Tell where he is: for look what love conceals, Calica. This is reward which thou dost threaten me : If terror thou wilt threaten, promise joys. Alaham. Smart cools these boiling styles of vanity. Calica. And if my father I no more shall see, Help me unto the place where he remains: To hell below, or to the sky above, The way is easy where the guide is love. Thy glorious pride of this unglorious deed Alaham. Bodies have place, and blindness must be led. Graves be the thrones of kings when they be dead. Alaham. Well, Sirs, go seek the dark and secret caves, The holy temples, sanctified cells, All parts wherein a living corpse may dwell. Calica. Seek him amongst the dead, you placed him there : Yet lose no pains, good souls, go not to hell; And, but to heaven, you may go every If any more I of my father know, where. Than that he is where you would have him go. Alaham. Tear up the vaults. Behold her agonies! Sorrow substracts, and multiplies, the spirits; Care, and desire, do under anguish cease; Doubt curious is, affecting piety; Woe loves itself; fear from itself would fly. Calica. If aught be quick in me, move it with scorn : Nothing can come amiss to thoughts forlorn. Alaham. Confess in time. Revenge is merciless. Are vain in things impossible to do. Alaham. Tell yet where thou thy father last did see. And wouldst thou trait'rously thyself exceed, Alaham. Bear her away: devise; add to the rack Torments, that both call death and turn it back. Calica. The flattering glass of power is others' pain. Perfect thy work; that heaven and hell may know, To worse I cannot, going from thee, go. Eternal life, that ever liv'st above! If sense there be with thee of hate, or love; Accept these pains, whereof you feel no smart. The KING comes forth. King. What sound is this of Cælica's distress? With shame and sin to have affinity. Break me; I am the prison of thy thought: Crowns dear enough with fathers' blood are bought. King. Flatter thy wickedness; adorn thy rage; To do an ill that brings no good with it. Alaham. Go, lead them hence. Prepare the funeral. Hasten the sacrifice and pomp of woe. Where she did hide him, thither let them go. A Nuntius (or Messenger) relates to Alaham the manner of his Father's, Brother's, and Sister's deaths; and the popular discontents which followed. Alaham by the sudden working of Remorse is distracted, and imagines that he sees their Ghosts. ALAHAM. Nuntius. Nuntius. The first which burnt, as Cain* his next of kin, In blood your brother, and your prince in state, Drew wonder from men's hearts, brought horror in. The execution, to make it plausible to the people, is colored with the pretext, that the being burnt is a voluntary sacrifice of themselves by the victims at the funeral of Cain a bashaw and relative. Deceit is odious in a king's estate. Strange visions rise; strange furies haunt the flame; These words he spake, even breathing out his breath: Unhappy weakness! never innocent! "If in a crown, yet but an instrument. 66 People! observe; this fact may make you see, "Excess hath ruin'd what itself did build: "But ah! the more opprest the more you yield." These words he spake. "Behold one that hath lost "This is the fruit of power's misgovernment. 66 People! my fall is just; yet strange your fate, "That, under worst, will hope for better state." Grief roars aloud. Your sister yet remain'd; Helping in death to him in whom she died; Then going to her own, as if she gain'd, These mild words spake with looks to heaven bent. "O God! 'Tis thou that suff'rest here, not we: "Wrong doth but like itself in working thus: "At thy will, Lord! revenge thyself, not us." The fire straight upward bears the souls in breath: Visions of horror circle in the flame With shapes and figures like to that of Death, But lighter-tongued and nimbler wing'd than Fame: "And power's foundations, strengths, not vices, are." What thoughts be these that do my entrails tear? I feel my brother and my sister there. |