Bos. Oh, by no means. Physicians that apply horse-leeches to any rank swelling use to cut off their tails, that the blood may run through them the faster. Let me have no train when I go to shed blood, lest it make me have a greater when I ride to the gallows.

Card. Come to me after midnight, to help to

remove

That body to her own lodging. I'll give out She died o' the plague; 'twill breed the less inquiry

After her death.

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-
key

Of our lodgings; and by that you may conceive
What trust I plant in you.

Bos. You shall find me ready. [Exit CARDINAL.
Oh, poor Antonio, though nothing be so needful
To thy estate as pity, yet I find
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;

The precedent's here afore me. How this man Bears up in blood! seems fearless! Why, 'tis well.

Security some men call the suburbs of hell,

Only a dead wall between. Well, good Antonio,
I'll seek thee out; and all my care shall be
To put thee into safety from the reach
Of these most cruel biters that have got
Some of thy blood already. It may be,

I'll join with thee in a most just revenge.

The weakest arm is strong enough that strikes
With the sword of justice. Still methinks the

duchess

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,
Shall I never see her more?

Echo. Never see her more.

Ant. I mark'd not one repetition of the echo But that; and on the sudden a clear light Presented me a face folded in sorrow.

Del. Your fancy merely.

Ant. Come, I'll be out of this ague,
For to live thus is not indeed to live;

Haunts me. There, there!-'Tis nothing but my It is a mockery and abuse of life.
melancholy.

O Penitence, let me truly taste thy cup,
That throws men down only to raise them up!

ACT V.-SCENE III.

Enter ANTONIO and DELIO.

[Exit.

I will not henceforth save myself by halves;
Lose all, or nothing.

Del. Your own virtue save you!
I'll fetch your eldest son, and second you.
It may be that the sight of his own blood,
Spread in so sweet a figure, may beget
The more compassion. However, fare you well.
Though in our miseries Fortune have a part,
Yet in our noble sufferings she hath none:

Del. Yond's the cardinal's window. This for- Contempt of pain, that we may call our own.

tification

Grew from the ruins of an ancient abbey;
And to yond side o' the river lies a wall,
Piece of a cloister, which in my opinion
Gives the best echo that you ever heard,
So hollow and so dismal, and withal
So plain in the distinction of our words,
That many have suppos'd it is a spirit
That answers.

Ant. I do love these ancient ruins.
We never tread upon them but we set
Our foot upon some reverend history.
And questionless, here, in this open court,
Which now lies naked to the injuries
Of stormy weather, some men lie interr'd
Lov'd the church so well, and gave so largely to't,
They thought it should have canopied their
bones

Till doomsday; but all things have their end:
Churches and cities, which have diseases like to

men,

Must have like death that we have.

Echo. Like death that we have.

Del. Now the echo hath caught you.

ACT V.-SCENE IV.

[Exeunt.

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 I., 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.]

ANTONIO AND MELLIDA:
A HISTORY.

ACTED BY THE CHILDREN OF PAUL'S.

BY JOHN MARSTON.

London. 1602.

PIERO SFORZA, Duke of Venice.

ANDRUGIO, Duke of Genoa.

Dramatis Personæ.

CASTILIO BALTHAZAR.
CATZO, his Servant.

ANTONIO, son of Andrugio, disguised as FLORI- DILDO, Servant to Balurdo.

ZELL, an Amazon.

GALEATZO, son of the Duke of Florence.

MATZAGENTE, a braggadocio, Duke of Milan's son.
FOROBOSCO, a parasite.

BALURDO, a silly, 'mountebanking' courtier.
FELICE, a shrewd, contemplative cynic.
ALBERTO, a Venetian Gentleman.

LUCIO, Companion or Servant to Andrugio.
A Page.

MELLIDA, Piero's Daughter.
ROSSALINE, Niece to Piero.
FLAVIA, Maid to Rossaline.

Courtiers, etc.

SCENE-In and around Venice.

INDUCTION.

Enter GALEATZO, PIERO, ALBERTO, ANTONIO,
FOROBOSCO, BALURDO, MATZAGENTE, and
FELICE, with parts in their hands, having
cloaks cast over their apparel.

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.

Of the slight'st fortunes, as if Hercules
And stalks as proud upon the weakest stilts
Or burly Atlas shouldered up their state.
Pie. Good; but whom act you?

Alb. The necessity of the play forceth me to act two parts: Andrugio, the distressed Duke of Genoa, and Alberto, a Venetian gentleman, enamoured on the Lady Rossaline; whose fortunes being too weak to sustain the port of her, he prov'd always disastrous in love; his worth being underpoised' by the uneven scale, that currents all things by the outward stamp of

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?
Bal. The part of all the world.

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's heir of Venice.

1 underpoised-undervalued.

2 currents-makes pass current, values.

3 burgomasco's-equivalent, we suppose, to burgomaster's.