SCENE III.[2692

_Enter_ DUKE PIETRO, COUNT CELSO, COUNT EQUATO, BILIOSO, FERRARDO, _and_ MENDOZA.

_Pietro._ The night grows deep and foul: what hour is ’t?

_Celso._ Upon the stroke of twelve.

_Mal._ Save ye, Duke!

_Pietro._ From thee: begone, I do not love (5) thee! Let me see thee no more; we are displeas’d.

_Mal._ Why, God b’ wi’ thee! Heaven hear my curse,—may thy wife and thee live long together! 10

_Pietro._ Begone, sirrah!

_Mal._ “When Arthur first in court began,”—Agamemnon—Menelaus—was ever any duke a cornuto?

_Pietro._ Begone, hence! 15

_Mal._ What religion wilt thou be of next?

_Men._ Out with him!

_Mal._ With most servile patience.—Time will come When wonder of thy error will strike dumb Thy bezzled[2693] senses.— 20 Slaves! ay, favour: ay, marry, shall he rise: Good God! how subtle hell doth flatter vice! Mounts him aloft, and makes him seem to fly, As fowl the tortoise mock’d, who to the sky The ambitious shell-fish rais’d! The end of all Is only, that from height he might dead fall. 26

[[2694]_Bil._ Why, when? Out, ye rogue! begone, ye rascal!

_Mal._ I shall now leave ye with all my best wishes. 30

_Bil._ Out, ye cur!

_Mal._ Only let’s hold together a firm correspondence.

_Bil._ Out!

_Mal._ A mutual-friendly-reciprocal-perpetual kind of steady-unanimous-heartily-leagued— 36

_Bil._ Hence, ye gross-jaw’d, peasantly—out, go!

_Mal._ Adieu, pigeon-house; thou burr, that only stickest to nappy fortunes. The serpigo,[2695] (40) the strangury, an eternal uneffectual priapism seize thee!

_Bil._ Out, rogue!

_Mal._ May’st thou be a notorious wittolly pander to thine own wife, and yet get no office, (46) but live to be the utmost misery of mankind, a beggarly cuckold!] _Exit._

_Pietro._ It shall be so.

_Men._ It must be so, for where great states revenge, ’T is requisite the parts be closely dogg’d, 50 (Which piety and soft respect forbears).[2696] Lay one into his breast shall sleep with him, Feed in the same dish, run in self-faction, Who may discover any shape of danger; For once disgrac’d, displayed in offence, 55 It makes man blushless, and man is (all confess) More prone to vengeance than to gratefulness. Favours are writ in dust; but stripes we feel. Depraved nature stamps in lasting steel.

_Pietro._ You shall be leagu’d with the duchess.

_Equato._ The plot is very good. 61

_Men._ You shall both kill, and seem the corse to save.

_Fer._ A most fine brain-trick.

_Celso._ (_Aside._) Of a most cunning knave. 64

_Pietro._ My lords, the heavy action we intend Is death and shame, two of the ugliest shapes That can confound a soul; think, think of it. I strike, but yet, like him that ’gainst stone walls Directs, his shafts rebound in his own face; My lady’s shame is mine, O God, ’t is mine! 70 Therefore I do conjure all secrecy: Let it be as very little as may be, Pray ye, as may be, Make frightless entrance, salute her with soft eyes, Stain nought with blood; only Ferneze dies, 75 But not before her brows. O gentlemen, God knows I love her! Nothing else, but this:—I am not well: if grief, that sucks veins dry, Rivels[2697] the skin, casts ashes in men’s faces, Be-dulls the eye, unstrengthens all the blood, 80 Chance to remove me to another world, As sure I once must die, let him succeed: I have no child; all that my youth begot Hath been your loves, which shall inherit me: Which as it ever shall, I do conjure it, 85 Mendoza may succeed: he’s nobly born; With me of much desert.

_Celso._ (_Aside._) Much!

_Pietro._ Your silence answers, “Ay.” I thank you. Come on now. O, that I might die 90 Before her shame ’s display’d! Would I were forc’d To burn my father’s tomb, unheal[2698] his bones, And dash them in the dirt, rather than this! This both the living and the dead offends: 94 Sharp surgery where naught but death amends. _Exeunt._