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And in your lives your father's excellence.1
Some music, and my fit will cease, my lord.

[They call for music.

Tamb. Proud fury, and intolerable fit,
That dares torment the body of my love,
And scourge the scourge of the immortal God:
Now are those spheres, where Cupid used to sit,
Wounding the world with wonder and with love,
Sadly supplied with pale and ghastly death,
Whose darts do pierce the centre of my soul.
Her sacred beauty hath enchanted heaven;
And had she lived before the siege of Troy,
Helen (whose beauty summoned Greece to arms,
And drew a thousand ships to Tenedos)
Had not been named in Homer's Iliads;
Her name had been in every line he wrote.
Or had those wanton poets, for whose birth
Old Rome was proud, but gazed a while on her,
Nor Lesbia nor Corinna had been named;

Zenocrate had been the argument

Of every epigram or elegy.

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[The music sounds.-Zenocrate dies.

What is she dead? Techelles, draw thy sword
And wound the earth, that it may cleave in twain,
And we descend into the infernal vaults,

To hale the Fatal Sisters by the hair,2

1 So 4to.-8vo. "excellency."

2 "This is very like the raving of old Titus Andronicus :'I'll dive into the infernal lake below

And pull her out of Acheron by the heels.'"-Broughton.

And throw them in the triple moat of hell,
For taking hence my fair Zenocrate.
Casane and Theridamas, to arms!

Raise cavalieros1 higher than the clouds,

And with the cannon break the frame of heaven;
Batter the shining palace of the sun,

And shiver all the starry firmament,

For amorous Jove hath snatched my love from hence, Meaning to make her stately queen of heaven.

What God soever holds thee in his arms,

Giving thee nectar and ambrosia,

Behold me here, divine Zenocrate,
Raving, impatient, desperate, and mad,
Breaking my steelèd lance, with which I burst
The rusty beams of Janus' temple-doors,
Letting out Death and tyrannising War,
To march with me under this bloody flag!
And if thou pitiest Tamburlaine the Great,
Come down from heaven, and live with me again!
Ther. Ah, good my lord, be patient; she is dead,
And all this raging cannot make her live.

If words might serve, our voice hath rent the air;
If tears, our eyes have watered all the earth;

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If grief, our murdered hearts have strained forth blood; Nothing prevails,2 for she is dead, my lord.

1 O Cavalier is the word still used for a mound for cannon, elevated above the rest of the works of a fortress, as a horseman is raised above a foot-soldier."-Cunningham.

2 Avails. So Peele (in Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes) :

"O king, the knight is fled and gone, pursuit prevaileth nought."

Tamb. For she is dead! Thy words do pierce my

soul!

Ah, sweet Theridamas! say so no more;

Though she be dead, yet let me think she lives,
And feed my mind that dies for want of her.

Where'er her soul be, thou [To the body] shalt stay with

me,

Embalmed with cassia, ambergris, and myrrh,

Not lapt in lead, but in a sheet of gold,
And till I die thou shalt not be interred.
Then in as rich a tomb as Mausolus'
We both will rest and have one epitaph
Writ in as many several languages

As I have conquered kingdoms with my sword.
This cursed town will I consume with fire,

Because this place bereaved me of my love:
The houses, burnt, will look as if they mourned;
And here will I set up her statua,1

And march about it with my mourning camp
Drooping and pining for Zenocrate.

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140

[The scene closes.

1 Old copies give "stature," but the metre requires a trisyllable.

ACT THE THIRD.

SCENE I.

Enter the Kings of Trebizond and Syria, one bearing a sword, and the other a sceptre; next the Kings of Natolia and Jerusalem, with the imperial crown; after, CALLAPINE, and after him other Lords and Almeda. ORCANES and the King of Jerusalem crown him, and the others give him the sceptre.

Orc. Callapinus Cyricelibes, otherwise Cybelius, son and successive heir to the late mighty emperor, Bajazeth, by the aid of God and his friend Mahomet, emperor of Natolia, Jerusalem, Trebizond, Soria, Amasia, Thracia, Illyria, Carmania, and all the hundred and thirty kingdoms late contributory to his mighty father. Long live Callapinus, Emperor of Turkey!

Call. Thrice worthy kings of Natolia, and the rest,
I will requite your royal gratitudes

With all the benefits my empire yields;
And were the sinews of the imperial seat
So knit and strengthened as when Bajazeth
My royal lord and father filled the throne,
Whose cursed fate hath so dismembered it,

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Then should you see this chief of Scythia,

This proud, usurping king of Persia,
Do us such honour and supremacy,

Bearing the vengeance of our father's wrongs,
As all the world should blot his 1 dignities
Out of the book of base-born infamies.
And now I doubt not but your royal cares
Have so provided for this cursèd foe,
That, since the heir of mighty Bajazeth,
(An emperor so honoured for his virtues,)
Revives the spirits of all true Turkish hearts,
In grievous memory of his father's shame,
We shall not need to nourish any doubt,
But that proud fortune, who hath followed long
The martial sword of mighty Tamburlaine,
Will now retain her old inconstancy,
And raise our honours to as high a pitch,
In this our strong and fortunate encounter;
For so hath heaven provided my escape,
From all the cruelty my soul sustained,
By this my friendly keeper's happy means,
That Jove, surcharged with pity of our wrongs,
Will pour it down in showers on our heads,
Scourging the pride of cursèd Tamburlaine.

Orc. I have a hundred thousand men in arms;
Some, that in conquest 2 of the perjured Christian,
Being a handful to a mighty host,

1 Old copies "our."

2 So 4to.-8vo. "in the conquest."

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