The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o'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 th' other world?

Bos. Yet methinks,

The manner of your death should much afflict you;
This cord should terrify you.

Duch. Not a whit.

What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smothered

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,

You may open them both ways; any way: (for heav'n sake)

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.

Ferd. Is she dead?

(They strangle her, kneeling.)

Ferdinand enters.

Bos. She is what you would have her.

Fix your eye

here

Ferd. Constantly.

Bps. Do you not weep?

Other

Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.
The element of water moistens the earth,

But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavesn.

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. 68

*

*

O fie

Single Life.

upon this single life forego it.

We read how Daph., 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 prov'd kind unto their friends,
Were, by a gracious influence, trans-shap'd

Into the olive, pomgranate, mulberry;

Became flowers, precious stones, or eminent stars.

68 All the several parts of the dreadful apparatus with which the Duchesses 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 victim, 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 smatch 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 bell-man, 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 66 terrify babes with painted devils" but they know not how a soul is capable of being moved; their terrors want dig. nity, their affrightments are without decorum,

:

Fable,

Fable.

Upon a time, Reputation, Love, and Death,
Would travel o'er the world: and 'twas concluded
That they should part, and take three several ways.
Death told them, they should find him in great battles,
Or cities plagued with plagues: Love gives them counsel
To enquire for him 'mongst unambitious shepherds,
Where dowries were not talk'd of; and sometimes,
'Mongst quiet kindred that had nothing left

By their dead parents: stay, quoth Reputation;
Do not forsake me, for it is my nature,

If once I part from any man I meet,

I am never found again.

Another.

A Salmon, as she swam unto the sea,
'Met with a Dog-fish; who encounters her
With his rough language: why art thou so bold
To mix thyself with our high state of floods?
Being no eminent courtier, but one

That for the calmest and fresh time of the year
Dost live in shallow rivers, rank'st thyself
With silly Smelts and Shrimps :-and darest thou
Pass by our Dog-ship without reverence?
O (quoth the Salmon) sister, be at peace,
Thank Jupiter we both have past the net.
Our value never can be truly known,
Till in the fisher's basket we be shewn :
In the market then my price may be the higher;
Even when I am nearest to the cook and fire.

So to great men the moral may be stretched :
Men oft are valued high when they are most wretched.

THE

THE WHITE DEVIL: OR, VITTORIA COROMBONA, A LADY OF VENICE. A TRAGEDY.

BY JOHN WEBSTER.69

The arraignment of Vittoria.-Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke
of Brachiano, for the love of Vittoria Corombona, a Ve-
netian Lady, and at her suggestion, causes her Husband
Camillo to be murdered. Suspicion falls upon Vit-
toria, who is tried at Rome, on a double Charge of
Murder and Incontinence: in the presence of Cardinal
Monticelso, Cousin to the deceased Camillo; Francisco de
Medicis, Brother in Law to Brachiano; the Ambassa-
dors of France, Spain, England, &c. As the arraign-
ment is beginning, the Duke confidently enters the Court.
Mon. Forbear, my Lord, here is no place assign'd you:
This business, by his holiness, is left
To our examination.

Bra. May it thrive with you.
Fra. A chair there for his lordship.

(Lays a rich gown under him.)

Bra.

69 The Author's Dedication to this Play is so modest, yet so conscious of self-merit withal, he speaks so frankly of the deservings of others, and by implication insinuates his own deserts so ingenuously, that I cannot forbear inserting it, as a specimen how a man may praise himself gracefully and commend others without suspicion of envy.

"To the Reader.

In publishing this Tragedy, I do but challenge to myself that liberty which other men have taken before me; not that I affect praise by it, for nos hæc novimus esse nihil; only since it was acted in so open and black a theatre, that it wanted (that which is the only grace and setting-out of a tragedy) a full and understanding auditory; and that, since that time, I have noted, most of the people that come to that play-house resemble those ignorant asses, (who, visiting stationers shops, their use is not to enquire for good

Bra. Forbear your kindness; an unbidden guest
Should travel as Dutch women go to church,
Bear their stool with them.

Mon. At your pleasure, Sir.

Stand to the table, gentlewoman.-Now, Signior,
Fall to your plea.

Lawyer. Domine judex converte oculos in hanc pestem mulierum corruptissimam.

Vit. What's he?

Fra. A lawyer, that pleads against you.

books, but new books) I present it to the general view with this confidence,

Nec rhoncos metues malignorum

Nec scombris tunicas dabis molestas.

If it be objected this is no true dramatic poem, I shall easily confess it, non potes in nugas dicere plura meas, ipse ego quam dixi; willingly, and not ignorantly, have I faulted. For should a man present, to such an auditory, the most sententious tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical laws, as height of style, and gravity of person, inrich it with the sententious chorus, and, as it were, enliven death, in the passionate and weighty Nuntius: yet after all this divine rapture, O dura messorum Ilia, the breath that comes from the uncapable multitude is able to poison it; and ere it be acted, let the author resolve to fix to every scene this of Horace:

Hæc hodie porcis comedenda relinques.

To those who report I was a long time in finishing this Tragedy, I confess, I do not write with a goose-quill wing'd with two fea thers; and if they will needs make it my fault, I must answer them with that of Euripides to Alcestides, a tragic writer: Alcestides objecting that Euripides had only, in three days, composed three verses, whereas himself had written three hundred: Thou tell'st truth (quoth he); but here's the difference, thine shall only be read for three days, whereas mine shall continue three ages.

Detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance: for mine own part, I have ever truly cherish'd my good opinion of other men's worthy labours, especially of that full and heighten'd stile of Master Chapman, the labor'd and understanding works of Master Jonson, the no less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher; and lastly, (without wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious industry of Master Shakspeare, Master Decker, and Master Heywood, wishing what I write may be read by their light; protesting that, in the strength of mine own judgment, I know them so worthy, that tho' I rest silent in my own work, yet to most of theirs I dare (without fattery) fix that of Martial: non norunt hæc monumenta mori.

Vit,