Fred. Assure your grace 'tis superstition To stand so strictly on dispensive faith; And should we lose the opportunity That God hath given to avenge our Christians' death, And scourge their foul blasphèmous Paganism, As fell to Saul, to Balaam, and the rest, That would not kill and curse at God's command, So surely will the vengeance of the Highest, And jealous anger of His fearful arm, Be poured with rigour on our sinful heads, If we neglect this offered victory.

Sig. Then arm, my lords, and issue suddenly, Giving commandment to our general host, With expedition to assail the Pagan, And take the victory our God hath given. [Exeunt.

SCENE II.
Enter ORCANES, GAZELLES, and URIBASSA, with their

trains.
Orc. Gazellus, Uribassa, and the rest,
Now will we march from proud Orminius' mount,
To fair Natolia, where our neighbour kings
Expect our power and our royal presence,
To encounter with the cruel Tamburlaine,
That nigh Larissa sways a mighty host,
And with the thunder of his martial? tools
Makes earthquakes in the hearts of men and heaven.

Gaz. And now come we to make his sinews shake, With greater power than erst his pride hath felt.

10 An hundred kings, by scores, will bid him arms, And hundred thousands subjects to each score, Which, if a shower of wounding thunderbolts Should break out of the bowels of the clouds, And fall as thick as hail upon our heads, In partial aid of that proud Scythian, Yet should our courages and steelèd crests, And numbers, more than infinite, of men, Be able to withstand and conquer him.

Uri. Methinks I see how glad the Christian king 20 Is made, for joy of your admitted truce, That could not but before be terrified With ? unacquainted power of our host.

Enter a Messenger.
Mess. Arm, dread sovereign, and my noble lords !
The treacherous army of the Christians,
Taking advantage of your slender power,
Comes marching on us, and determines straight
To bid us battle for our dearest lives.

Orc. Traitors! villains ! damned Christians !
Have I not here the articles of peace,
And solemn covenants we have both confirmed,
He by his Christ, and I by Mahomet ?

Gaz. Hell and confusion light upon their heads,

30

That with such treason seek our overthrow,
And care so little for their prophet, Christ !

Orc. Can there be such deceit in Christians,
Or treason in the fleshly heart of man,
Whose shape is figure of the highest God!
Then, if there be a Christ, as Christians say,
But in their deeds deny him for their Christ,
If he be son to everliving Jove,
And hath the power of his outstretched arm;
If he be jealous of his name and honour,
As is our holy prophet, Mahomet ;-
Take here these papers as our sacrifice
And witness of thy servant's perjury.

[He tears to pieces the articles of peace. Open, thou shining veil of Cynthia, And make a passage from the empyreal heaven,

That he that sits on high and never sleeps,
Nor in one place is circumscriptible,

- 50
But everywhere fills every continent
With strange infusion of his sacred vigour,
May in his endless power and purity,
Behold and ’venge this traitor's perjury !
Thou Christ, that art esteemed omnipotent,
If thou wilt prove thyself a perfect God,
Worthy the worship of all faithful hearts,
Be now revenged upon this traitor's soul,
And make the power I have left behind,
(Too little to defend our guiltless lives)
Sufficient to discomfort and confound
The trustless force of those false Christians.

To arms, my lords ! On Christ still let us cry!
If there be Christ, we shall have victory.

SCENE III. Alarums of battle.—Enter SIGISMUND, wounded. Sig. Discomfited is all the Christian host, And God hath thundered vengeance from on high, For my accursed and hateful perjury. O, just and dreadful punisher of sin, Let the dishonour of the pains I feel, In this my mortal well-deserved wound, End all my penance in my sudden death! And let this death, wherein to sin I die, Conceive a second life in endless mercy! (He dies.

Enter ORCANES, GAZELLUS, URIBASSA, and others. Orc. Now lie the Christians bathing in their bloods, 10 And Christ or Mahomet hath been my friend.

Gaz. See here the perjured traitor Hungary,
Bloody and breathless for his villany.

Orc. Now shall his barbarous body be a prey
To beasts and fowls, and all the winds shall breathe
Through shady leaves of every senseless tree
Murmurs and hisses for his heinous sin.
Now scalds his soul in the Tartarian streams,
And feeds upon the baneful tree of hell,
That Zoacum, that fruit of bitterness,

20

That in the midst of fire is ingraffed,
Yet flourishes as Flora in her pride,
With apples like the heads of damned fiends.
The devil there, in chains of quenchless flame,
Shall lead his soul through Orcus' burning gulph,
From pain to pain, whose change shall never end.
What say'st thou yet, Gazellus, to his foil
Which we referred to justice of his Christ,
And to his power, which here appears as full
As rays of Cynthia to the clearest sight?

30 Gaz. 'Tis but the fortune of the wars, my lord, Whose power is often proved a miracle.

Orc. Yet in my thoughts shall Christ be honoured,
Not doing Mahomet an injury,
Whose power had share in this our victory;
And since this miscreant hath disgraced his faith,
And died a traitor both to heaven and earth,
We willi both watch and ward shall keep his trunk
Amidst these plains for fowls to prey upon.
Go, Uribassa, give it straight in charge.

40 Uri. I will, my lord.

[Exit. Orc. And now, Gazellus, let us haste and meet Our army, and our brother[s] of Jerusalem, Of Soria, Trebizond, and Amasia, And happily, with full Natolian bowls Of Greekish wine, now let us celebrate Our happy conquest and his angry fate. [Exeunt.