University of Virginia Library

SCENE VI.

—Montrose.
Baliol, Sir John Cuming.
SIR JOHN CUMING.
My liege, I have a leter from the North,
Enveloping black news that touch us both;—
Your lady-mother, Donagill, is dead.—

BALIOL.
Misery on misery heap'd! Me miserable!
My mother dead! Alas!—
Grief for her wretched son hath laid her low;
O, would to God I had preceded her,
And she had clad me in my coffin-clothes,
Ere I had seen such cruel, cruel times!
Bereft of peace, of mother, and of friends,
I do not live—I die upon the earth,
Dragging such heavy days of dismal dole,
As make me gratulate the churchyard dead,
On being couched in their beds of rest:
O, Cuming! I am sick of persecution!
Find out a grave for me; I'll lay me down
And court the shelter of its wormy mould
From an enraged, false, unworthy world;
Yet tear from me these rags of royalty
Ere I be bury'd; they would spoil my rest,
And make me shudder deep within my grave,
Remembering me of what calamities
They brought so thick upon me:—Take them off;—
Hence every rag; Cuming, I fain would go
To heaven without them.

SIR JOHN CUMING.
Good my liege, the hour
Is come that shall relieve you of th'oppression
Of these heart-breaking symbols:—England's King
Waits to receive them.

BALIOL.
Let us go to him:
O, how I long to be despoil'd! Come, come!
I faint till I be lighten'd.

[Exeunt.