University of Virginia Library

Scene IV.

An apartment in the ducal palace.
Enter the Duke and courtiers.
Duke.
Yes, was it not enough, good Garcia,—
Blood spilt in every street by his wild sword;
The reverend citizens pelted with wrongs,
Their rights and toil-won honours blown aside,
Torn off, and trampled 'neath his drunken foot;
The very daughters of the awful church
Smeared in their whiteness by his rude attempts;
The law thus made a lie even in my mouth;
Myself a jest for beer-pot orators;
My state dishonoured;—was it not enough
To turn a patience, made of ten-years' ice,
Into a thunderbolt?

Garcia.
It was too much:
I wonder at your grace's long endurance.
Did you ne'er chide him?

Duke.
No, never in his life:
He has not that excuse. My eyes and ears
Were frozen-closed. Yet was it not enough
That his ill deeds outgrew all name and number,
O'er-flowed his years and all men's memories?
Gaudentio, I was mild; I bore upon me
This world of wrongs, and smiled. But mark you now,
How he was grateful.—Tell them, Melchior.

Melch.
Linked, as it is surmised, with Lutherans,
And other rebels 'gainst his father's state,
He has not only for their aid obtained
From me, the steward of the dukedom, money,
But also robbed, most treacherously robbed,
By night, and like a thief, the public treasury.

Gauden.
I'll not believe it; and he is a villain,
Ay, and the very thief, that did the thing,
Who brings the accusation.

Duke.
Knave, I think
Thou wert my son's accomplice.

Melch.
Nay, my lord,
He says what all would say, and most myself,
But that these facts—

Gauden.
What facts? What witnesses?
Who saw? Who heard? Who knows?

Duke.
Our trusty steward.

Gauden.
A Spanish Jew! a godless, heartless exile,
Whose ear's the echo of the whispering world.
Why, if he only knows, and saw, and heard,
This Argus-witness, with his blood-hound nose,
Who keeps a fairy in his upright ear,
Is no more than a black, blind, ugly devil,
Nick-named a lie.

Duke.
Be silent, slave, or dead.
I do believe him: Garcia, so dost thou?
All honest men, good Melchior, like thyself,—
For that thou art, I think, upon my life,—
Believe thee too.

Melch.
It is my humble trust:
And, in the confidence of honesty,
I pray you pardon this good servant's boldness. (aside)

God help the miserable velvet fellow!
It seems he has forgot that little story,
How he debauched my poor, abandoned sister,
And broke my family into the grave.—
That's odd; for I exceeding well remember it,
Though then a boy.

Duke.
Gaudentio, thou dost hear
Why I forgive thee: but be cautious, sir.

Gauden.
Cautious,—but honest,—cautious of a villain.

Duke.
[Exeunt Courtiers.
Enter Torrismond.

Torris.
Why then well parted, for I'm going to bed.
I'm weary; so, good-night.

Duke.
Stay; I must speak to you.—

Torris.
To-morrow then, good father, and all day.
But now no more than the old sleepy word,
And so again, good-night.

Duke.
Turn, sir, and stay:
I will be brief, as brief as speech can be.—
Seek elsewhere a good night: there is none here.
This is no home for your good nights, bad son,
Who hast made evil all my days to come,
Poisoned my age, torn off my beauteous hopes
And fed my grave with them.—Oh! thou hast now,
This instant, given my death an hundred sinews,
And drawn him nearer by a thousand hours.
But what of that? You'd sow me like a grain,
And from my stalk pick you a ducal crown.
But I will live.—

Torris.
That you may live and prosper
Is every day my prayer, my wish, my comfort.
But what offence has raised these cruel words?

Duke.
That I may live, you plot against my life;
That I may prosper, you have cured my fortunes
Of their encrusted jaundice,—you have robbed me.
So, for your prayers and wishes I do thank you;
But for your deeds I wish and pray Heaven's vengeance.

Torris.
Is this your own invention, or—O nature!
O love of fathers! could a father hear
His offspring thus accused, and yet believe?
Believe! Could he endure, and not strike dead,
The monster of the lie? Sir, here or there,
In you, or your informers, there's a villain,
A fiend of falsehood: so beware injustice!

Duke.
I never was unjust, but when I pardoned
Your bloody sins and ravening appetites,—
For which Heaven pardon me, as I repent it!
But I'll not play at battledore with words.
Hear me, young man, in whom I did express
The venom of my nature, thus the son,
Not of my virtuous will, but foul desires,
Not of my life, but of a wicked moment,
Not of my soul, but growing from my body,
Like thorns or poison on a wholesome tree,
The rank excrescence of my tumid sins,—
And so I tear thee off: for, Heaven doth know,
All gentler remedies I have applied;
But to this head thy rankling vice has swelled,
That, if thou dwellest in my bosom longer,
Thou wilt infect my blood, corrode my heart,
And blight my being: therefore, off for ever!

Torris.
O mother, thou art happy in thy grave!
And there's the hell in which my father lies,
The serpent that hath swallowed him!

Gaudentio rushes in.
Gauden.
(As he enters, to those without, the other courtiers, who also enter but remain at the side.)
Away!
Let me come in! . . Now, I beseech you, lords,
Put out this anger; lay a night of sleep
Upon its head, and let its pulse of fire
Flap to exhaustion. Do not, sir, believe
This reptile falsehood: think it o'er again,
And try him by yourself; thus questioning,
Could I, or did I, thus, or such a fault,
In my beginning days? There stands before you
The youth and golden top of your existence,
Another life of yours: for, think your morning
Not lost, but given, passed from your hand to his,
The same except in place. Be then to him
As was the former tenant of your age,
When you were in the prologue of your time,
And he lay hid in you unconsciously
Under his life. And thou, my younger master,
Remember there's a kind of god in him,
And after heaven the next of thy religion.
Thy second fears of God, thy first of man,
Are his, who was creation's delegate,
And made this world for thee in making thee.

Duke.
A frost upon thy words, intended dog!
Because thy growth has lost its four-legged way
And wandered with thee into man's resemblance,
Shalt thou assume his rights? Get to thy bed,
Or I'll decant thy pretext of a soul,
And lay thee, worm, where thou shalt multiply.
Sir slave, your gibbet's sown.

Torris.
Leave him, Gaudentio,
My father and your master are not here;
His good is all gone hence, he's truly dead;
All that belonged to those two heavenly names
Are gone from life with him, and changing cast
This slough behind, which all abandoned sins
Creep into and enliven devilishly.

Duke.
What! stand I in thy shadow? or has Momus
Opened a window 'twixt thy heart and mine?
'Tis plated then!

Torris.
We talk like fighting boys:—
Out on't! I repent of my mad tongue.
Come, sir; I cannot love you after this,
But we may meet and pass a nodding question—

Duke.
Never! There lies no grain of sand between
My loved and my detested. Wing thee hence,
Or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cob-web
Spun o'er the well of clotted Acheron,
Whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire;
And may this intervening earth be snow,
And my step burn like the mid coal of Ætna,
Plunging me, through it all, into the core
Where in their graves the dead are shut like seeds,
If I do not—O but he is my son!
If I do not forgive thee then—but hence!
Gaudentio, hence with him, for in my eyes
He does look demons.—

Melch.
(to Torrismond.)
Come out with me and leave him:
You will be cool, to-morrow.

Torris.
That I shall;
Cool as an ice-drop on the skull of Death,
For winter is the season of the tomb,
And that's my country now.

Duke.
Away with him!
I will not hear.—Where did I leave my book?
Or was it music?—Take the beggar out.
Is there no supper yet?—O my good Melchior!
I'm an eternal gap of misery.—
Let's talk of something else.

Torris.
O father, father! must I have no father,
To think how I shall please, to pray for him,
To spread his virtues out before my thought,
And set my soul in order after them?
To dream, and talk of in my dreaming sleep?
If I have children, and they question me
Of him who was to me as I to them;
Who taught me love, and sports, and childish lore;
Placed smiles where tears had been; who bent his talk,
That it might enter my low apprehension,
And laughed when words were lost.—O father, father!
Must I give up the first word that my tongue,
The only one my heart has ever spoken?
Then take speech, thought, and knowledge quite away,—
Tear all my life out of the universe,
Take of my youth, unwrap me of my years,
And hunt me up the dark and broken past
Into my mother's womb: there unbeget me;
For 'till I'm in thy veins and unbegun,
Or to the food returned which made the blood
That did make me, no possible lie can ever
Unroot my feet of thee. Canst thou make nothing?
Then do it here, for I would rather be
At home nowhere, than here nowhere at home.

Duke.
Why ask'st thou me? Hast thou no deeds to undo,
No virtues to rebuy, no sins to loose?
Catch from the wind those sighs that thou hast caused;
Out of large ocean pick the very tears,
And set them in their cabinets again.
Renew thyself, and then will I remember
How thou camest thus. Thou art all vices now
Of thine own getting. My son Torrismond
Did sow himself under a heap of crime,
And thou art grown from him: die to the root,
So I may know thee as his grave at least.—
Now, Melchior, we'll away.

Melch.
Not yet, my lord:
I wait upon this gentleman.

Duke.
Is't so?
Why then, begone! Good morrow to you, sirs.
Farewell! and be that word a road to death
Uncrossed by any other! Not a word!

[Exit with courtiers: manent Torrismond and Melchior.
Melch.

Torris.
What shall we do?—why, all.
How many things, sir, do men live to do?
The mighty labour is to die: we'll do't,—
But we'll drive in a chariot to our graves,
Wheel'd with big thunder, o'er the heads of men.

[Exeunt.
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