 | John Woodvil |  |
ACT THE FOURTH.
Scene—An Apartment in Woodvil Hall.JOHN WOODVIL.
(Alone.)
A weight of wine lies heavy on my head,
The unconcocted follies of last night.
Now all those jovial fancies, and bright hopes,
Children of wine, go off like dreams.
This sick vertigo here
Preacheth of temperance, no sermon better.
These black thoughts, and dull melancholy,
That stick like burrs to the brain, will they ne'er leave me?
Some men are full of choler, when they are drunk;
Some brawl of matter foreign to themselves;
And some, the most resolved fools of all,
Have told their dearest secrets in their cups.
SIR WALTER. SIMON. LOVEL. GRAY.
LOVEL.
Sir, we are sorry we cannot return your French salutation.
GRAY.
Nor otherwise consider this garb you trust to than as a poor disguise.
LOVEL.
Nor use much ceremony with a traitor.
GRAY.
Therefore, without much induction of superfluous
words, I attach you, Sir Walter Woodvil, of High
Treason, in the King's name.
LOVEL.
And of taking part in the great Rebellion against
our late lawful Sovereign, Charles the First.
SIMON.
John has betrayed us, father.
LOVEL.
Come, Sir, you had best surrender fairly. We know you, Sir.
Hang ye, villains, ye are two better known than
trusted. I have seen those faces before. Are ye
not two beggarly retainers, trencher-parasites, to John?
I think ye rank above his footmen. A sort of bed
and board worms—locusts that infest our house; a
leprosy that long has hung upon its walls and princely
apartments, reaching to fill all the corners of my
brother's once noble heart.
GRAY.
We are his friends.
SIMON.
Fie, Sir, do not weep. How these rogues will
triumph! Shall I whip off their heads, father?
(Draws.)
LOVEL.
Come, Sir, though this shew handsome in you,
being his son, yet the law must have its course.
SIMON.
And if I tell you the law shall not have its course,
cannot ye be content? Courage, father; shall such
things as these apprehend a man? Which of ye will
venture upon me?—Will you, Mr. Constable self-elect?
or you, Sir, with a pimple on your nose, got
GRAY.
'Tis a brave youth—I cannot strike at him.
SIMON.
Father, why do you cover your face with your
hands? Why do you fetch your breath so hard?
See, villains, his heart is burst! O villains, he
cannot speak. One of you run for some water:
quickly, ye knaves; will ye have your throats cut?
How is it with you, Sir Walter? Look up, Sir, the
villains are gone. He hears me not, and this deep
disgrace of treachery in his son hath touched him
even to the death. O most distuned, and distempered
world, where sons talk their aged fathers into their
graves! Garrulous and diseased world, and still
empty, rotten and hollow talking world, where good
men decay, states turn round in an endless mutability,
and still for the worse, nothing is at a stay, nothing
abides but vanity, chaotic vanity.—Brother, adieu!
Which I will see consign'd with tears to earth.
Grief and a true remorse abide with thee.
Scene—Another Part of the Forest.
MARGARET.
(Alone.)
It was an error merely, and no crime,
An unsuspecting openness in youth,
That from his lips the fatal secret drew,
Which should have slept like one of nature's mysteries,
Unveil'd by any man.
Well, he is dead!
And what should Margaret do in the forest?
O ill-starr'd John!
O Woodvil, man enfeoffed to despair!
Take thy farewell of peace.
O never look again to see good days,
Or close thy lids in comfortable nights,
Or ever think a happy thought again,
If what I have heard be true.—
Forsaken of the world must Woodvil live,
If he did tell these men.
No tongue must speak to him, no tongue of man
Or bid “good night” to John. Who seeks to live
In amity with thee, must for thy sake
Abide the world's reproach. What then?
Shall Margaret join the clamours of the world
Against her friend? O undiscerning world,
That cannot from misfortune separate guilt,
No, not in thought! O never, never, John.
Prepar'd to share the fortunes of her friend
For better or for worse thy Margaret comes,
To pour into thy wounds a healing love,
And wake the memory of an ancient friendship.
And pardon me, thou spirit of Sir Walter,
Who, in compassion to the wretched living,
Have but few tears to waste upon the dead.
Scene.—Woodvil Hall.
(SANDFORD. MARGARET. (As from a Journey.)
SANDFORD.
The violence of the sudden mischance hath so
wrought in him, who by nature is allied to nothing
have never seen any thing more changed and spirit-broken.
He hath, with a peremptory resolution,
dismissed the partners of his riots and late hours,
denied his house and person to their most earnest
solicitings, and will be seen by none. He keeps ever
alone, and his grief (which is solitary) does not so
much seem to possess and govern in him, as it is by
him, with a wilfulness of most manifest affection,
entertained and cherished.
MARGARET.
How bears he up against the common rumour?
SANDFORD.
With a strange indifference, which whosoever
dives not into the niceness of his sorrow might mistake
for obdurate and insensate. Yet are the wings
of his pride for ever clipt; and yet a virtuous predominance
of filial grief is so ever uppermost, that you
may discover his thoughts less troubled with conjecturing
what living opinions will say, and judge of his
deeds, than absorbed and buried with the dead, whom
his indiscretion made so.
MARGARET.
I knew a greatness ever to be resident in him, to
which the admiring eyes of men should look up even
would I see him, fain talk with him; but that a sense
of respect, which is violated, when without deliberation
we press into the society of the unhappy, checks and
holds me back. How, think you, he would bear my
presence?
SANDFORD.
As of an assured friend, whom in the forgetfulness
of his fortunes he past by. See him you must; but
not to night. The newness of the sight shall move
the bitterest compunction and the truest remorse; but
afterwards, trust me, dear lady, the happiest effects of
a returning peace, and a gracious comfort, to him, to
you, and all of us.
MARGARET.
I think he would not deny me. He hath ere this
received farewell letters from his brother, who hath
taken a resolution to estrange himself, for a time,
from country, friends, and kindred, and to seek occupation
for his sad thoughts in travelling in foreign
places, where sights remote and extern to himself
may draw from him kindly and not painful ruminations.
SANDFORD.
I was present at the receipt of the letter. The
contents seemed to affect him, for a moment, with a
outwardly shewn. He wept with many tears (which
I had not before noted in him) and appeared to be
touched with a sense as of some unkindness; but the
cause of their sad separation and divorce quickly
recurring, he presently returned to his former inwardness
of suffering.
MARGARET.
The reproach of his brother's presence at this hour
would have been a weight more than could be
sustained by his already oppressed and sinking spirit.—Meditating
upon these intricate and wide-spread
sorrows, hath brought a heaviness upon me, as of
sleep. How goes the night?
SANDFORD.
An hour past sun-set. You shall first refresh your
limbs (tired with travel) with meats and some cordial
wine, and then betake your no less wearied mind to
repose.
MARGARET.
A good rest to us all.
SANDFORD.
Thanks, lady.
| John Woodvil | |