Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

Sus. Oh dead, Sir, Frank is dead.

For. Alas, alas, my boy! I have not the heart
To look upon his wide and gaping wounds.

Pray tell me, Sir, does this appear to you
Fearful and pitiful-to you that are
A stranger to my dead boy?

Host. How can it otherwise?

For. O me most wretched of all wretched men! stranger his warm bleeding wounds

If to

Appear so grisly and so lamentable,

How will they seem to me that am his father?
Will they not hale my eye-brows from their rounds,
And with an everlasting blindness strike them?

Sus. Oh, Sir, look here.

For. Dost long to have me blind?

Then I'll behold them, since I know thy mind.
Oh me!

Is this my son that doth so senseless lie,

And swims in blood? my soul shall fly with his
Unto the land of rest. Behold I crave,

Being kill'd with grief, we both may have one grave.
Sus. Alas, my father's dead too! gentle Sir,
Help to retire his spirits, over travail'd

With age and sorrow.

Host. Mr. Forest

Sus. Father

For. What says my girl? good morrow.

clock,

What's a

That you are up so early? call up Frank;
Tell him he lies too long a bed this morning.
He was wont to call the sun up, and to raise
The early lark, and mount her 'mongst the clouds.
Will he not up? rise, rise, thou sluggish boy.

Sus. Alas, he cannot, father.

For. Cannot, why?

Sus. Do you not see his bloodless colour pale? For. Perhaps he's sickly, that he looks so pale. Sus. Do you not feel his pulse no motion keep, How still he lies?

For. Then is he fast asleep.

Sus. Do you not see his fatal eye-lid close?
For. Speak softly; hinder not his soft repose.
Sus. Oh see you not these purple conduits run?
Know you these wounds?

For. Oh me! my murder'd son !

Enter young MR. FOREST.

Y. For. Sister!

Sus. O brother, brother!

Y. For. Father, how cheer you, Sir? why, you were

wont

To store for others comfort, that by sorrow

Were any ways

distress'd. Have

Have you all wasted,

And spared none to yourself?

O. For. O Son, Son, Son,

See, alas, see where thy brother lies.

He dined with me to day, was merry, merry,

Aye, that corpse was; he that lies here, see here,
Thy murder'd brother and my son was.

Dost thou not weep for him?

Y. For. I shall find time;

Oh see,

When you have took some comfort, I'll begin

To mourn his death, and scourge the murderer's sin.
O. For. Oh, when saw father such a tragic sight,
And did outlive it? never, son, ah never,

From mortal breast ran such a precious river.

Y. For. Come, father, and dear sister, join with me ; Let us all learn our sorrows to forget.

He owed a death, and he hath paid that debt.

[If I were to be consulted as to a Reprint of our Old English Dramatists, I should advise to begin with the collected Plays of Heywood. He was a fellow Actor, and fellow Dramatist, with Shakspeare. He possessed not the imagination of the latter; but in all those qualities which gained for Shakspeare the attribute of gentle, he was not inferior to him. Generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depths of passion; sweetness, in a word, and gentleness; Christianism; and true hearty Anglicism of feelings, shaping that Christianism; shine throughout his beautiful writings in a manner more conspicuous than in those of Shakspeare, but only more conspicuous, inasmuch as in Heywood these qualities are primary, in the other subordinate to poetry. I love them both equally, but Shakspeare has most of my wonder. Heywood should be known to his countrymen, as he deserves. His plots are almost invariably English. I am sometimes jealous, that Shakspeare laid so few of his scenes at home. I laud Ben Jonson, for that in one instance having framed the first draught of his Every Man in his Humour in Italy, he changed the scene, and Anglicised his characters. The names of them in the First Edition, may not be unamusing.

[blocks in formation]

How say you, Reader? do not Master Kitely, Mistress Kitely, Master Knowell, Brainworm, &c. read better than these Cisalpines?]

[blocks in formation]

THE GAME AT CHESS: A COMEDY. BY THOMAS MIDDLETON, 1624.

Popish Priest to a great Court Lady, whom he hopes to make s Convert of.

Let me contemplate;

With holy wonder season my access,
And by degrees approach the sanctuary

Of unmatch'd beauty, set in grace and goodness.
Amongst the daughters of men I have not found
A more Catholical aspect.
That eye

Doth promise single life, and meek obedience.
Upon those lips (the sweet fresh buds of youth)
The holy dew of prayer lies, like pearl
Dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn
Upon the bashful rose. How beauteously
A gentle fast (not rigorously imposed)
Would look upon that cheek; and how delightful
The courteous physic of a tender penance,
(Whose utmost cruelty should not exceed
The first fear of a bride), to beat down frailty!

THE VIRGIN WIDOW: A COMEDY, 1649: THE ONLY PRODUCTION, IN THAT KIND, OF FRANCIS QUARLES, AUTHOR OF EMBLEMS.

Song.

How blest are they that waste their weary hours

In solemn groves and solitary bowers,

Where neither eye nor ear

Can see or hear

The frantic mirth

And false delights of frolic earth;
Where they may sit, and pant,

And breathe their pursy souls;

Where neither grief consumes, nor griping want
Afflicts, nor sullen care controuls.

Away false joys; ye murther where ye

kiss:

There is no heaven to that, no life to this.

[blocks in formation]

When we were framed, the Fates consultedly

Did make this law, that all things born should die.

Yet Nature strove,

And did deny

We should be slaves
To Destiny.

At which, they heapt

Such misery;
That Nature's self

Did wish to die :

And thank their goodness, that they would foresee
To end our cares with such a mild decree.

Another.

Come, Lovers, bring your cares,

Bring sigh-perfumed sweets;

Bedew the grave with tears,

Where Death with Virtue meets.

« PředchozíPokračovat »