Tell where he is: for look what love conceals,
Pain out of nature's labyrinths reveals.

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.
Alaham. Confess; where is he hid?
Calica. Rack not my woe.

Thy glorious pride of this unglorious deed
Doth mischief ripe, and therefore falling, shew.

Alaham. Bodies have place, and blindness must be led.

Graves be the thrones of kings when they be dead.
Calica. He was (unhappy) cause that thou art now;
Thou art, ah wicked! cause that he is not,
And fear'st thou parricide can be forgot?
Bear witness, though Almighty God on high,
And you black powers inhabiting below,
That for his life myself would yield to die.

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
Guilty, with you, of his blood let me be,

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.
Do not these trembling motions witness bear,
That all these protestations be of fear?

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.
Calica. Reward and pain, fear and desire too,

Are vain in things impossible to do.

Alaham. Tell yet where thou thy father last did see.
Calica. Even where he by his loss of eyes hath won
That he no more shall see his monstrous son.
First in perpetual night thou mad'st him go;
His flesh the grave; his life the stage, where sense
Plays all the tragedies of pain and woe.

And wouldst thou trait'rously thyself exceed,
By seeking thus to make his ghost to bleed?

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;
Revenge my king and father's overthrow.
O father! if that name reach up so high,
And be more than a proper word of art,
To teach respects in our humanity ;

Accept these pains, whereof you feel no smart.

The KING comes forth.

King. What sound is this of Cælica's distress?
Alaham, wrong not a silly sister's faith.
Tis plague enough that she is innocent;
My child, thy sister; born (by thee and me)

With shame and sin to have affinity.

Break me; I am the prison of thy thought:

Crowns dear enough with fathers' blood are bought.
Alaham. Now feel thou shalt, thou ghost unnatural,
Those wounds which thou to my heart did'st give,
When, in despite of God, this state, and me,
Thou did'st from death mine elder brother free.
The smart of king's oppression doth not die:
Time rusteth malice; rust wounds cruelly.

King. Flatter thy wickedness; adorn thy rage;
To wear a crown, tear up thy father's age.
Kill not thy sister: it is lack of wit

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.
This innocent, this soul too meek for sin,
Yet made for others to do harm withal,
With his self-pity tears drew tears from us;
His blood compassion had; his wrong stirr'd hate:

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.
Repiningly he goes unto his end:

Strange visions rise; strange furies haunt the flame;
People cry out, Echo repeats, his name.

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."
The next was He whose age had reverence,
His gesture something more than privateness;
Guided by One, whose stately grace did move
Compassion, even in hearts that could not love.
As soon as these approached near the flame,
The wind, the steam, or furies, rais'd their veils ;
And in their looks this image did appear:
Each unto other, life to neither, dear.

These words he spake. "Behold one that hath lost
"Himself within; and so the world without;
"A king, that brings authority in doubt:

"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:
Some to the church; some to the people fly:
A voice cries out; " revenge and liberty.
"Princes, take heed; your glory is your care;

"And power's foundations, strengths, not vices, are."
Alaham. What change is this, that now I feel within?
Is it disease that works this fall of spirits?
Or works this fall of spirits my disease?
Things seem not as they did; horror appears.
What Sin embodied, what strange sight is this?
Doth sense bring back but what within me is?
Or do I see those shapes which haunt the flame?
What summons up remorse? Shall conscience rate
Kings' deeds, to make them less than their estate?
Ah silly ghost! is't you that swarm about?
Would'st thou, that art not now, a father be?
These body laws do with the life go out.

What thoughts be these that do my entrails tear?
You wand'ring spirits frame in me your hell;

I feel

my brother and my

sister there.