Act 5 — [Scene IV.][1092]

Um. Up with these stupid thoughts, still loved daughter, And strike away this heartless trance of anguish. Be like the sun, and labour in eclipses; Look to the end of woes: oh, can you sit Mustering the horrors of your servant’s slaughter5 Before your contemplation, and not study[1093] How to prevent it? Watch when he shall rise, And with a sudden outcry of his murder, Blow[1094] his retreat before he be revenged. Ta. O father, have my dumb woes wak’d your death?10 When will our human griefs be at their height? Man is a tree that hath no top in cares, No root in comforts; all his power to live Is given to no end, but t’ have power to grieve. Um. It is the misery of our creation.15 Your true friend, Led by your husband, shadowed in my weed, Now enters the dark vault. Ta. But, my dearest father, Why will not you appear to him yourself, And see that none of these deceits annoy him? Um. My power is limited; alas! I cannot.21 All that I can do—See, the cave opens. Exit. D’Ambois at the gulf. Ta. Away, my love, away; thou wilt be murder’d!

Bu. Murder’d; I know not what that Hebrew means: That word had ne’er been nam’d had all been D’Ambois.25 Murder’d? By heaven he is my murderer That shows me not a murderer; what such bug[1095] Abhorreth not the very sleep of D’Ambois? Murder’d? Who dares give all the room I see To D’Ambois’ reach? or look with any odds30 His fight i’ th’ face, upon whose hand sits death; Whose sword hath wings, and every feather pierceth? If I scape Monsieur’s ’pothecary shops, Foutre[1096] for Guise’s shambles! ’T was ill plotted; They should have maul’d me here,35 When I was rising. I am up and ready. Let in my politic visitants, let them in, Though ent’ring like so many moving armours, Fate is more strong than arms and sly than treason, And I at all parts huckl’d in my fate.40

Bu. Dare they not come?

Ta. They come. 1 Mur. Come all at once. Um. Back, coward murderers, back. Omn. Defend us, heaven. Exeunt all but the first. 1 Mur. Come ye not on? Bu. No, slave, nor goest thou off. [Strikes at him.] Stand you so firm? Will it not enter here?45 You have a face yet; so in thy life’s flame I burn the first rites to my mistress’ fame. Um. Breathe thee, brave son, against the other charge. Bu. Oh, is it true then that my sense first told me? Is my kind father dead? Ta. He is, my love.50 ’T was the Earl, my husband, in his weed that brought thee. Bu. That was a speeding sleight,[1097] and well resembled. Where is that angry Earl? My lord, come forth And show your own face in your own affair; Take not into your noble veins the blood55 Of these base villains, nor the light reports Of blister’d tongues for clear and weighty truth: But me against the world, in pure defence Of your rare lady, to whose spotless name I stand here as a bulwark, and project60 A life to her renown, that ever yet Hath been untainted, even in envy’s eye, And where it would protect a sanctuary. Brave Earl, come forth, and keep your scandal in; ’Tis not our fault if you enforce the spot65 Nor the wreak[1098] yours if you perform it not.

Mont. Cowards, a fiend or spirit beat ye off! They are your own faint spirits that have forg’d The fearful shadows that your eyes deluded.69 The fiend was in you; cast him out then, thus. D’Ambois hath Mont. down. Ta. Favour my lord, my love, O, favour him! Bu. I will not touch him: take your life, my lord, And be appeas’d. Pistols shot within. O, then the coward Fates Have maim’d themselves, and ever lost their honour. Um. What have ye done, slaves? Irreligious lord!76 Bu. Forbear them, father; ’tis enough for me That Guise and Monsieur, death and destiny, Come behind D’Ambois. Is my body, then, But penetrable flesh? And must my mind Follow my blood? Can my divine part add No aid to th’ earthly in extremity?81 Then these divines are but for form, not fact.[1099] Man is of two sweet courtly friends compact, A mistress and a servant; let my death Define life nothing but a courtier’s breath.85 Nothing is made of nought, of all things made, Their abstract being a dream but of a shade. I’ll not complain to earth yet, but to heaven, And, like a man, look upwards even in death. And if Vespasian thought in majesty90 An emperor might die standing, why not I? She offers to help him. Nay, without help, in which I will exceed him; For he died splinted with his chamber grooms. Prop me, true sword, as thou hast ever done: The equal thought I bear of life and death95 Shall make me faint on no side; I am up. Here like a Roman statue I will stand Till death hath made me marble. Oh, my fame, Live in despite of murder; take thy wings And haste thee where the grey-ey’d morn perfumes100 Her rosy chariot with Sabaean spices; Fly, where the evening from th’ Iberian vales, Takes on her swarthy shoulders Hecate, Crown’d with a grove of oaks; fly where men feel The burning axletree; and those that suffer105 Beneath the chariot of the snowy Bear; And tell them all that D’Ambois now is hasting To the eternal dwellers; that a thunder Of all their sighs together (for their frailties Beheld in me) may quit my worthless fall110 With a fit volley for my funeral. Um. Forgive thy murderers. Bu. I forgive them all; And you, my lord, their fautor;[1100] for true sign Of which unfeign’d remission, take my sword; Take it, and only give it motion,115 And it shall find the way to victory By his own brightness, and th’ inherent valour My fight hath ’still’d into ’t, with charms of spirit. Now let me pray you that my weighty blood Laid in one scale of your impartial spleen,120 May sway the forfeit of my worthy love Weigh’d in the other; and be reconcil’d With all forgiveness to your matchless wife. Ta. Forgive thou me, dear servant, and this hand That led thy life to this unworthy end;125 Forgive it, for the blood with which ’tis stain’d, In which I writ the summons of thy death; The forced summons, by this bleeding wound, By this here in my bosom; and by this That makes me hold up both my hands imbru’d130 For thy dear pardon. Bu. O, my heart is broken. Fate, nor these murderers, Monsieur, nor the Guise, Have any glory in my death, but this, This killing spectacle, this prodigy. My sun is turn’d to blood, in whose red beams Pindus and Ossa, hid in drifts of snow136 Laid on my heart and liver, from their veins Melt like two hungry torrents, eating rocks Into the ocean of all human life, And make it bitter, only with my blood.140 O frail condition of strength, valour, virtue, In me (like warning fire upon the top Of some steep beacon on a steeper hill) Made to express it: like a falling star Silently glanc’d, that like a thunderbolt145 Lookt to have struck[1101] and shook the firmament. Moritur. Um. [My terrors are struck inward, and no more My penance will allow they shall enforce Earthly afflictions but upon myself.][1102] Farewell, brave relics of a complete man!150 Look up and see thy spirit made a star, Join flames with Hercules, and when thou sett’st Thy radiant forehead in the firmament, Make the vast crystal crack with thy receipt; Spread to a world of fire; and th’ aged sky155 Cheer with new sparks of old humanity. [To Mont.] Son of the earth, whom my unrested soul, Rues t’ have begotten in the faith of heaven; [Since thy revengeful spirit hath rejected The charity it commands, and the remission160 To serve and worship the blind rage of blood][1102] Assay to gratulate[1103] and pacify The soul fled from this worthy by performing The Christian reconcilement he besought164 Betwixt thee and thy lady. Let her wounds Manlessly[1104] digg’d in her, be eas’d and cur’d With balm of thine own tears; or be assur’d Never to rest free from my haunt and horror. Mont. See how she merits this, still kneeling by,169 And mourning his fall more than her own fault. Um. Remove, dear daughter, and content thy husband; So piety wills thee, and thy servant’s peace. Ta. O wretched piety, that art so distract In thine own constancy, and in thy right Must be unrighteous. If I right my friend,175 I wrong my husband; if his wrong I shun, The duty of my friend I leave undone. Ill plays on both sides; here and there it riseth; No place, no good, so good but ill compriseth. [My soul more scruple breeds, than my blood, sin,180 Virtue imposeth more than any stepdame;][1105] O had I never married but for form, Never vow’d faith but purpos’d to deceive, Never made conscience of any sin. But cloak’d it privately and made it common; Nor never honour’d been in blood or mind,186 Happy had I been then, as others are Of the like licence; I had then been honour’d; Liv’d without envy; custom had benumb’d All sense of scruple, and all note of frailty;190 My fame had been untouch’d, my heart unbroken: But (shunning all) I strike on all offence, O husband! Dear friend! O my conscience! Mo. Come, let’s away; my senses are not proof194 Against those plaints. Exeunt Guise, Monsieur: D’Ambois is borne off. Mont. I must not yield to pity, nor to love So servile and so traitorous. Cease, my blood, To wrastle with my honour, fame, and judgment.— Away! Forsake my house; forbear complaints Where thou hast bred them: here all things [are] full200 Of their own shame and sorrow; leave my house. Ta. Sweet lord, forgive me, and I will be gone, And till these wounds, that never balm shall close Till death hath enter’d at them, so I love them, Being opened by your hands, by death be cur’d, I never more will grieve you with my sight,206 Never endure that any roof shall part Mine eyes and heaven; but to the open deserts (Like to a hunted tigress) I will fly, Eating my heart, shunning the steps of men, And look on no side till I be arriv’d.211 Mont. I do forgive thee, and upon my knees, With hands held up to heaven, wish that mine honour Would suffer reconcilement to my love; But since it will not, honour never serve My love with flourishing object till it sterve:[1106] And as this taper, though it upwards look,217 Downwards must needs consume, so let our love; As having lost his honey, the sweet taste Runs into savour, and will needs retain220 A spice of his first parents, till, like life, It sees and dies; so let our love; and lastly, As when the flame is suffer’d to look up, It keeps his lustre, but, being thus turn’d down, (His natural course of useful light inverted),225 His own stuff puts it out; so let our love. Now turn from me, as here I turn from thee, And may both points of heaven’s straight axletree Conjoin in one, before thyself and me. Exeunt severally.

With many hands you have seen D’Ambois slain, Yet by your grace he may revive again, And every day grow stronger in his skill To please, as we presume he is in will. The best deserving actors of the time5 Had their ascents, and by degrees did climb To their full height, a place to study due. To make him tread in their path lies in you; He’ll not forget his makers, but still prove His thankfulness as you increase your love.10