Act 5 — Scene I.[1064]

Ta. Oh, help me, father. Fr. Impious earl, forbear. Take violent hand from her, or by mine order The King shall force thee. Mont. ’T is not violent; Come you not willingly? Ta. Yes, good my lord. Fr. My lord, remember that your soul must seek5 Her peace, as well as your revengeful blood. You ever to this hour have prov’d yourself A noble, zealous, and obedient son, T’ our holy mother; be not an apostate. Your wife’s offence serves not, were it the worst10 You can imagine, without greater proofs, To sever your eternal bonds and hearts; Much less to touch her with a bloody hand; Nor is it manly, much less husbandly, To expiate any frailty in your wife15 With churlish strokes or beastly odds of strength. The stony birth of clouds[1066] will touch no laurel, Nor any sleeper; your wife is your laurel, And sweetest sleeper; do not touch her then; Be not more rude than the wild seed of vapour,20 To her that is more gentle than that rude; In whom kind nature suffer’d one offence But to set off her other excellence. Mont. Good father, leave us; interrupt no more The course I must run for mine honour sake.25 Rely on my love to her, which her fault Cannot extinguish. Will she but disclose Who was the secret minister of her love, And through what maze he serv’d it, we are friends. Fr. It is a damn’d work to pursue those secrets30 That would ope more sin, and prove springs of slaughter; Nor is ’t a path for Christian feet to tread, But out of all way to the health of souls, A sin impossible to be forgiven; Which he that dares commit——35 Mont. Good father, cease your terrors; Tempt not a man distracted; I am apt To outrages that I shall ever rue; I will not pass the verge that bounds a Christian, Nor break the limits of a man nor husband.40 Fr. Then Heaven inspire you both with thoughts and deeds Worthy his high respect, and your own souls. Ta. Father! Fr. I warrant thee, my dearest daughter, He will not touch thee; think’st thou him a pagan? His honour and his soul lies for thy safety.45 Exit. Mont. Who shall remove the mountain from my breast? Stand [in][1067] the opening furnace of my thoughts, And set fit outcries for a soul in hell? Montsurry turns a key. For now it nothing fits my woes to speak But thunder, or to take into my throat50 The trump of heaven, with whose determinate[1068] blast The winds shall burst, and the devouring seas Be drunk up in his sounds; that my hot woes (Vented enough) I might convert to vapour, Ascending from my infamy unseen;55 Shorten the world, preventing[1069] the last breath That kills the living and regenerates death.[1070] Ta. My lord, my fault (as you may censure[1071] it With too strong arguments) is past your pardon: But how the circumstances may excuse me60 Heaven knows, and your more temperate mind hereafter May let my penitent miseries make you know. Mont. Hereafter? ’T is a suppos’d infinite, That from this point will rise eternally. Fame grows in going; in the scapes[1072] of virtue60 Excuses damn her: they be fires in cities Enrag’d with those winds that less lights extinguish. Come, syren, sing, and dash against my rocks Thy ruffian galley, rigg’d with quench for lust; Sing, and put all the nets into thy voice70 With which thou drew’st into thy strumpet’s lap The spawn of Venus; and in which ye danc’d; That, in thy lap’s stead, I may dig his tomb, And quit his manhood with a woman’s sleight, Who never is deceiv’d in her deceit.75 Sing (that is, write), and then take from mine eyes The mists that hide the most inscrutable pander That ever lapt up[1073] an adulterous vomit, That I may see the devil, and survive To be a devil, and then learn to wive;80 That I may hang him, and then cut him down, Then cut him up, and with my soul’s beams search The cranks and caverns of his brain, and study The errant wilderness of a woman’s face; Where men cannot get out, for[1074] all the comets85 That have been lighted at it; though they know That adders lie a-sunning in their smiles, That basilisks drink their poison from their eyes, And no way there to coast out to their hearts; Yet still they wander there, and are not stay’d90 Till they be fetter’d, nor secure before All cares devour them; nor in human consort Till they embrace within their wife’s two breasts All Pelion and Cythaeron with their beasts.94 Why write you not? Ta. O good my lord, forbear In wreak[1075] of great faults, to engender greater, And make my love’s corruption generate murder. Mont. It follows needfully as child and parent; The chain-shot of thy lust is yet aloft, And it must murder; ’tis thine own dear twin:100 No man can add height to a woman’s sin. Vice never doth her just hate so provoke, As when she rageth under virtue’s cloak. Write! for it must be—by this ruthless steel, By this impartial torture, and the death105 Thy tyrannies have invented in my entrails, To quicken life in dying, and hold up The spirits in fainting, teaching to preserve, Torments in ashes, that will ever last.109 Speak! Will you write? Ta. Sweet lord, enjoin my sin Some other penance than what makes it worse; Hide in some gloomy dungeon my loath’d face, And let condemned murderers let me down (Stopping their noses) my abhorred food: Hang me in chains, and let me eat these arms That have offended; bind me face to face116 To some dead woman, taken from the cart Of execution, till death and time In grains of dust dissolve me; I’ll endure; Or any torture that your wrath’s invention120 Can fright all pity from the world withal; But to betray a friend with show of friendship, That is too common for the rare revenge Your rage affecteth. Here then are my breasts, Last night your pillows; here my wretched arms,125 As late the wished confines of your life; Now break them as you please, and all the bounds Of manhood, noblesse, and religion. Mont. Where all these have been broken, they are kept, In doing their justice there with any show130 Of the like cruel cruelty; thine arms have lost Their privilege in lust, and in their torture Thus they must pay it. Stabs her. Ta. O Lord! Mont. Till thou writest, I’ll write in wounds (my wrong’s fit characters) Thy right of sufferance. Write. Ta. Oh, kill me, kill me;135 Dear husband, be not crueller than death. You have beheld some Gorgon; feel, oh, feel How you are turn’d to stone. With my heart-blood Dissolve yourself again, or you will grow Into the image of all tyranny.140 Mont. As thou art of adultery; I will ever Prove thee my parallel, being most a monster; Thus I express thee yet. Stabs her again. Ta. And yet I live. Mont. Ay, for thy monstrous idol is not done yet; This tool hath wrought enough; now, torture, use145 Enter Servants. This other engine[1076] on th’ habituate powers Of her thrice-damn’d and whorish fortitude. Use the most madding pains in her that ever Thy venoms soak’d through, making most of death; That she may weigh her wrongs with them, and then150 Stand vengeance on thy steepest rock, a victor. Ta. Oh, who is turn’d into my lord and husband? Husband! My lord! None but my lord and husband! Heaven, I ask thee remission of my sins, Not of my pains; husband, oh, help me, husband!155

Fr. What rape of honour and religion— Oh, wrack of nature! Falls and dies. Ta. Poor man; oh, my father. Father, look up; oh, let me down, my lord, And I will write. Mont. Author of prodigies! What new flame breaks out of the firmament,160 That turns up counsels never known before? Now is it true, earth moves, and heaven stands still; Even heaven itself must see and suffer ill. The too huge bias of the world hath sway’d Her back part upwards, and with that she braves165 This hemisphere, that long her mouth hath mockt; The gravity of her religious face, (Now grown too weighty with her sacrilege, And here discern’d sophisticate enough) Turns to th’ antipodes; and all the forms170 That her illusions have imprest in her, Have eaten through her back; and now all see, How she is riveted with hypocrisy. Was this the way? Was he the mean betwixt you? Ta. He was, he was, kind worthy man, he was.175 Mont. Write, write a word or two. Ta. I will, I will. I’ll write, but with my blood, that he may see These lines come from my wounds, and not from me. Writes. Mont. Well might he die for thought; methinks the frame And shaken joints of the whole world should crack180 To see her parts so disproportionate; And that his[1077] general beauty cannot stand Without these stains in the particular man. Why wander I so far? Here, here was she That was a whole world without spot to me, Though now a world of spots. Oh, what a lightning185 Is man’s delight in women! What a bubble He builds his state, fame, life on, when he marries! Since all earth’s pleasures are so short and small, The way t’ enjoy it, is t’ abjure it all.190 Enough! I must be messenger myself, Disguis’d like this strange creature. In, I’ll after, To see what guilty light gives this cave eyes, And to the world sing new impieties. He puts the Friar in the vault and follows. She wraps herself in the arras. Exeunt [servants].