.5 If heaven should give sufficiency of grace To clear my soul, it would make heaven graceless: My sins would make the stock of mercy poor; O, they would tire heaven’s goodness to reclaim them! Judgment is just, yet from that vast villain,10 But, sure, he shall not miss sad punishment ’Fore he shall rule.—On to my cell of shame! Pietro. My cell ’tis, lady; where, instead of masks, Music, tilts, tourneys, and such court-like shows, The hollow murmur of the checkless winds15 Shall groan again; whilst the unquiet sea Shakes the whole rock with foamy battery. There usherless the air comes in and out: The rheumy vault will force your eyes to weep, Whilst you behold true desolation.20 A rocky barrenness shall pain your eyes, Where all at once one reaches where he stands, With brows the roof, both walls with both his hands. Aur. It is too good.—Bless’d spirit of my lord, O, in what orb so’er thy soul is thron’d,25 Behold me worthily most miserable! O, let the anguish of my contrite spirit Entreat some reconciliation! If not, O, joy, triumph in my just grief! Death is the end of woes and tears relief.30 Pietro. Belike your lord not lov’d you, was unkind. Aur. O heaven! As the soul loves[2751] the body, so lov’d he: ’T was death to him to part my presence, heaven To see me pleas’d.35 Yet I, like a wretch given o’er to hell, Brake all the sacred rites of marriage, To clip[2752] a base ungentle faithless villain; O God! a very pagan reprobate— What should I say? ungrateful, throws me out,40 For whom I lost soul, body, fame, and honour. But ’t is most fit: why should a better fate Attend on any who forsake chaste sheets; Fly the embrace of a devoted heart, Join’d by a solemn vow ’fore God and man,45 To taste the brackish[2753] flood[2754] of beastly lust In an adulterous touch? O ravenous immodesty! Insatiate impudence of appetite! Look, here ’s your end; for mark, what sap in dust, What good in sin,[2755] even so much love in lust.50 Joy to thy ghost, sweet lord! pardon to me! Celso. ’T is the duke’s pleasure this night you rest in court. Aur. Soul, lurk in shades; run, shame, from brightsome skies; In night the blind man misses not his eyes.55
Exit [with Celso, Ferrardo, and halberts].
Mal. Do not weep, kind cuckold: take comfort, man; thy betters have been beccos:[2756] Agamemnon, emperor of all the merry Greeks, that tickled all the true Trojans, was a cornuto; Prince Arthur, that cut off twelve kings’60 beards, was a cornuto; Hercules, whose back bore up heaven, and got forty wenches with child in one night,—
Pietro. Nay, ’t was fifty.
Mal. Faith, forty ’s enow, o’ conscience,—yet65 was a cornuto. Patience; mischief grows proud: be wise.
Pietro. Thou pinchest too deep; art too keen upon me.
Mal. Tut, a pitiful surgeon makes a dangerous70 sore; I ’ll tent[2757] thee to the ground. Thinkest I ’ll sustain myself by flattering thee, because thou art a prince? I had rather follow a drunkard, and live by licking up his vomit, than by servile flattery.75
Pietro. Yet great men ha’ done ’t.
Mal. Great slaves fear better than love, born naturally for a coal-basket;[2758] though the common usher of princes’ presence, Fortune, ha’ blindly given them better place. I am80 vowed to be thy affliction.
Pietro. Prithee, be: I love much misery, and be thou son to me. Mal. Because you are an usurping duke.— Enter Bilioso. Your lordship’s well returned from Florence.
Bil. Well return’d, I praise my horse.85
Mal. What news from the Florentines?
Bil. I will conceal the great duke’s pleasure; only this was his charge: his pleasure is, that his daughter die; Duke Pietro be banished90 for publishing[2759] his blood’s dishonour; and that Duke Altofront be re-accepted. This is all: but I hear Duke Pietro is dead.
Mal. Ay, and Mendoza is duke: what will you do?95
Bil. Is Mendoza strongest?
Mal. Yet he is.
Bil. Then yet I ’ll hold with him.
Mal. But if that Altofront should turn straight again?100
Bil. Why, then, I would turn straight again. ’T is good run still with him that has most might: I had rather stand with wrong, than fall with right.
Mal. What religion will you be of now?
Bil. Of the Duke’s religion, when I know what it is.106
Mal. O Hercules!
Bil. Hercules! Hercules was the son of Jupiter and Alcmena.
Mal. Your lordship is a very wit-all.110
Bil. Wittal!
Mal. Aye, all-wit.
Bil. Amphitryo was a cuckold.
Mal. Your lordship swears; your young lady will get you a cloth for your old worship’s115 brows. (Exit Bilioso.) Here’s a fellow to be damn’d: this is his inviolable maxim.—flatter the greatest and oppress the least: a whoreson flesh-fly, that still knaws upon the lean galled backs.120
Pietro. Why dost, then, salute him?
Mal. Faith, as bawds go to church, for fashion sake. Come, be not confounded; thou ’rt but in danger to lose a dukedom. Think this:—this earth is the only grave and Golgotha125 wherein all things that live must rot; ’t is but the draught wherein the heavenly bodies discharge their corruption; the very muck-hill on which the sublunary orbs cast their excrements: man is the slime of this dung pit,130 and princes are the governors of these men; for, for our souls, they are as free as emperors, all of one piece; there goes but a pair of shears betwixt[2760] an emperor and the son of a bagpiper; only the dying, dressing, pressing, glossing,135 makes the difference.
Now, what art thou like to lose?
A gaoler’s office to keep men in bonds,
Whilst toil and treason all life’s good confounds.
Pietro. I here renounce for ever regency:140 O Altofront, I wrong thee to supplant thy right, To trip thy heels up with a devilish sleight! For which I now from throne am thrown: world-tricks abjure; For vengeance, though ’t comes slow, yet it comes sure. O, I am chang’d! for here, ’fore the dread power,145 In true contrition, I do dedicate My breath to solitary holiness, My lips to prayer, and my breast’s care shall be, Restoring Altofront to regency. Mal. Thy vows are heard, and we accept thy faith. Undisguiseth himself. Re-enter Ferneze and Celso. Banish amazement: come, we four must stand151 Full shock of fortune: be not so wonder-stricken. Pietro. Doth Ferneze live? Fer. For your pardon. Pietro. Pardon and love. Give leave to recollect155 My thoughts-dispers’d in wild astonishment. My vows stand fix’d in heaven, and from hence I crave all love and pardon. Mal. Who doubts of providence, That sees this change? A hearty faith to all! He needs must rise who can no lower fall:161 For still impetuous vicissitude Touseth the world; then let no maze intrude Upon your spirits: wonder not I rise; For who can sink that close can temporize?165 The time grows ripe for action: I ’ll detect My privat’st plot, lest ignorance fear suspect. Let ’s close to counsel, leave the rest to fate: Mature discretion is the life of state. Exeunt.