Folded Thoughts. Come, come, my lord, untie your folded thoughts, And let them dangle loose as a bride's hair. Your sister's poison'd. Dying Princes. [Act iii., Sc. 2.] To see what solitariness is about dying Princes! As heretofore they have unpeopled towns, divorced friends, and made great houses unhospitable! so now, O justice! where are their flatterers now? flatterers are but the shadows of princes' bodies; the least thick cloud makes them invisible. Natural Death. O, thou soft natural death! that art joint twin Vow of Murder rebuked. Miserable creature, If thou persist in this 'tis damnable. Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood, Or like the black and melancholic yew-tree, Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves [Act v., Sc. 3.] [Ibid.] [Act iv. Sc. 2.] Oh hold it constant. It settles his wild spirits: and so his eyes Melt into tears. [Act v., Sc. 3.] Despair. O the cursed devil, Which doth present us with all other sins Thrice candied o'er; despair, with gall and stibium [For other extracts from Webster see pages 59 and VOL. IV.-13 Sc. 6.] THE LOVER'S MELANCHOLY [PUBLISHED 1629: PRODUCED 1628]. BY JOHN FORD [FLOURISHED 1639] Contention of a Bird and a Musician. Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales Which poets of an elder time have feign'd To glorify their Tempe, bred in me Desire of visiting that paradise. To Thessaly I came, and living private, This youth, this fair-fac'd youth, upon his lute Nature's best skill'd musician, undertakes The challenge; and, for every several strain The well-shap'd youth could touch, she sung her down; Upon his quaking instrument, than she The nightingale did with her various notes Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes, Should vie with him for mastery, whose study Had busied many hours to perfect practice: To end the controversy, in a rapture Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly, [Two lines omitted.] 2 [A line.] 3 [Four lines.] The bird (ordain'd to be Musick's first martyr) strove to imitate These several sounds: which when her warbling throat And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness, To see the conqueror upon her hearse To weep a funeral elegy of tears.1 He looks upon the trophies of his art, Then sigh'd, then wiped his eyes, then sigh'd, and cried, "Alas! poor creature, I will soon revenge This cruelty upon the author of it. Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, peace To an untimely end:" and in that sorrow, I suddenly stept in. [Act i., Sc. 1.2] This Story, which is originally to be met with in Strada's Prolusions, has been paraphrased in rhyme by Crashaw, Ambrose Phillips, and others: but none of those versions can at all compare for harmony and grace with this blank verse of Ford's: it is as fine as anything in Beaumont and Fletcher; and almost equals the strife which it celebrates. THE LADIES' TRIAL [PUBLISHED 1639: PRODUCED 1638]. BY JOHN FORD Auria, in the possession of Honours, Preferment, Fame, can find no peace in his mind while he thinks his Wife unchaste. AURIA. AURELIO. Auria. Count of Savona, Genoa's admiral, A Worthy of my country, sought and sued to, -My triumphs Are echoed under every roof, the air Is streightned with the sound, there is not room [Three lines omitted.] 2[Mermaid Series, ed. Ellis.] 3[Fifteen lines omitted.] From all that royalty of blest content, By a confed'racy 'twixt love and frailty. Aurelio. Glories in public view but add to misery, Which travails in unrest at home. Auria. At home! That home, Aurelio speaks of, I have lost : Sleeps, heaven knows where. Would she and I, my wife On any outcast parings coarse and mouldy, [Act iii., Sc. 3.1] LOVE'S SACRIFICE. A TRAGEDY [PUBLISHED 1633]. BY JOHN FORD Biancha, Wife to Caraffa, Duke of Pavia, loves and is loved by Fernando the Duke's favourite. She long resists his importunate suit; at length, she enters the room where he is sleeping, and awakens him, to hear her confession of her love for him. BIANCHA. FERDINAND, sleeping. Bian. Resolve, and do; 'tis done. What, are those eyes, Which lately were so over-drown'd in tears, So easy to take rest? O happy man, How sweetly sleep hath seal'd up sorrows here! But I will call him: what, my Lord, my Lord, My Lord Fernando Fer. Who calls? Sleeping, or waking? Fer. Ha, who is't? Bian. "Tis I: Have you forgot my voice? or is your ear But useful to your eye? Fer. Madam the Duchess! [Ford's Works, ed. Dyce, 1869, vol. iii.] Bian. She, 'tis she; sit up: Sit up and wonder, whiles my sorrows swell : Bian. "Tis possible : Why do you think I come? And make me master of my best desires. Bian. "Tis true, you guess aright; sit up and listen, Poor wretched woman liv'd, that lov'd like me; Fer. O, Madam Bian. To witness that I speak is truth, look here; Thus singly I adventure to thy bed, And do confess my weakness: if thou tempt'st Fer. Perpetual happiness! Bian. Now hear me out: When first Caraffa, Pavy's Duke, my lord, Not mov'd by counsel, or remov'd by greatness: I have done so: nor was there in the world Bian. True, I do, Beyond imagination: if no pledge Of love can instance what I speak is true, Fer. What do you mean? |