Duch. Of nothing:

When I muse thus, I sleep.

Car. Like a madman, with your eyes open ?
Duch. Dost thou think we shall know one another
In the other world?

Car. Yes, out of question.

Duch. O that it were possible we might

But hold some two days' conference with the dead!
From them I should learn somewhat I am sure

I never shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle;
I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow.

The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass,
The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad;
I am acquainted with sad misery,

As the tann'd galley-slave is with his oar;
Necessity makes me suffer constantly,

And custom makes it easy. Who do I look like now?

Car. Like to your picture in the gallery:

A deal of life in show, but none in practice:
Or rather, like some reverend monument
Whose ruins are ev'n pitied.

Duch. Very proper:

And Fortune seems only to have her eyesight,
To behold my tragedy: how now,

What noise is that?

A Servant enters.

Serv. I am come to tell

you,

Your brother hath intended you some sport.
A great physician, when the Pope was sick
Of a deep melancholy, presented him

With several sorts of madmen, which wild object
(Being full of change and sport) forced him to laugh,
And so the imposthume broke: the selfsame cure
The duke intends on you.

Duch. Let them come in.

Here follows a Dance of sundry sorts of Madmen, with music answerable thereto: after which BosOLA (like an old man) enters.

Duch. Is he mad too?

Bos. I am come to make thy tomb.

Duch. Ha! my tomb?

Thou speak'st as if I lay upon my deathbed,
Gasping for breath: dost thou perceive me sick?

Bos. Yes, and the more dangerously, since thy sickness is

insensible.

Duch. Thou art not mad sure: dost know me?

Bos. Yes.

Duch. Who am I?

Bos. Thou art a box of wormseed; at best but a salvatory of green mummy. What's this flesh ? a little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste. Our bodies are weaker than those paper-prisons boys use to keep flies in, more contemptible; since ours is to preserve earthworms. Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass; and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison. Duch. Am not I thy duchess?

Bos. Thou art some great woman sure, for riot begins to sit on thy forehead (clad in grey hairs) twenty years sooner than on a merry milk-maid's. Thou sleepest worse, than if a mouse should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat's ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out, as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow.

Duch. I am Duchess of Malfy still.

Bos. That makes thy sleeps so broken :

Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright;
But, look'd too near, have neither heat nor light.

Duch. Thou art very plain.

Bos. My trade is to flatter the dead, not the living.
I am a tomb-maker.

Duch. And thou comest to make

Bos. Yes.

Duch. Let me be a little merry.

my tomb?

Of what stuff wilt thou make it?

Bos. Nay, resolve me first; of what fashion?
Duch. Why, do we grow fantastical in our death-bed?
Do we affect fashion in the grave?

Bos. Most ambitiously. Princes' images on their tombs do not lie as they were wont, seeming to pray up to heaven; but with their hands under their cheeks (as if they died of the tooth-ache): they are not carved with their eyes fixed upon the stars; but, as

their minds were wholly bent upon the world, the selfsame way they seem to turn their faces.

Duch. Let me know fully therefore the effect

Of this thy dismal preparation,

This talk, fit for a charnel.

Bos. Now I shall.

[A coffin, cords, and a bell, produced.

Here is a present from your princely brothers;
And may it arrive welcome, for it brings
Last benefit, last sorrow.

Duch. Let me see it.

I have so much obedience in my blood,
I wish it in their veins to do them good.
Bos. This is your last presence-chamber.
Car. O my sweet lady!

Duch. Peace, it affrights not me.
Bos. I am the common bellman,

That usually is sent to condemn'd
The night before they suffer.

Duch. Even now thou saidst,

Thou wast a tomb-maker.

Bos. 'Twas to bring you

persons

By degrees to mortification. Listen.

Dirge.

Hark, now everything is still;

This screech-owl, and the whistler shrill,

Call upon our dame aloud,

Ard bid her quickly d'on her shroud.

Much you had of land and rent;

Your length in clay 's now competent.
A long war disturb'd your mind;
Here your perfect peace is sign'd.

Of what is 't fools make such vain keeping?
Sin, their conception; their birth, weeping:
Their life, a general mist of error;
Their death, a hideous storm of terror.
Strew your hair with powders sweet,
D'on clean linen, bathe your feet:
And (the foul fiend more to check)
A crucifix let bless your neck.
'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day:
End your groan, and come away,

Car. Hence, villains, tyrants, murderers: alas!
What will you do with my lady? Call for help.
Duch. To whom; to our next neighbours? They are mad
Farewell, Cariola.

I pray thee look thou givest my little boy
Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl

[folks.

Say her prayers ere she sleep.-Now what you please;
What death?

Bos. Strangling. Here are your executioners.
Duch. I forgive them.

The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough of the lungs,
Would do as much as they do.

Bos. Doth not death fright you

?

Duch. Who would be afraid on 't,

Knowing to meet such excellent company
In the other world?

What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smother'd

With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls ?
I know, death hath ten thousand several doors

For men to take their exits: and 'tis found

They go on such strange geometrical hinges,
may open them both

You

sake)

ways; any way: (for heaven's

So I were out of your whispering: tell my brothers,
That I perceive, death (now I'm well awake)
Best gift is, they can give or I can take.

I would fain put off my last woman's fault;
I'd not be tedious to you.

Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength
Must pull down heaven upon me.

Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly arch'd
As princes' palaces; they that enter there

Must go upon their knees. Come, violent death,
Serve for Mandragora to make me sleep.

Go tell my brothers; when I am laid out,

They then may feed in quiet.

[They strangle her, kneeling,

FERDINAND enters.

Ferd. Is she dead?

Bos. She is what you would have her.

Fix your eye

Ferd. Constantly.

here.

Bos. Do you not weep?

Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.

The element of water moistens the earth,

But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens. Ferd. Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young. Bos. I think not so: her infelicity

Seem'd to have years too many.

Ferd. She and I were twins:

And should I die this instant, I had lived
Her time to a minute'.

*

Single Life.

O fie upon this single life! forego it.
We read how Daphne, for her peevish flight,
Became a fruitless bay-tree: Syrinx turn'd
To the pale empty reed: Anaxarate

Was frozen into marble: whereas those

Which married, or proved kind unto their friends,
Were, by a gracious influence, trans-shaped
Into the olive, pomegranate, mulberry;

Became flowers, precious stones, or eminent stars.

1 All the several parts of the dreadful apparatus with which the Duchess's death is ushered in, are not more remote from the conceptions of ordinary vengeance, than the strange character of suffering which they seem to bring upon their victims is beyond the imagination of ordinary poets. As they are not like inflictions of this life, so her language seems not of this world. She has lived among horrors till she is become "native and endowed unto that element." She speaks the dialect of despair, her tongue has a snatch of Tartarus and the souls in bale.-What are "Luke's iron crown," the brazen bull of Perillus, Procrustes' bed, to the waxen images which counterfeit death, to the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bellman, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees! To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit— this only a Webster can do. Writers of an inferior genius may "upon horror's head horrors accumulate," but they cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality, they "terrify babes with painted devils," but they know not how a soul is capable of being moved; their terrors want dignity, their affrightments are without decorum.