University of Virginia Library

Scena Quarta.

Enter Zemes, and Alexander Bishop of Rome.
Bishop.
Cannot my words add solace to your thoughts?
Oh! you are gulft too deepe in a desire
Of soueraigne pompe, and your high thoughts aspire.
All the vnshadowed plainenesse of my life
Doth but contract thick wrinckles of mislike
In your Majestick brow, and you distast
Morall receipts, which I haue ministred
To coole Ambitions Feauer.

Zemes.
Pardon Sir,
Your Holinesse mistakes my malady,
Another sicknesse grates my tender breast,
And I am ill at heart: alas, I stand
An abject now as well in Natures eye,
As erst I did in Fortunes: is my health
Fled with mine honour? and the common rest
Of man, growne stranger to me in my griefe?
Some vnknowne cause hath bred through all my bloud
A colder operation, then the juice
Of Hemlock can produce: O wretched man!
Looke downe propitious God heads on my woes:
Phœbus infuse into me the sweet breath
Of cheerefull health, or else infectious death.
If there an Angell be whom I haue crost
In my tormented boldnesse? and these griefes
Are expiatory punishments of sinne?
Now, now repentance strike quite through my heart,
Enough of paines, enough of bitter smart
Haue tyed me to't. I haue already bin
Bolted from ioy, content can enter in,
Not at the open passage of my heart,
I neither heare, nor see, nor feele, nor touch
With pleasure; my vexation is so much.
My graue can onely quit me of annoy;
That preuents mischiefe, which can bring no ioy.

Exit.
Bish.
Now I could curse what mine owne hand hath done,
And wish that he would vomit out the draught
Of direfull poyson, which infects his bloud.
Ambitious fire? why 'tis as cleane extinct,
As if his heart were set beneath his feet,
Griefe hath boil'd out the humours of vaine pride,
And he was meere contrition.
What's the newes?

Enter a Messenger.
Messen.
Zemes as now he left you, pale and wan,
Dragging his weake legges after him, did fall
Dead on the stony pauement of the Hall,
Not by vnhappy chance, but as he walkt,
Folding his armes vp in a pensiue knot,
And rayling at his Fate, as if he staged
The wounded Priam, or some falling King,
So he, oft lifting vp his closing eye,
Sunke faintly downe, groan'd out, I dye, I dye.

Bish.
It grieues my soule: let Baiazet know this
Could our owne shortned life, but lengthen his
By often sighes I would transfuse my breath
Into his breast, and call him back from death.

Exit.