 | Comedies |  |
7
ACT I.
SCENE I.
A Grove near Naples.Tancred and Roger.
Tancred.
By Heaven! but I could almost hate my rank,
That it went nigh to rob me of myself.
Roger, but thou—thou art not sociable;
Or else thou 'dst kept me amorous company,
And toward her cousin vented as sweet sighs
As I toward Rosalie. Could I but think
Thou wast in love: then wert thou perfect, whole.
Knowst thou where joy and sorrow are akin?
Roger.
I know that love is crafty at invention.
Tanc.
I'll tell thee. Parents are they both of wisdom.
Roger.
Like Hercles' labor 'mong th' Hesperides,
Thy brain hath wrought a logic miracle,
Plucking such ponderous fruit from sapless soil.
8
Weight hath indeed the fruit this month's new joy
Is laden with, being this golden truth;
Who is a Prince, he can not be a man.
Rog.
'Tis more than golden, 'tis a royal truth.
Tanc.
Thy drift, Philosopher?
Rog.
The present will
Is absolute in Kings 'gainst fact and reason.
Tanc.
Than this, reason ne'er dug a purer gem.
For list:—had I not doffed the princely state,
Hither I had not come; and not come hither,
Unblest had lived; my richest vein unwrought;
Unblown; in nature's wisest page unschooled;
Undeeded in the fairest field of action;
My life so sterile, that the warden, Death,
Had found my soul for skyward flight unfledged.
Rog.
Heigho!
Tanc.
Best cause hast thou to sigh. Believe me,
We are but half ourselves, till in our frames
Love's soul is breathed. Enlarged even thou shalt be,
Transformed,—
Rog.
Into a looking-glass, wherein
An amorous maid shall feast on her dear self.
Tanc.
Truly a transformation to be wished.
Thy humorous conceit doth aptly paint
Love's joy and potency, whereby are we
Of grosser qualities so purged, our hearts
Become of Angels' souls the lucent mirrors
And blest reverberants of woman's smiles.
9
Or frowns.
Tanc.
If Rosalie did ever frown.
Rog.
Upon my word, I never saw her frown.
Tanc.
And did she so, why frowns would sit on her
Like clouds at molten eve, sunned into grace,
Made beautiful by what they bask in.
Rog.
Thou,
Meanwhile, as faithful glass—forget not that—
As smile for smile, wilt give back frown for frown;
Whence the black danger, that those doubling frowns,
Breeding as cloud doth cloud in angry weather
Heaven's face besmirch with gusty grimness,
Not to be rent but by a stormful breach;
And then, obsequious glass, instead of smiles,
Hot lightning and the rough-mouthed thunder echoes.
Alas! too certain 'tis, as smile to smile,
And frown to frown, love leads to matrimony.
Tanc.
Now I suspect thee. Thou dost never flout
At aught thyself hast not a part in. Come,
Confess.
Rog.
Well, in what guise? Shall I protest
A melancholy sickness at my heart,—
Tanc.
All sicknesses that life is wasted with
Are purged from hearts that are by love invigored.
Does it not seem as thou wert disembodied;
Snatched up from earthly moods and cares and thralments;
In thoughts above this muddy sphere ensteeped;
Consorted with celestial essences—
10
Hold—I'll confess: only leave me on earth.
For 'tis the very front of my confession,
That her dear face looked never yet so fair.
I'm all terrestrial, and this clod, my body,
Paces its native dust with prouder port,
Since I have here discerned in what sweet forms
Our elemental grossness can be wrought;
For Blanche's eyes are only fulgent clay.
Tanc.
How thou art curséd with imagination,
That canst espy such vile affinities.
Rog.
Diamond and gold are dust, and all the feasts
The senses in their finest hunger take
Are but more cunning mixtures of mere mud.
Tanc.
Well, rail thy worst, and beat thy bars; thou'rt caged.
Rog.
To friendship and to loyalty a martyr.
My Prince, my friend, a pining prisoner,
And I not share in his captivity!
But see, where yonder come our gentle captors.
Tanc.
Enlinked in one another's shining arms,
In fragrant interchange of maiden love.
Rog.
Like woodbine and white jesmin interlocked,
Perfuming each the other with their breaths.
Tanc.
The branches stoop to kiss their radiant brows.
Rog.
The birds have hushed to hear their cadenced voices.
Enter Rosalie and Blanche. They start on seeing Tancred and Roger, and disengage their arms.
Tanc.
Forgive us that we fright your solitude.
11
In truth we did not think to meet you here.
Yet is the meeting apt, for we must hence;
And first would thank you for your courtesies.
Tanc.
What you are fain to call our courtesies,
Are only echoes, shadows of yourselves;
Doings, the which, although by us enacted,
Are yet as indivisible from your presence
As is illumination from the sun.
You gender courtesy, as you do life
On the pleased mirror that retorts your image.
Ros.
Your words, sir, are what words not always are,
Near kinsmen of your acts, and these embrace
With sumptuous phrase, that still enriches them
As caskets deep-enchased do costly gems.
Blanche.
And thus-enclasped, more glibly shall we bear them
Away to Syracuse.
Rog.
To Syracuse!
Tanc.
To Syracuse!
Ros.
We must take ship to day;
And with good Neptune's favor shall o'erride
His wind-ploughed field ere a new morrow dies.
Rog.
Wherefore to Syracuse!
Ros.
It is our nest,
Whence we with half-fledged wings have lately flown.
Tanc.
Rumor belies it, or 'tis a city worth
A voyage to behold; wise and well governed.
Rog.
If so, a solitary paragon
12
Ros.
Better can we tell
Of convent-rule, wherein we have been bounded.
Yet, so far may our girlish knowledge stretch,
As to report the general heart, whose pulse
Beats everywhere content, unsoiled by fear,
Save for the future.
Tanc.
Ah! whence comes this fear?
Ros.
The King is agéd, and surmises cloud
The hopes of thinking subjects, when they weigh
What changes may assault us at his death.
Tanc.
Behind the duteous masking of your thought
I spy the tell-tale glance of meaning, thus;—
The good King's heir is somewhat better known
Unto the fears of men than to their hopes.
Rog.
A fickle Prince, constant in self-devotion?
Blanche.
Nay, sir, your guess hits wide of the crown's heir.
Rog.
Ay; self-love in a Prince is pardoned quickest.
It is a fault the prostrate subjects love.
Ros.
Howe'er that be, it is no fault of his.
Rather is he taxed with self-forgetfulness,
Not valuing the homage of his place,
Its princely dignities and royal dues;
But given to still and learned occupations;
Whereto he is enlisted by his friend
And loved companion, Roger, Count of Susa,
Deep-versed in hidden things.
13
A sorcerer?
A solemn necromancer, draped in black,
To maze the empty many?
Ros.
Nay, he wins
Men by his wit, when he consorts with them,
Which is not often; chiefly using them
For laughter. One as skilled in the brain's secrets
As in the occulted qualities of metals,
Taking small pleasure in affairs of state,
And less in courtly pomps.
Tanc.
A misanthrope,
Addicted to unholy entertainments;
The Prince unteaching of his princely port,
And charging him with guilty novelties.
What's his complexion? Bilious, lean, and dry?
Ros.
Herein the testimony of our tongues
Hath not our eyes for vouchers. We but speak
With Rumor's voice, which is so loud and boastful,
When bruiting the doings of the great,
It overleaps the walls of cloister life.
But if by the bright bigness of its theme
It be not falsely swelled, the Prince and Count
Are both, in the outward panoply of person
As well equipped as in more secret gifts.
Tanc.
You make me wish to know this wizard Count.
Rog.
And me to look on this unprincely Prince.
Ros.
You're very like t' encounter them; for they,
As you do, take delight in voyaging,
14
Seeking close converse with outlandish seers
And delvers in forbidden mines of knowledge—
A cause of dutiful disquietude
Unto the King and Court. But come, dear cousin,
'Tis time that we commit us to the waves.
Our ready ship, chafing her cable curb,
Springs at the frothy sea, eager to chase
This sunny breeze that runs so fast toward Sicily.
Tanc.
Would that we could transmute ourselves to wind,
That we might fan you home with gentlest force,
Spending our life in breath upon your sails
When friendly breezes falter.
Ros.
To minister
Unseen, felt but not known; that were to scale
Unearthly heights of bounteousness. The thought
Enfolds its thinker: this your courteous wish
Embalms you in our memory. Farewell!
Tanc.
That voice so tuneful should speak word so harsh.
Till now I never learned its envious meaning.
Ros.
To learn is ever the best end of travel.
Rog.
And to their teachers learners should be grateful.
Wherefore for this, your bitter-sweet instruction,
We thank you. Could we but repay the lesson,—
Ros.
We, sir, are neither travellers nor scholars.
Rog.
Learners you are, for you are young and witty;
And the best lesson is not always learnt
Through watchful purpose, but by sudden light
15
Blan.
You speak, sir,
As one who had himself learnt many lessons.
Rog.
Fair lady, our best schooling is within;
And now I speak from instant inspiration.
Ros.
Cousin, we know the cunning subtlety
These gentlemen can gild plain words withal.
They'll hold us here with polished argument
Till the wind shifts. Once more we say, Adieu.
Tanc.
Perforce then we must say, Adieu.
Rog.
Adieu.
[Exeunt Rosalie and Blanche.
Tanc.
Let's quick aboard. Will there be wind for both?
The jealous breeze will hug their sails alone,
Plaguing all meaner hulls with lazy calms.
Or will he not pervert his unchecked license,
Madly to head them off from Sicily,
That he may hold them longer in his clasp?
Haste we aboard; then fasten on their wake
Like pirate on his prey.—No; we'll to leeward,
And so, sail in the air that hath kissed them,
Made odorous, like breezes from Spice Islands.
And if the amorous wind, for the prolonging
Of his delight, shall toss them from their track,
Toward Sardi's laughing hills or Afric's waste,
We'll toss—
Rog.
No more, no more.
Tanc.
Why, what's the matter?
16
Dancing on briny waves what shall I be,
When from the billowy motion of your tongue
I am already sea-sick?
Tang.
Ha! ha! ha!
I had forgot your qualmish malady.
Oh! Sicily, my country, till this hour
I knew not how I love thee.
Rog.
Whither wilt thou?
Tang.
Whither? Whither but back to Syracuse?
Rog.
The King's son wafted to his capital
Intorted in the wings of upstart Cupids.
Tang.
A seat for gods to envy.
Rog.
And for men
To weep at.
Tang.
Ay, with tears of crocodile.
Roger, why should the Prince englut the man?
Rog.
Princehood and manhood are blank opposites.
He who begins by swallowing his fellows,
Must end with the engulfing of himself.
Tang.
I will have no such ending or beginning.
We'll think of this, and you shall do the thinking.
Rog.
The King's prime minister, he too will think.
Methinks, he'll think our thinking is unthinking.
Tang.
Well, now I'll think of naught but Rosalie,
Cleansing thereby my thoughts for enterprise.
[Exeunt.
17
SCENE II.
King's Palace in Syracuse.Enter King, Orontio, his Prime Minister, and Bernardo, a Priest, Confessor to the King.
King.
Bernardo, you have searched my niece, to clutch
The very kernel of her disposition?
Bern.
I have, my liege; it is as sweet as sound.
A truer servant of the holy church
Lives not uncanonized.
King.
I mean, Bernardo,
Touching her marriage with my son.
Bern.
My liege.
Devout obedience turns all duties light;
Foreruns the will, subjecting it unfelt
To clerical predominance; whereby
Encounter 'twixt desire and duteous need
Loses its angry pith, and acts like this,
Where will and wisdom close in glad embrace,
Are calmly hailed as providential blessings.
King.
Though she has known some summers more than Tancred,
Still wears she green the glistening crown of youth.
Marriage becomes a Prince. His daily life
It sanctifies, and plants him in the respect
Of sober men. Orontio, have you tidings
Of Tancred?
Orontio.
Sire, my messenger, a quick one,
18
News of him there.
King.
These wayward voyagings
Beseem him not, and have for the throne's heir
A peril disproportioned to their aim.
Bern.
'Gainst the remitting perils of the sea
He's armed by provident contrivances
Of Art, and the picked skill that waits on princes.
But hourly near him, and as subtly poisonous
As speechless exhalations from a fen—
For which there is no antidote but distance—
Are hotter dangers that assail his soul.
King.
You have before frighted my ear, Bernardo,
With stormy mutterings against Count Roger;
And I, with all a father's watchfulness,
Have hearkened, questioned, probed, and nothing found
Worse in the count than the irreverence
Native to youth, which riper years will physic.
Bern.
Pardon, my liege; you much misprize this man.
He's old in thought, and never has been young.
'Tis his great fault that in youth's levity
He's wanting. He bemocks our sacred calling,
Gores custom and time's steadfast usages;
And with licentious hand seeks to unrobe
Nature's chaste mysteries. Harmless alone,
He is, as princely parasite, a sore
Sickening the healthy heart of Sicily.
King.
Marriage will heal this sore. Two warmer fires
19
Love is a whetted knife 'twixt youthful friendships.—
I hear, Orontio, that you have a purpose
To let your daughter first behold the world
In mask.
Oron.
'Tis true, my liege. To-morrow I
Present my niece and daughter to my friends.
My brother's orphaned child and my own girl,
Have grown together in my heart as one.
Our festal entertainment will lack naught
But that my King should grace it with his looks.
King.
Count me, my friend, among your grateful guests.—
Bernardo, be your cleric task, to season
The good Matilda for her budding duties.
[Exeunt King and Orontio
Bernardo,
alone.
The sovereign church hath duties paramount.
The single fountain of true piety,
Self-love in her is one with generous virtue,
And self-replenishment religious goodness;
And thence, her heaviest sin were self-neglect,
Now, through conjunction of our separate loves,—
Made one by interchange of opposites,—
Princess Matilda is betrothed to us.
As rich is she in reverence as gold.
Marriage with Tancred would imperil both.
For he, not having an obedient bent,
Already loves us not; and this his lukeness,—
20
Might turn to hate through dastard jealousy.
Men are not wrought to piety by women
So oft as wives are thence distraught by husbands.
One of our harvest-fields is maidenhood,
Which sheds its buds in autumn fruit on us.
Exit.
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