Bos. Where's Castruccio, her husband? Card. He's rode to Naples, to take possession Of Antonio's citadel. Bos. Believe me, you have done a very happy turn. Card. Fail not to come. There is the master- Of our lodgings; and by that you may conceive Bos. You shall find me ready. [Exit CARDINAL. Nothing so dangerous! I must look to my footing. In such slippery ice-pavements men had need To be frost-nail'd well; they may break their necks else; on you, And give you good counsel. Ant. Echo, I will not talk with thee, For thou art a dead thing. Echo. Thou art a dead thing. Ant. My duchess is asleep now, And her little ones, I hope sweetly. O Heaven, Echo. Never see her more. Ant. I mark'd not one repetition of the echo But that; and on the sudden a clear light Del. Your fancy merely. Del. Your own virtue save you! ACT V.-SCENE IV. [Exeunt. Del. Yond's the cardinal's window. This for- Contempt of pain, that we may call our own. Ant. I do love these ancient ruins. bones Enter CARDINAL, PESCARA, MALATESTI, RODERIGO, and GRISOLAN. Card. You shall not watch to-night by the His grace is very well recover'd. The noise, and change of object in his eye, Pes. So, sir; we shall not. Card. Nay, I must have you promise Till doomsday; but all things have their end: By himself; and he seem'd to urge it sensibly. Ferd. Strangling is a very quiet death. Bos. [aside.] Nay, then, I see I must stand upon my guard. Ferd. What say to that? whisper softly; do you agree to't? So; it must be done i' the dark: the cardinal would not for a thousand pounds the doctor should see it. [Exit. Bos. My death is plotted; here's the consequence of murder. We value not desert nor Christian breath, Take him up, if thou tender thine own life, Was wont to lodge.-Oh, my fate moves swift! Now I'll bring him to the hammer. O direful misprision! I will not imitate things glorious, ACT V.-SCENE V. Enter CARDINAL with a Book. [Exeunt. Card. I am puzzled in a question about hell: He says, in hell there's one material fire, When we know black deeds must be cur'd with When I look into the fish-ponds in my garden, death. Methinks I see a thing arm'd with a rake, That seems to strike at me. Enter BOSOLA, and Servant bearing ANTONIO'S Thou look'st ghastly: [Stabs him. I'll not give thee so much leisure as to pray. Ant. Oh, I am gone! Thou hast ended a long suit In a minute. Bos. What art thou? Ant. A most wretched thing, That only have thy benefit in death, To appear myself. Re-enter Servant with a Lantern. Serv. Where are you, sir? Ant. Very near my home. Bosola! Serv. O misfortune! Bos. Smother thy pity; thou art dead else.Antonio! The man I would have sav'd 'bove mine own life! We are merely the stars' tennis-balls, struck and banded Which way please them. O good Antonio, I'll whisper one thing in thy dying ear body. Now, art thou come? There sits in thy face some great determination Mix'd with some fear. Bos. Thus it lightens into action: I am come to kill thee. Card. Ha!-Help! our guard! Bos. Thou art deceiv'd; They are out of thy howling. Card. Hold; and I will faithfully divide Revenues with thee. Bos. Thy prayers and proffers Are both unseasonable. Card. Raise the watch! we are betray'd! I'll suffer your retreat to Julia's chamber, Card. Help! we are betray'd! Enter above, PESCARA, MALATESTI, RODERIGO, and GRISOLAN. 1 Under the belief that he is the cardinal. Mal. Listen. 1 sadness-earnest. 2 tender-love. 3 above-i.e. on the upper stage, the raised platform towards the back of the stage.-DYCE. 'Tis ready to part from me. I do glory That thou, which stood'st like a huge pyramid Begun upon a large and ample base, Pes. He wish'd you should not come at him; Shalt end in a little point, a kind of nothing. but, believe't, The accent of the voice sounds not in jest: Force ope the doors. Rod. Let's follow him aloof, And note how the cardinal will laugh at him. [Exeunt above, MALATESTI, RODERIGO, and GRISOLAN. Bos. There's for you first, 'Cause you shall not unbarricade the door To let in rescue. [Kills the Servant. Card. What cause hast thou to pursue my life ? Bos. Look there. Enter PESCARA, MALATESTI, RODERIGO, and GRISOLAN. Pes. How now, my lord! Mal. Oh sad disaster! Rod. How comes this? Here i' the rushes. And now, I pray, let me Be laid by and never thought of. [Dies. Pes. How fatally, it seems, he did withstand His own rescue! Mal. Thou wretched thing of blood, How came Antonio by his death? Bos. In a mist; I know not how: We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves, [Dies. Pes. The noble Delio, as I came to the palace, Told me of Antonio's being here, and show'd me A pretty gentleman, his son and heir. Enter DELIO, and ANTONIO'S Son. Mal. Oh, sir, you come too late! Was arm'd for't ere I came. Let us make noble 1 the rushes-i.e. on the rushes that then covered the floor in lieu of a carpet.-W. HAZLITT. JOHN MARSTON. * [IF we may trust Oldys, this dramatist was sprung from a Shropshire family, but the date of his birth is unknown. According to Anthony-à-Wood, Marston was a student in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and was admitted Bachelor of Arts February 23d, 1592. Mr. Halliwell, editor of Marston's works, thinks this a mistake, and conjectures that the dramatist was another John Marston, mentioned by Wood, who was 'son of a father of both names, of the city of Coventry, Esquire,' who 'became either a commoner or a gentlemancommoner of Brasen-nose College in 1591, and in the beginning of February 1593 he was admitted Bachelor of Arts, as the eldest son of an esquire, and soon after completing that degree by determination, he went his way, and improved his learning in other faculties, 'alluding probably, says Mr. Halliwell, to his poetical and dramatic efforts. It is supposed that it was Marston's father who was appointed Lecturer of the Middle Temple in 1592; and according to Oldys, the dramatist married Mary, daughter of the Rev. William Wilkes, chaplain to James 1., and rector of St. Martin's, Wiltshire. In Ben Jonson's conversations with Drummond, it is stated that 'Marston wrote his father-in-law's preachings, and his father-in-law his comedies,' which Gifford thinks is a humorous allusion to the sombre air of Marston's comedies, as contrasted with the cheerful tone of his father-in-law's discourses. Marston died in June 1634, and was buried near his father in the Temple Church in London, 'under the stone which hath written on it, Oblivioni Sacrum.' For these meagre statements concerning the life of Marston we are indebted to the painstaking researches of Mr. J. O. Halliwell, who has edited an excellent edition of the dramatist's works. Marston appears to have been at one time an intimate friend and ardent admirer of Ben Jonson, but having satirized Ben in two of his plays, a quarrel took place, Jonson replying with vigour in his Poetaster. We learn from Drummond that Jonson 'had many quarrels with Marston, beat him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his Poetaster on him; the beginning of them were, that Marston represented him in the stage, in his youth given to venerie.' 'Were more known of the literary history of the period,' says Mr. Halliwell, it would perhaps be found that as there was probably more than one quarrel between these dramatists, so also was there more than one reconciliation.' Marston, along with Jonson and Chapman, had a hand in Eastward Hoe. His principal dramas are The Scourge of Villany (printed 1598); Antonio and Mellida (1602), the second part of which, Antonio's Revenge, was published the same year; The Malcontent (1604); The Dutch Courtezan (1605); Parasitaster (1606); Sophonisba (1606); What You Will (1607); The Insatiate Countess (1613). Besides these, he wrote a number of poems, chiefly of a satirical cast, nearly all of which, as well as many of his dramas, are characterized by coarseness and impurity of language. Indeed his nature appears to have been essentially coarse and bitter; and in illustration of this Mr. Collier quotes from a contemporary diary the following anecdote:-'Jo. Marston, the last Christmas, when he danced with Alderman More's wife's daughter, a Spaniard born, fell into a strange commendation of her wit and beauty. When he had done, she thought to pay him home, and told him she thought he was a poet. "Tis true," said he, "for poets feign and lie; and so did I when I commended your beauty, for you are exceeding foul."' Marston has undoubtedly vigour and originality, and one writer ranks him with Fletcher, Ford, and Massinger; he can be at times pathetic and quaintly humorous; but his works are characterized by great inequality. Hazlitt calls him 'a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic verse or lofty invective. He was properly a satirist.' We have selected Antonio and Mellida, both on account of its intrinsic merits, and as being on the whole the most appropriate of Marston's dramas for a work like the present. It is printed as it stands in the original edition, except that the spelling is modernized.] Enter GALEATZO, PIERO, ALBERTO, ANTONIO, Gal. Come, sirs, come! the music will sound straight for entrance. Are ye ready, are ye perfect? Pie. Faith! we can say our parts; but we are ignorant in what mould we must cast our actors. Alb. Whom do you personate? Pie. Piero, Duke of Venice. And stalks as proud upon the weakest stilts Pie. Good; but whom act you? Alb. Oh ho! then thus you frame your exterior opinion. shape, To haughty form of elate majesty; As if you held the palsy shaking head Of reeling chance, under your fortune's belt In strictest vassalage: grow big in thought, As swoln with glory of successful arms. Pie. If that be all, fear not, I'll suit it right. Who cannot be proud, stroke up the hair, and strut? Alb. Truth; such rank custom is grown popular; And now the vulgar fashion strides as wide, Gal. Well, and what dost thou play? Alb. The part of all the world? What's that? Bal. The fool. Ay, in good deed law now, I play Balurdo, a wealthy mountebanking burgomasco'ss heir of Venice. 1 underpoised-undervalued. 2 currents-makes pass current, values. 3 burgomasco's equivalent, we suppose, to burgo master's. |