SCENE II.

_Chamber in the Duke's Palace._

_Enter_ MALEVOLE _at one door_; BIANCA, EMILIA, _and_ MAQUERELLE _at the other door_.

_Mal._ Bless ye, cast o' ladies![412]--Ha, dipsas![413] how dost thou, old coal?

_Maq._ Old coal!

_Mal._ Ay, old coal: methinks thou liest like a brand under these[414] billets of green wood. He that will inflame a young wench's heart, let him lay close to her an old coal that hath first been fired, a panderess, my half-burnt lint, who though thou canst not flame thyself, yet art able to set a thousand virgin's tapers afire.--And how does[415] Janivere thy husband, my little periwinkle? is he troubled with the cough o' the lungs still? does he hawk o' nights still? he will not bite. 12

_Bian._ No, by my troth, I took him with his mouth empty of old teeth.

_Mal._ And he took thee with thy belly full of young bones: marry, he took his maim by the stroke of his enemy.

_Bian._ And I mine by the stroke of my friend.

_Mal._ The close stock![416] O mortal wench! Lady, ha' ye now no restoratives for your decayed Jasons?[417] look ye, crab's guts baked,[418] distilled ox-pith,[419] the pulverised hairs of a lion's upper-lip, jelly of cock-sparrows, he-monkey's marrow, or powder of fox-stones?--And whither are all[420] you ambling now? 24

_Bian._ Why,[421] to bed, to bed.

_Mal._ Do your husbands lie with ye?

_Bian._ That were country fashion, i'faith.

_Mal._ Ha' ye no foregoers about you? come, whither in good deed, la, now?

_Maq._[422] In good indeed, la, now, to eat the most miraculously, admirably, astonishable composed posset with three curds, without any drink. Will ye help me with a he-fox?--Here's the duke. 33

_Mal._[423] Fried frogs are very good, and French-like, too.

[_Exeunt Ladies._

_Enter_ PIETRO, CELSO, 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 thee; let me see thee no more; we are displeased.

_Mal._ Why, God b'wi' thee![424] Heaven hear my curse,--may thy wife and thee live long together! 41

_Pietro._ Begone, sirrah!

_Mal. When Arthur first in court began_,[425]--Agamemnon --Menelaus--was ever any duke a cornuto?

_Pietro._ Begone, hence!

_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[426] sense.-- 50 Slaves! ay, favour: ay, marry, shall he rise:[427] Good God! how subtle hell doth flatter vice! Mounts[428] 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.

_Bil._[429] Why, when?[430] out, ye rogue! begone, ye rascal!

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

_Bil._ Out, ye cur!

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

_Bil._ Out! 61

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

_Bil._ Hence, ye gross-jawed, peasantly--out, go!

_Mal._ Adieu, pigeon-house; thou burr, that only stickest to nappy fortunes. The serpigo, 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, but live to be the utmost misery of mankind, a beggarly cuckold! 71

[_Exit._

_Pietro._ It shall be so.

_Men._ It must be so, for where great states revenge, 'Tis requisite the parts be closely dogg'd,[431] (Which piety and soft respect forbears). Lay one into his breast shall sleep with him, Feed in the same dish, run in self-faction, Who may discover[432] any shape of danger; For once disgrac'd, displayèd[433] in offence, It makes man blushless, and man is (all confess) 80 More prone to vengeance than to gratefulness. Favours are writ in dust; but stripes we feel Depravèd nature stamps in lasting steel.

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

_Equato._ The plot is very good.

_Pietro._[434] You shall both kill, and seem the corse to save.

_Fer._ A most fine brain-trick.

_Celso._ [_aside_] Of a most cunning knave.

_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: 90 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, 'tis mine! 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 naught with blood; only Ferneze dies, But not before her brows. O gentlemen, God knows I love her! Nothing else, but this:-- 100 I am not well: if grief, that sucks veins dry, Rivels[435] the skin, casts ashes in men's faces, Be-dulls the eye, unstrengthens all the blood, 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, Mendoza may succeed: he's nobly[436] born; With me of much desert.

_Celso._ [_aside_] Much![437] 110

_Pietro._ Your silence answers, "Ay:" I thank you. Come on now. O, that I might die Before her shame's display'd! would I were forc'd To burn my father's tomb, unheal[438] his bones, And dash them in the dirt, rather than this! This both the living and the dead offends: Sharp surgery where naught but death amends.

[_Exeunt._

[412] "Cast o' ladies"--couple of ladies.

[413] A very venomous little serpent. "A man or beast wounded with this serpent," says Topsel in his _Hist. of Serpents_ (ed. 1658, p. 699), "is afflicted with intolerable thirst, insomuch as it is easier for him to break his belly than to quench his thirst with drinking; always gaping like a bull, casteth himself down into the water and maketh no spare of the cold liquor, but continually sucketh it in till either the belly break or the poison drive out the life by overcoming the vital spirits."

[414] Omitted in ed. 2.--"A maquerela, in plain English a bawd," says Overbury in his _Characters_, "is an old charcoal that hath been burnt herself, and therefore is able to kindle a whole green coppice."

[415] Ed. 2. "dooth."

[416] Stockado--a thrust in fencing.

[417] Ed. 1. "Jason."

[418] So in the _Scourge of Villainy_: "A crab's baked guts and lobster's butter'd thigh, I hear them swear is blood for venery."

[419] Ox-pith is mentioned among other provocatives in John Taylor's _The Sculler_, ep. 32:-- "Look how yon lecher's legs are worn away, With haunting of the whore-house every day! He knows more greasy panders, bawds and drabs, And eats more lobsters, artichokes and crabs, Blue roasted eggs, potatoes, muscadine, Oysters, and _pith that grows i' the ox's chine_, With many drugs, compounds, and simples store, Which makes him have a stomach to a whore."

[420] Omitted in ed. 2.

[421] Omitted in ed. 2.

[422] This speech is given to Bianca in ed. 2.

[423] This speech was added in ed. 2.

[424] Ed. 2. "be with thee."

[425] The first line of an old ballad (printed in Percy's _Reliques_). Falstaff is introduced humming a snatch of it in _2 Henry IV._, ii. 4.

[426] Drunken.

[427] The line is corrupt. Old eds. "slaues I fauour, I marry shall he rise."--Dyce reads "The slave's in favour: ay, marry, shall he rise."

[428] Ed. 1. "mount."

[429] "Why, when? ... cuckold" (ll. 57-71).--This passage was added in ed. 2.

[430] A common exclamation of impatience.

[431] The passage is very corrupt. Old eds. read:-- "'Tis requisite, the parts [ed. 2. _partes_] with piety, And soft [ed. 2. and some copies of ed. 1. _loft_] respect forbeares, be closely dogg'd," &c.

Dyce's emendation is:-- "'Tis requisite the parties with piety And soft respect ever be closely dogg'd."

W. N. Lettsom proposed:-- "It must be so, for where Great states revenge, 'tis requisite the parties With spy of close respect be closely dogg'd."

[432] Ed. 1. "disseuer."

[433] Ed. 1. "discouered."

[434] Old eds. "_Mend._"

[435] Wrinkles.

[436] Ed. 2. "noble."

[437] Ironical exclamation.

[438] Uncover.--"Descouvrir. To discover, uncover, _unhill_, denude, &c."--_Cotgrave._