SCENE I.--_A Hall in_ MONTICELSO'S _Mansion.

_Enter_ FRANCISCO DE MEDICIS, MONTICELSO, _the six lieger_ Ambassadors, BRACHIANO, VITTORIA COROMBONA, FLAMINEO, MARCELLO, Lawyer, _and a_ Guard.

_Mont._ Forbear, my lord, here is no place assigned you: This business by his holiness is left To our examination. [_To_ BRACH.

_Brach._ May it thrive with you! [_Lays a rich gown under him._

_Fran. de Med._ A chair there for his lordship!

_Brach._ Forbear your kindness: an unbidden guest Should travel as Dutchwomen go to church, Bear their stools with them.

_Mont._ At your pleasure, sir.-- Stand to the table, gentlewoman [_To_ VITTORIA].--Now, signior, Fall to your plea.

_Law. Domine judex, converte oculos in hanc pestem, mulierum corruptissimam._

_Vit. Cor._ What's he?

_Fran. de Med._ A lawyer that pleads against you.

_Vit. Cor._ Pray, my lord, let him speak his usual tongue; I'll make no answer else.

_Fran. de Med._ Why, you understand Latin.

_Vit. Cor._ I do, sir; but amongst this auditory Which come to hear my cause, the half or more May be ignorant in't.

_Mont._ Go on, sir.

_Vit. Cor._ By your favour, I will not have my accusation clouded In a strange tongue; all this assembly Shall hear what you can charge me with.

_Fran. de Med._ Signior, You need not stand on't much; pray, change your language.

_Mont._ O, for God sake!--Gentlewoman, your credit Shall be more famous by it.

_Law._ Well, then, have at you!

_Vit. Cor._ I am at the mark, sir: I'll give aim to you, And tell you how near you shoot.

_Law._ Most literated judges, please your lordships So to connive your judgments to the view Of this debauched and diversivolent woman; Who such a black concatenation Of mischief hath effected, that to extirp The memory of't, must be the consummation Of her and her projections,--

_Vit. Cor._ What's all this?

_Law._ Hold your peace: Exorbitant sins must have exulceration.

_Vit. Cor._ Surely, my lords, this lawyer here hath swallowed Some pothecaries' bills, or proclamations; And now the hard and undigestible words Come up, like stones we use give hawks for physic; Why, this is Welsh to Latin.

_Law._ My lords, the woman Knows not her tropes nor figures, nor is perfect In the academic derivation Of grammatical elocution.

_Fran. de Med._ Sir, your pains Shall be well spared, and your deep eloquence Be worthily applauded amongst those Which understand you.

_Law._ My good lord,--

_Fran. de Med._ Sir, Put up your papers in your fustian bag,-- [FRANCISCO _speaks this as in scorn._ Cry mercy, sir, 'tis buckram--and accept My notion of your learned verbosity.

_Law._ I most graduatically thank your lordship: I shall have use for them elsewhere.

_Mont._ I shall be plainer with you, and paint out Your follies in more natural red and white Than that upon your cheek. [_To_ VITTORIA.

_Vit. Cor._ O you mistake: You raise a blood as noble in this cheek As ever was your mother's.

_Mont._ I must spare you, till proof cry "whore" to that.-- Observe this creature here, my honoured lords, A woman of a most prodigious spirit, In her effected.

_Vit. Cor._ Honourable my lord, It doth not suit a reverend cardinal To play the lawyer thus.

_Mont._ O, your trade instructs your language.-- You see, my lords, what goodly fruit she seems; Yet, like those apples[47] travellers report To grow where Sodom and Gomorrah stood, I will but touch her, and you straight shall see She'll fall to soot and ashes.

_Vit. Cor._ Your envenomed Pothecary should do't.

_Mont._ I am resolved,[48] Were there a second Paradise to lose, This devil would betray it.

_Vit. Cor._ O poor charity! Thou art seldom found in scarlet.

_Mont._ Who knows not how, when several night by night Her gates were choked with coaches, and her rooms Outbraved the stars with several kind of lights; When she did counterfeit a prince's court In music, banquets, and most riotous surfeits? This whore, forsooth, was holy.

_Vit. Cor._ Ha! whore! what's that!

_Mont._ Shall I expound whore to you? sure, I shall; I'll give their perfect character. They are first, Sweetmeats which rot the eater; in man's nostrils Poisoned perfumes: they are cozening alchemy; Shipwrecks in calmest weather. What are whores! Cold Russian winters, that appear so barren As if that nature had forgot the spring: They are the true material fire of hell: Worse than those tributes i' the Low Countries paid, Exactions upon meat, drink, garments, sleep, Ay, even on man's perdition, his sin: They are those brittle evidences of law Which forfeit all a wretched man's estate For leaving out one syllable. What are whores! They are those flattering bells have all one tune, At weddings and at funerals. Your rich whores Are only treasuries by extortion filled, And emptied by cursed riot. They are worse, Worse than dead bodies which are begged at gallows, And wrought upon by surgeons, to teach man Wherein he is imperfect. What's a whore! She's like the guilty counterfeited coin Which, whosoe'er first stamps it, brings in trouble All that receive it.

_Vit. Cor._ This character scapes me.

_Mont._ You, gentlewoman! Take from all beasts and from all minerals Their deadly poison--

_Vit. Cor._ Well, what then?

_Mont._ I'll tell thee; I'll find in thee a pothecary's shop, To sample them all.

_Fr. Am._ She hath lived ill.

_Eng. Am._ True; but the cardinal's too bitter.

_Mont._ You know what whore is. Next the devil adultery, Enters the devil murder.

_Fran. de Med._ Your unhappy Husband is dead.

_Vit. Cor._ O, he's a happy husband: Now he owes nature nothing.

_Fran. de Med._ And by a vaulting-engine.

_Mont._ An active plot; he jumped into his grave.

_Fran. de Med._ What a prodigy was't That from some two yards' height a slender man Should break his neck!

_Mont._ I' the rushes![49]

_Fran. de Med._ And what's more, Upon the instant lose all use of speech, All vital motion, like a man had lain Wound up three days. Now mark each circumstance.

_Mont._ And look upon this creature was his wife. She comes not like a widow; she comes armed With scorn and impudence: is this a mourning-habit?

_Vit. Cor._ Had I foreknown his death, as you suggest, I would have bespoke my mourning.

_Mont._ O, you are cunning.

_Vit. Cor._ You shame your wit and judgment, To call it so. What! is my just defence By him that is my judge called impudence? Let me appeal, then, from this Christian court To the uncivil Tartar.

_Mont._ See, my lords, She scandals our proceedings.

_Vit. Cor._ Humbly thus, Thus low, to the most worthy and respected Lieger ambassadors, my modesty And womanhood I tender; but withal, So entangled in a cursèd accusation, That my defence, of force, like Perseus,[50] Must personate masculine virtue. To the point. Find me but guilty, sever head from body, We'll part good friends: I scorn to hold my life At yours or any man's entreaty, sir.

_Eng. Am._ She hath a brave spirit.

_Mont._ Well, well, such counterfeit jewels Make true ones oft suspected.

_Vit. Cor._ You are deceived: For know, that all your strict-combinèd heads, Which strike against this mine of diamonds, Shall prove but glassen hammers,--they shall break. These are but feignèd shadows of my evils: Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils; I am past such needless palsy. For your names Of whore and murderess, they proceed from you, As if a man should spit against the wind; The filth returns in's face.

_Mont._ Pray you, mistress, satisfy me one question: Who lodged beneath your roof that fatal night Your husband brake his neck?

_Brach._ That question Enforceth me break silence: I was there.

_Mont._ Your business?

_Brach._ Why, I came to comfort her, And take some course for settling her estate, Because I heard her husband was in debt To you, my lord.

_Mont._ He was.

_Brach._ And 'twas strangely feared That you would cozen[51] her.

_Mont._ Who made you overseer?

_Brach._ Why, my charity, my charity, which should flow From every generous and noble spirit To orphans and to widows.

_Mont._ Your lust.

_Brach._ Cowardly dogs bark loudest: sirrah priest, I'll talk with you hereafter. Do you hear? The sword you frame of such an excellent temper I'll sheathe in your own bowels. There are a number of thy coat resemble Your common post-boys.

_Mont._ Ha!

_Brach._ Your mercenary post-boys: Your letters carry truth, but 'tis your guise To fill your mouths with gross and impudent lies.

_Serv._ My lord, your gown.

_Brach._ Thou liest, 'twas my stool: Bestow't upon thy master, that will challenge The rest o' the household-stuff; for Brachiano Was ne'er so beggarly to take a stool Out of another's lodging: let him make Vallance for his bed on't, or a demi-foot-cloth For his most reverent moil.[52] Monticelso, _Nemo me impune lacessit_. [_Exit._

_Mont._ Your champion's gone.

_Vit. Cor._ The wolf may prey the better.

_Fran. de Med._ My lord, there's great suspicion of the murder, But no sound proof who did it. For my part, I do not think she hath a soul so black To act a deed so bloody: if she have, As in cold countries husbandmen plant vines, And with warm blood manure them, even so One summer she will bear unsavoury fruit, And ere next spring wither both branch and root. The act of blood let pass; only descend To matter of incontinence.

_Vit. Cor._ I discern poison Under your gilded pills.

_Mont._ Now the duke's gone, I will produce a letter, Wherein 'twas plotted he and you should meet At an apothecary's summer-house, Down by the river Tiber,--view't, my lords,-- Where, after wanton bathing and the heat Of a lascivious banquet,--I pray read it, I shame to speak the rest.

_Vit. Cor._ Grant I was tempted; Temptation to lust proves not the act: _Casta est quam nemo rogavit._[53] You read his hot love to me, but you want My frosty answer.

_Mont._ Frost i' the dog-days! strange!

_Vit. Cor._ Condemn you me for that the duke did love me! So may you blame some fair and crystal river For that some melancholic distracted man Hath drowned himself in't.

_Mont._ Truly drowned, indeed.

_Vit. Cor._ Sum up my faults, I pray, and you shall find, That beauty, and gay clothes, a merry heart, And a good stomach to a feast, are all, All the poor crimes that you can charge me with. In faith, my lord, you might go pistol flies; The sport would be more noble.

_Mont._ Very good.

_Vit. Cor._ But take you your course: it seems you have beggared me first, And now would fain undo me. I have houses, Jewels, and a poor remnant of crusadoes:[54] Would those would make you charitable!

_Mont._ If the devil Did ever take good shape, behold his picture.

_Vit. Cor._ You have one virtue left,-- You will not flatter me.

_Fran. de Med._ Who brought this letter?

_Vit. Cor._ I am not compelled to tell you.

_Mont._ My lord duke sent to you a thousand ducats The twelfth of August.

_Vit. Cor._ 'Twas to keep your cousin From prison: I paid use for't.

_Mont._ I rather think 'Twas interest for his lust.

_Vit. Cor._ Who says so But yourself? if you be my accuser, Pray, cease to be my judge: come from the bench; Give in your evidence 'gainst me, and let these Be moderators. My lord cardinal, Were your intelligencing ears as loving As to my thoughts, had you an honest tongue, I would not care though you proclaimed them all.

_Mont._ Go to, go to. After your goodly and vain-glorious banquet, I'll give you a choke-pear.

_Vit. Cor._ O' your own grafting?

_Mont._ You were born in Venice, honourably descended From the Vittelli: 'twas my cousin's fate,-- Ill may I name the hour,--to marry you: He bought you of your father.

_Vit. Cor._ Ha!

_Mont._ He spent there in six months Twelve thousand ducats, and (to my acquaintance) Received in dowry with you not one julio:[55] 'Twas a hard pennyworth, the ware being so light. I yet but draw the curtain now to your picture: You came from thence a most notorious strumpet, And so you have continued.

_Vit. Cor._ My lord,--

_Mont._ Nay, hear me; You shall have time to prate. My Lord Brachiano-- Alas, I make but repetition Of what is ordinary and Rialto talk, And ballated, and would be played o' the stage, But that vice many times finds such loud friends That preachers are charmed silent.-- You gentlemen, Flamineo and Marcello, The court hath nothing now to charge you with Only you must remain upon your sureties For your appearance.

_Fran. de Med._ I stand for Marcello.

_Flam._ And my lord duke for me.

_Mont._ For you, Vittoria, your public fault, Joined to the condition of the present time, Takes from you all the fruits of noble pity; Such a corrupted trial have you made Both of your life and beauty, and been styled No less an ominous fate than blazing stars To princes: here's your sentence; you are confined Unto a house of convertites, and your bawd--

_Flam._ [_Aside_]. Who, I?

_Mont._ The Moor.

_Flam._ [_Aside_]. O, I am a sound man again.

_Vit. Cor._ A house of convertites! what's that?

_Mont._ A house Of penitent whores.

_Vit. Cor._ Do the noblemen in Rome Erect it for their wives, that I am sent To lodge there?

_Fran. de Med._ You must have patience.

_Vit. Cor._ I must first have vengeance. I fain would know if you have your salvation By patent, that you proceed thus.

_Mont._ Away with her! Take her hence.

_Vit. Cor._ A rape! a rape!

_Mont._ How!

_Vit. Cor._ Yes, you have ravished justice; Forced her to do your pleasure.

_Mont._ Fie, she's mad!

_Vit. Cor._ Die with these pills in your most cursèd maw Should bring you health! or while you sit o' the bench Let your own spittle choke you!--

_Mont._ She's turned Fury.

_Vit. Cor._ That the last day of judgment may so find you, And leave you the same devil you were before! Instruct me, some good horse-leech, to speak treason; For since you cannot take my life for deeds, Take it for words: O woman's poor revenge, Which dwells but in the tongue! I will not weep; No, I do scorn to call up one poor tear To fawn on your injustice; bear me hence Unto this house of--what's your mitigating title?

_Mont._ Of convertites.

_Vit. Cor._ It shall not be a house of convertites; My mind shall make it honester to me Than the Pope's palace, and more peaceable Than thy soul, though thou art a cardinal. Know this, and let it somewhat raise your spite, Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light.[56] [_Exeunt_ VITTORIA COROMBONA, Lawyer, _and_ Guards.

_Re-enter_ BRACHIANO.

_Brach._ Now you and I are friends, sir, we'll shake hands In a friend's grave together; a fit place, Being the emblem of soft peace, to atone our hatred.

_Fran. de Med._ Sir, what's the matter?

_Brach._ I will not chase more blood from that loved cheek; You have lost too much already: fare you well. [_Exit._

_Fran. de Med._ How strange these words sound! what's the interpretation?

_Flam._ [_Aside._] Good; this is a preface to the discovery of the duchess' death: he carries it well. Because now I cannot counterfeit a whining passion for the death of my lady, I will feign a mad humour for the disgrace of my sister; and that will keep off idle questions. Treason's tongue hath a villainous palsy in't: I will talk to any man, hear no man, and for a time appear a politic madman. [_Exit._

_Enter_ GIOVANNI, Count LODOVICO, _and_ Attendant.

_Fran. de Med._ How now, my noble cousin! what, in black!

_Giov._ Yes, uncle, I was taught to imitate you In virtue, and you must imitate me In colours of your garments. My sweet mother Is--

_Fran. de Med._ How! where?

_Giov._ Is there; no, yonder: indeed, sir, I'll not tell you, For I shall make you weep.

_Fran. de Med._ Is dead?

_Giov._ Do not blame me now, I did not tell you so.

_Lod._ She's dead, my lord.

_Fran. de Med._ Dead!

_Mont._ Blessed lady, thou are now above thy woes!-- Wilt please your lordships to withdraw a little? [_Exeunt_ Ambassadors.

_Giov._ What do the dead do, uncle? do they eat, Hear music, go a hunting, and be merry, As we that live?

_Fran. de Med._ No, coz; they sleep.

_Giov._ Lord, Lord, that I were dead! I have not slept these six nights.--When do they wake?

_Fran. de Med._ When God shall please.

_Giov._ Good God, let her sleep ever! For I have known her wake an hundred nights, When all the pillow where she laid her head Was brine-wet with her tears. I am to complain to you, sir; I'll tell you how they have used her now she's dead: They wrapped her in a cruel fold of lead, And would not let me kiss her.

_Fran. de Med._ Thou didst love her.

_Giov._ I have often heard her say she gave me suck, And it should seem by that she dearly loved me, Since princes seldom do it.

_Fran. de Med._ O, all of my poor sister that remains!-- Take him away, for God's sake! [_Exeunt_ GIOVANNI _and_ Attendant.

_Mont._ How now, my lord!

_Fran. de Med._ Believe me, I am nothing but her grave; And I shall keep her blessèd memory Longer than thousand epitaphs. [_Exeunt_ FRANCISCO DE MEDICIS _and_ MONTICELSO.

_Re-enter_ FLAMINEO _as if distracted._

_Flam._ We endure the strokes like anvils or hard steel, Till pain itself make us no pain to feel. Who shall do me right now? is this the end of service? I'd rather go weed garlic; travel through France, and be mine own ostler; wear sheepskin linings, or shoes that stink of blacking; be entered into the list of the forty thousand pedlers in Poland.

_Re-enter_ Ambassadors.

Would I had rotted in some surgeon's house at Venice, built upon the pox as well as on piles, ere I had served Brachiano!

_Savoy Am._ You must have comfort.

_Flam._ Your comfortable words are like honey; they relish well in your mouth that's whole, but in mine that's wounded they go down as if the sting of the bee were in them. O, they have wrought their purpose cunningly, as if they would not seem to do it of malice! In this a politician imitates the devil, as the devil imitates a cannon; wheresoever he comes to do mischief, he comes with his backside towards you.

_Fr. Am._ The proofs are evident.

_Flam._ Proof! 'twas corruption. O gold, what a god art thou! and O man, what a devil art thou to be tempted by that cursed mineral! Your diversivolent lawyer, mark him: knaves turn informers, as maggots turn to flies; you may catch gudgeons with either. A cardinal! I would he would hear me: there's nothing so holy but money will corrupt and putrify it, like victual under the line. You are happy in England, my lord: here they sell justice with those weights they press men to death with. O horrible salary!

_Eng. Am._ Fie, fie, Flamineo! [_Exeunt_ Ambassadors.

_Flam._ Bells ne'er ring well, till they are at their full pitch; and I hope yon cardinal shall never have the grace to pray well till he come to the scaffold. If they were racked now to know the confederacy,--but your noblemen are privileged from the rack; and well may, for a little thing would pull some of them a-pieces afore they came to their arraignment. Religion, O, how it is commedled[57] with policy! The first bloodshed in the world happened about religion. Would I were a Jew!

_Mar._ O, there are too many.

_Flam._ You are deceived: there are not Jews enough, priests enough, nor gentlemen enough.

_Mar._ How?

_Flam._ I'll prove it; for if there were Jews enough, so many Christians would not turn usurers; if priests enough, one should not have six benefices; and if gentlemen enough, so many early mushrooms, whose best growth sprang from a dunghill, should not aspire to gentility. Farewell: let others live by begging; be thou one of them practise the art of Wolner[58] in England, to swallow all's given thee; and yet let one purgation make thee as hungry again as fellows that work in a saw-pit. I'll go hear the screech-owl. [_Exit._

_Lod._ [_Aside_]. This was Brachiano's pander and 'tis strange That, in such open and apparent guilt Of his adulterous sister, he dare utter So scandalous a passion. I must wind him.

_Re-enter_ FLAMINEO.

_Flam._ [_Aside_]. How dares this banished count return to Rome, His pardon not yet purchased! I have heard The deceased duchess gave him pension, And that he came along from Padua I' the train of the young prince. There's somewhat in't: Physicians, that cure poisons, still do work With counter-poisons.

_Mar._ Mark this strange encounter.

_Flam._ The god of melancholy turn thy gall to poison, And let the stigmatic[59] wrinkles in thy face, Like to the boisterous waves in a rough tide, One still overtake another.

_Lod._ I do thank thee, And I do wish ingeniously[60] for thy sake The dog-days all year long.

_Flam._ How croaks the raven? Is our good duchess dead?

_Lod._ Dead.

_Flam._ O fate! Misfortune comes, like the coroner's business, Huddle upon huddle.

_Lod._ Shalt thou and I join house-keeping?

_Flam._ Yes, content: Let's be unsociably sociable.

_Lod._ Sit some three days together, and discourse.

_Flam._ Only with making faces: lie in our clothes.

_Lod._ With faggots for our pillows.

_Flam._ And be lousy.

_Lod._ In taffata linings; that's genteel melancholy: Sleep all day.

_Flam._ Yes; and, like your melancholic hare, Feed after midnight.-- We are observed: see how yon couple grieve!

_Lod._ What a strange creature is a laughing fool! As if man were created to no use But only to show his teeth.

_Flam._ I'll tell thee what,-- It would do well, instead of looking-glasses, To set one's face each morning by a saucer Of a witch's congealèd blood.

_Lod._ Precious gue![61] We'll never part.

_Flam._ Never, till the beggary of courtiers, The discontent of churchmen, want of soldiers, And all the creatures that hang manacled, Worse than strappadoed, on the lowest felly Of Fortune's wheel, be taught, in our two lives, To scorn that world which life of means deprives.

_Enter_ ANTONELLI _and_ GASPARO.

_Anto._ My lord, I bring good news. The Pope, on's death-bed, At the earnest suit of the Great Duke of Florence, Hath signed your pardon, and restored unto you--

_Lod._ I thank you for your news.--Look up again, Flamineo; see my pardon.

_Flam._ Why do you laugh? There was no such condition in our covenant.

_Lod._ Why!

_Flam._ You shall not seem a happier man than I: You know our vow, sir; if you will be merry, Do it i' the like posture as if some great man Sate while his enemy were executed; Though it be very lechery unto thee, Do't with a crabbèd politician's face.

_Lod._ Your sister is a damnable whore.

_Flam._ Ha!

_Lod._ Look you, I spake that laughing.

_Flam._ Dost ever think to speak again?

_Lod._ Do you hear? Wilt sell me forty ounces of her blood To water a mandrake?

_Flam._ Poor lord, you did vow To live a lousy creature.

_Lod._ Yes.

_Flam._ Like one That had for ever forfeited the daylight By being in debt.

_Lod._ Ha, ha!

_Flam._ I do not greatly wonder you do break; Your lordship learned't long since. But I'll tell you,--

_Lod._ What?

_Flam._ And't shall stick by you,--

_Lod._ I long for it.

_Flam._ This laughter scurvily becomes your face: If you will not be melancholy, be angry. [_Strikes him._ See, now I laugh too.

_Mar._ You are to blame: I'll force you hence.

_Lod._ Unhand me. [_Exeunt_ MARCELLO _and_ FLAMINEO. That e'er I should be forced to right myself Upon a pander!

_Anto._ My lord,--

_Lod._ H'ad been as good met with his fist a thunderbolt.

_Gas._ How this shows!

_Lod._ Ud's death,[62] how did my sword miss him? These rogues that are most weary of their lives Still scape the greatest dangers. A pox upon him! all his reputation, Nay, all the goodness of his family, Is not worth half this earthquake: I learned it of no fencer to shake thus: Come, I'll forget him, and go drink some wine. [_Exeunt._