KING JOHN AND MATILDA. A TRAGEDY [PUBLISHED 1655]. BY ROBERT DAVENPORT [FLOURISHED 1623]. ACTED IN 1651

John, not being able to bring Matilda, the chaste daughter of the old Baron Fitzwater, to compliance with his wishes, causes her to be poisoned in a nunnery.

SCENE. JOHN. The Barons: they being as yet ignorant of the murder, and having just come to composition with the King after tedious wars. Matilda's hearse is brought in

by HUBERT.

John. Hubert, interpret this apparition.
Hub. Behold, sir,

A sad-writ Tragedy, so feelingly

Languaged, and cast; with such a crafty cruelty
Contrived, and acted; that wild savages

Would weep to lay their ears to, and (admiring
To see themselves outdone) they would conceive
Their wildness mildness to this deed, and call
Men more than savage, themselves rational.
And thou, Fitzwater, reflect upon thy name,1
And turn the Son of Tears. O, forget
That Cupid ever spent a dart upon thee;
That Hymen ever coupled thee; or that ever
The hasty, happy, willing messenger

Told thee thou hadst a daughter. Oh, look here!
Look here, King John, and with a trembling eye
Read your sad act, Matilda's tragedy.

Barons. Matilda!

Fitzw. By the lab'ring soul of a much-injured man, It is my child Matilda!?

Bruce. Sweet niece!

Leic. Chaste soul! 3

John. Do I stir, Chester?

Good Oxford, do I move? stand I not still

To watch when the griev'd friends of wrong'd Matilda

1 Fitzwater: son of water. A striking instance of the compatibility of the serious pun with the expression of the profoundest sorrows. Grief, as well as joy, finds ease in thus playing with a word. Old John of Gaunt in Shakspeare thus descants on his name: "Gaunt, and gaunt indeed; " to a long string of conceits, which no one has ever yet felt as ridiculous ["Richard II.," Act ii., Sc. 7, line 72]. The poet Wither thus, in a mournful review of the declining estate of his family, says with deepest nature:

The very name of Wither shows decay.

2[Two lines omitted.]

3 [One line.]

Will with a thousand stabs turn me to dust,
That in a thousand prayers they might be happy?
Will no one do it? then give a mourner room,
A man of tears. Oh, immaculate Matilda,
These shed but sailing heat-drops, misling showers,
The faint dews of a doubtful April morning;
But from mine eyes ship-sinking cataracts,
Whole clouds of waters, wealthy exhalations,
Shall fall into the sea of my affliction,
Till it amaze the mourners.

Hub. Unmatch'd Matilda ;

Celestial soldier, that kept a fort of chastity 'Gainst all temptations.

Truth crowns your reed :

Fitzw. Not to be a Queen,
Would she break her chaste vow.
Unmatch'd Matilda was her name indeed.
John. O take into your spirit-piercing praise
My scene of sorrow. I have well-clad woes,
Pathetic epithets to illustrate passion,

And steal true tears so sweetly from all these

Shall touch the soul, and at once pierce and please.

[Peruses the motto and emblems on the hearse. "To Piety and Purity "—and "Lilies mix'd with Roses" How well you have apparell'd woe! this Pendant, To Piety and Purity directed,

Insinuates a chaste soul in a clean body,

Virtue's white Virgin, Chastity's red Martyr!
Suffer me then with this well-suited wreath

To make our griefs ingenious. Let all be dumb,
Whilst the king speaks her Epicedium.

Chest. His very soul speaks sorrow.

Oxf. And it becomes him sweetly.

John. Hail Maid and Martyr! lo on thy breast, Devotion's altar, chaste Truth's nest,

I offer (as my guilt imposes)

Thy merit's laurel, Lilies and Roses;

Lilies, intimating plain

Thy immaculate life, stuck with no stain ;

Roses red and sweet, to tell

How sweet red sacrifices smell.

Hang round then, as you walk about this hearse,
The songs of holy hearts, sweet virtuous verse.

Fitzw. Bring Persian silks, to deck her monument ;
John. Arabian spices, quick'ning by their scent;
Fitzw. Numidian marble, to preserve her praise;

John. Corinthian ivory, her shape to praise : Fitzw. And write in gold upon it, In this breast Virtue sate mistress, Passion but a guest.

John. Virtue is sweet; and, since griefs bitter be, Strew her with roses, and give rue to me.

1

Bruce. My noble brother, I h' lost a wife and son 1;
You a sweet daughter. Look on the king's penitence;
His promise for the public peace. Prefer
A public benefit." When it shall please,
Let Heaven question him. Let us secure
And quit the land of Lewis.3

Fitzw. Do any thing;

Do all things that are honourable; and the Great King
Make you a good king, sir! and when your soul
Shall at any time reflect upon your follies,
Good king John, weep, weep very heartily;
It will become you sweetly. At your eyes
Your sin stole in; there pay your sacrifice.

John. Back unto Dunmow Abbey. There we'll pay
To sweet Matilda's memory, and her sufferings,
A monthly obsequy, which (sweet'ned by
The wealthy woes of a tear-troubled eye)
Shall by those sharp afflictions of my face
Court mercy, and make grief arrive at grace.1

Song.

Matilda, now go take thy bed
In the dark dwellings of the dead;
And rise in the great waking day
Sweet as incense, fresh as May.

5

Rest there, chaste soul, fix'd in thy proper sphere,
Amongst Heaven's fair ones; all are fair ones there.
Rest there, chaste soul, whilst we here troubled say;
Time gives us griefs, Death takes our joys away.

[Act v., Sc. 3.6]

This scene has much passion and poetry in it, if I mistake not. The last words of Fitzwater are an instance of noble temperament; but to understand him, the character throughout of this mad, merry, feeling, insensible-seeming lord, should

1 Also cruelly slain by the poisoning John.

2i.e., of peace; which this monstrous act of John's in this play comes to counteract, in the same way as the discovered death of Prince Arthur is like to break the composition of the King with his Barons in Shakspeare's play.

The Dauphin of France, whom they had called in, as in Shakspeare's play. [Four lines omitted.] "["Rest thou" (Bullen).] [Davenport, ed. Bullen, 189o. For other extracts from Davenport see pp. 444 and 586.]

be read. That the venomous John could have even counterfeited repentance so well, is out of nature; but, supposing the possibility, nothing is truer than the way in which it is managed. These old play-wrights invested their bad characters with notions of good, which could by no possibility have coexisted with their actions. Without a soul of goodness in himself, how could Shakspeare's Richard the Third have lit upon those sweet phrases and inducements by which he attempts to win over the dowager queen to let him wed her daughter? It is not Nature's nature, but Imagination's substituted nature, which does almost as well in a fiction.

BY JOHN

THE PARLIAMENT OF BEES. A MASQUE.1
DAY [FLOURISHED 1606]. PRINTED 1607. [EAR-
LIEST EDITION NOW KNOWN, 1641]2

Ulania, a female Bee, confesses her passion for Meletus, who loves Arethusa.

not a village Fly, nor meadow Bee,

That trafficks daily on the neighbouring plain,
But will report, how all the Winged Train
Have sued to me for Love; when we have flown
In swarms out to discover fields new blown.
Happy was he could find the forward'st tree,
And cull the choicest blossoms out for me;
Of all their labours they allow'd me some

And (like my champions) mann'd me out, and home:
Yet loved I none of them. Philon, a Bee
Well-skill'd in verse and amorous poetry,

As we have sate at work, both of one Rose,3
Has humm'd sweet Canzons, both in verse and prose,
Which I ne'er minded. Astrophel, a Bee,

(Although not so poetical as he)

Yet in his full invention quick and ripe,

In summer evenings, on his well-tuned pipe,

Upon a woodbine blossom in the sun,

(Our hive being clean-swept, and our day's work done),

1 [Divided into twelve "Characters or "Colloquies."]

2 Whether this singular production, in which the characters are all Bees, was ever acted, I have no information to determine. It is at least as capable of representation as we can conceive the "Birds" of Aristophanes to have been.

3 Prettily pilfered from the sweet passage in the Midsummer Night's Dream, where Helena recounts to Hermia their school-days' friendship :

We Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Created with our needles both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion.

VOL. IV.-26

[Act iii., Sc. 2, line 203.]

Would play me twenty several tunes; yet I
Nor minded Astrophel, nor his melody.
Then there's Amniter, for whose love fair Leade
(That pretty Bee) flies up and down the mead
With rivers in her eyes; without deserving
Sent me trim Acorn bowls of his own carving,
To drink May dews and mead in. Yet none of these,
My hive-born Playfellows and fellow Bees,
Could I affect, until this strange Bee came;
And him I love with such an ardent flame,
Discretion cannot quench.-1

He labours and toils,

Extracts more honey out of barren soils

Than twenty lazy Drones. I have heard my Father,
Steward of the Hive, profess that he had rather

Lose half the Swarm than him. If a Bee, poor or weak,
Grows faint on his way, or by misfortune break

A wing or leg against a twig; alive,

Or dead, he'll bring into the Master's Hive
Him and his burthen. But the other day,
On the next plain there grew a fatal fray
Betwixt the Wasps and us; the wind grew high,
And a rough storm raged so impetuously,

Our Bees could scarce keep wing; then fell such rain,
It made our Colony forsake the plain,

And fly to garrison: yet still He stood,

And 'gainst the whole swarm made his party good;
And at each blow he gave, cried out His Vow,
His Vow, and Arethusa!-On each bough
And tender blossom he engraves her name
With his sharp sting. To Arethusa's fame
He consecrates his actions; all his worth
Is only spent to character her forth.
On damask roses, and the leaves of pines,

I have seen him write such amorous moving lines
In Arethusa's praise, as my poor heart
Has, when I read them, envied her desert;

And wept and sigh'd to think that he should be
To her so constant, yet not pity me.

[Ch. vi.]

Porrex, Vice Roy of Bees under King Oberon, describes his large prerogative.

To Us (who, warranted by Oberon's love,

Write Ourself Master Bee), both field and grove,

1[Two lines omitted.]

2[Day's Works, ed. Bullen, 1881.]