THE MALCONTENT. A TRAGI-COMEDY. BY JOHN MARSTON.
The Malcontent describes himself.
I cannot sleep, my eyes' ill neighboring lids
Will hold no fellowship. O thou pale sober night,
Thou that in sluggish fumes all sense dost steep;
Thou that giv'st all the world full leave to play,
Unbend'st the feebled veins of sweaty labor:
The gally-slave, that all the toilsome day
Tugs at the oar against the stubborn wave,
Straining his rugged veins, snores fast;
The stooping scythe-man, that doth barb the field,
Thou mak'st wink sure; in night all creatures sleep,
Only the Malcontent, that 'gainst his fate
Repines and quarrels: alas he's Goodman Tell-clock;
His sallow jaw-bones sink with wasting moan;
Whilst others' beds are down, his pillow's stone.
My cell 'tis, lady; where, instead of masks,
Music, tilts, tournies, and such court-like shows,
The hollow murmur of the checkless winds
Shall groan again, whilst the unquiet sea
Shakes the whole rock with foamy battery.
There Usherless* the air come in and out;
The rheumy vault will force your eyes to weep,
Whilst you behold true desolation.
A rocky barrenness shall pierce your eyes;
Where all at once one reaches, where he stands,
With brows the roof, both walls with both his hands.
i. e. without the ceremony of an Usher to give notice of its approach, as is usual in Courts. As fine as Shakspeare: "the bleak air thy boisterous Chamberlain."
THE WONDER OF WOMEN: OR THE TRAGEDY OF
SOPHONISBA. BY JOHN MARSTON.
Description of the Witch Erictho.
Here in this desart, the great Soul of Charms
Dreadful Erictho lives; whose dismal brow
Contemns all roofs, or civil coverture.
Forsaken graves and tombs (the ghosts forc'd out)
She joys to inhabit.
A loathsome yellow leanness spreads her face,
A heavy hell-like paleness loads her cheeks,
Unknown to a clear heaven. But if dark winds
Or black thick clouds drive back the blinded stars,
When her deep magic makes forc'd heaven quake,
And thunder, spite of Jove: Erictho then
From naked graves stalks out, heaves proud her head,
With long unkemb'd hair loaden, and strives to snatch
The night's quick sulphur; then she bursts up tombs
From half-rot sear-cloths; and she scrapes dry gums
For her black rites: but when she finds a corse
But newly grav'd, whose entrails are not turn'd
To slimy filth, with greedy havoc then
She makes fierce spoil, and swells with wicked triumph
To bury her lean knuckles in his eyes:
Then doth she gnaw the pale and o'er-grown nails
From his dry hand: but if she find some life
Yet lurking close, she bites his gelid lips,
And sticking her black tongue in his dry throat,
She breathes dire murmurs, which enforce him bear
Her baneful secrets to the spirits of horror.
-Hard by the reverent ruins
Of a once glorious temple, rear'd to Jove,
Whose very rubbish (like the pitied fall
Of virtue much unfortunate) yet bears
A deathless majesty, though now quite ras'd,
Hurl'd down by wrath and lust of impious kings,
So that, where holy Flamens wont to sing
Sweet hymns to heaven, there the daw, and crow,
The ill-voic'd raven, and still chattering pye,
Send out ungrateful sounds and loathsome filth;
Where statues and Jove's acts were vively* limn'd,
Boys with black coals draw the veil'd parts of nature
And lecherous actions of imagined lust;
Where tombs and beauteous urns of well-dead men
Stood in assured rest, the shepherd now
Unloads his belly, corruption most abhorr❜d
Mingling itself with their renowned ashes:
There once a charnel-house, now a vast cave,
Over whose brow a pale and untrod grove
Throws out her heavy shade, the mouth thick arms
Of darksome ewe, sun-proof, for ever choak;
Within, rests barren darkness, fruitless drought
Pines in eternal night; the steam of hell
Yields not so lazy air: there, that's her Cell.
WHAT YOU WILL: A COMEDY. BY JOHN MARSTON.
Venetian Merchant.
No knight,
But one (that title off) was even a prince,
A sultan Solyman: thrice was he made,
In dangerous arms, Venice' Providetore.
He was merchant, but so bounteous,
Valiant, wise, learned, all so absolute,
That nought was valued praiseful excellent,
But in 't was he most praiseful excellent.
OI shall ne'er forget how he went cloathed.
He would maintain it a base ill-used fashion,
To bind a merchant to the sullen habit
Of precise black, chiefly in Venice state,
Where merchants guilt the top.†
"Her whose merchant Sons were Kings."-Collins.
And therefore should you have him pass the bridge
Up the Rialto like a Soldier;
In a black bever belt, ash color plain,
A Florentine cloth-o'-silver jerkin, sleeves
White satin cut on tinsel, then long stock;
French panes embroider'd, goldsmith's work: O God,
Methinks I see him, how he would walk,
With what a jolly presence he would pace
Round the Rialto.*
I was a scholar: seven useful springs
Did I deflower in quotations
Of cross'd opinions 'bout the soul of man;
The more I learnt, the more I learn to doubt.
Delight my spaniel slept, whilst I baus'd leaves,
Toss'd o'er the dunces, pored on the old print
Of titled words: and still my spaniel slept.
Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, baited my flesh,
Shrunk up my veins and still my spaniel slept.
And still I held converse with Zabarell,
Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saw
Of Antick Donate: still my spaniel slept.
Still on went I; first, an sit anima ;
Then, an it were mortal. O hold, hold; at that
They're at brain buffets, fell by the ears amain
Pell-mell together; still my spaniel slept.
* To judge of the liberality of these notions of dress, we must advert to the days of Gresham, and the consternation which a Phenomenon habited like the Merchant here described would have excited among the flat round caps, and cloth stockings, upon Change, when those "original arguments cr tokens of a Citizen's vocation were in fashion not more for thrift and usefulness than for distinction and grace." The blank uniformity to which all professional distinctions in apparel have been long hastening, is one instance of the Decay of Symbols among us, which, whether it has contributed or not to make us a more intellectual, has certainly made us a less imaginative people. Shakspeare knew the force of signs:-" a malignant and turban'd Turk." "This meal-cap Miller," says the Author of God's Revenge against Murder, to express his indignation at an atrocious outrage committed by the miller Pierot upon the person of the fair Marieta.
Then, whether 'twere corporeal, local, fixt,
Ex traduce, but whether 't had free will
Or no, hot philosophers
Stood banding factions, all so strongly propt,
I stagger'd, knew not which was firmer part,
But thought, quoted, read, observ'd and pryed,
Stufft noting-books: and still my spaniel slept.
At length he wak'd, and yawned; and by yon sky,
For aught I know he knew as much as I.
Preparations for Second Nuptials.
Now is Albano's* marriage-bed new hung
With fresh rich curtains, now are my valence up,
Imbost with orient pearl, my grandsire's gift,
Now are the lawn sheets fum'd with violets
To fresh the pall'd lascivious appetite,
Now work the cooks, the pastry sweats with slaves,
The march-panes glitter, now, now the musicians
Hover with nimble sticks o'er squeaking crowds,†
Tickling the dried guts of a mewing cat:
The tailors, starchers, semsters, butchers, poulterers,
Mercers, all, all-none think on me.
THE INSATIATE COUNTESS: A TRAGEDY.
Isabella (the Countess), after a long series of crimes of infidelity to her husband and of murder, is brought to suffer on a scaffold. Roberto, her husband, arrives to take a last leave of her.
Roberto. Bear record all you blessed saints in heaven
I come not to torment thee in thy death;
For of himself he 's terrible enough,
But call to mind a Lady like yourself,
And think how ill in such a beauteous soul,
Upon the instant morrow of her nuptials,
Albano, the first husband speaks; supposed dead.
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