Hier. O, let them be worse, worse: stretch thine art,
And let their beards be of Judas's own colour,

And let their eyebrows jut over: in any case observe that;
Then, sir, after some violent noise,

Bring me forth in my shirt and my gown

under my arm, with my torch in my hand, and my sword rear'd up thus,

And with these words; What noise is this? who calls Hier

onimo?

May it be done?

Pain. Yea, sir.

Hier. Well, sir, then bring me forth, bring me thro' alley and alley, still with a distracted countenance going along, and let my hair heave up my night-cap.

Let the clouds scowl, make the moon dark, the stars extinct, the winds blowing, the bells tolling, the owls shrieking, the toads croaking, the minutes jarring, and the clock striking twelve.

And then at last, sir, starting, behold a man hanging, and tott'ring, and tott'ring, as you know the wind will wave a man, and I with a trice to cut him down.

be

And looking upon him by the advantage of my torch, find it to my son Horatio.

There you may shew a passion, there you may shew a passion. Draw me like old Priam of Troy, crying, The house is a fire, the house is a fire; and the torch over my head; make me curse, make me rave, make me cry, make me mad, make me well again, make me curse hell, invocate, and in the end leave me in a trance, and so forth. Pain. And is this the end?

Hier. O no, there is no end: the end is death and madness; And I am never better than when I am mad;

Then methinks I am a brave fellow;

Then I do wonders; but reason abuseth me;
And there's the torment, there's the hell.

At last, sir, bring me to one of the murderers;
Were he as strong as Hector,

Thus would I tear and drag him up and down.

(He beats the Painter in.) [Act iii., Sc. 12a, whole scene.]

These scenes, which are the very salt of the old play (which without them is but a caput mortuum, such another piece of flatness as Locrine), Hawkins, in his republication of this tragedy, has thrust out of the text into the notes; as omitted in the Second Edition [1594], "printed for Ed. Allde, amended of such gross blunders as passed in the first: and thinks them to have been foisted in by the players.—A late discovery at Dulwich College has ascertained that two sundry payments were made to Ben Jonson by the Theatre for furnishing additions to Hieronimo. See last edition of Shakspeare by Reed. There is nothing in the undoubted plays of Jonson which would authorise us to suppose that he could have supplied the scenes in ques

tion. I should suspect the agency of some "more potent spirit." Webster might have furnished them. They are full of that wild solemn preternatural cast of grief which bewilders us in the Duchess of Malfy.

THE LOVE OF KING DAVID AND FAIR BETHSABE, WITH THE TRAGEDY OF ABSALOM [FIRST PRINTED IN 1599]. BY GEORGE PEELE [1558 ?-1597?] 1

Bethsabe, with her maid, bathing. She sings: and David sits above, viewing her.

The song.

Hot sun, cool fire, temper'd with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair:
Shine sun, burn fire, breathe air and ease me;
Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me;
Shadow (my sweet nurse) keep me from burning,
Make not my glad cause, cause of mourning.
Let not my beauty's fire

Inflame unstaid desire,

Nor pierce any bright eye

That wandereth lightly.

Bethsabe. Come, gentle Zephyr, trick'd with those perfumes That erst in Eden sweetned Adam's love,

And stroke my bosom with the silken fan:

2

This shade (sun-proof) is yet no proof for thee,
Thy body smoother than this waveless spring,
And purer than the substance of the same,
Can creep through that his lances cannot pierce.
Thou and thy sister soft and sacred Air,
Goddess of life, and governess of health,
Keeps every fountain fresh and arbour sweet;
No brazen gate her passage can repulse,
Nor bushy thicket bar thy subtle breath.

Then deck thee with thy loose delightsome robes,

And on thy wings bring delicate perfumes,

To play the wantons with us through the leaves.

David. What tunes, what words, what looks, what wonders pierce

My soul, incensed with a sudden fire!

What tree, what shade, what spring, what paradise,

Enjoys the beauty of so fair a dame!

[The play is in fifteen Scenes. See Peele's Works, ed. Bullen, 1888, vol. ii.] The sun's rays.

Fair Eva, plac'd in perfect happiness,

Lending her praise-notes to the liberal heavens,
Struck with the accents of Arch-angels' tunes,

Wrought not more pleasure to her husband's thoughts,
Than this fair woman's words and notes to mine.
May that sweet plain that bears her pleasant weight,
Be still enamel'd with discolour'd flowers;

That precious fount bear sand of purest gold;
And for the pebble, let the silver streams
That pierce earth's bowels to maintain the source,
Play upon rubies, sapphires, chrysolites ;
The brim let be embrac'd with golden curls
Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make
For joy to feed the fount with their recourse;
Let all the grass that beautifies her bower
Bear manna every morn instead of dew;
Or let the dew be sweeter far than that
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,
Or balm which trickled from old Aaron's beard.1

Enter CUSAY.

See, Cusay, see the flower of Israel,
The fairest daughter that obeys the king
In all the land the Lord subdued to me.
Fairer than Isaac's lover at the well,

Brighter than inside bark of new-hewn cedar,
Sweeter than flames of fine perfumed myrrh;
And comelier than the silver clouds that dance
On Zephyr's wings before the king of Heaven.
Cusay. Is it not Bethsabe the Hethite's wife
Urias, now at Rabath siege with Joab?

David. Go now and bring her quickly to the King ;
Tell her, her graces hath found grace with him.
Cusay. I will, my Lord.

David. Bright Bethsabe shall wash in David's bower

In water mix'd with purest almond flower,
And bathe her beauty in the milk of kids;
Bright Bethsabe gives earth to my desires,
Verdure to earth, and to that verdure flowers,
To flowers sweet odours, and to odours wings,
That carries pleasures to the hearts of Kings.2

[Exit

[Two lines omitted.]

[Twenty-one lines omitted.]

Now comes my Lover tripping like the Roe,
And brings my longings tangled in her hair.
To joy her love I'll build a kingly bower,
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams,
That, for their homage to her sovereign joys,
Shall, as the serpents fold into their nests,
In oblique turnings wind the nimble waves
About the circles of her curious walks,

And with their murmur summon easeful sleep
To lay his golden sceptre on her brows.1

[Sc. 1.]

There is more of the same stuff, but I suppose the reader has a surfeit; especially as this Canticle of David has never been suspected to contain any pious sense couched underneath it, whatever his son's may. The kingly bower, "seated in hearing of a hundred streams," is the best of it.

LUST'S DOMINION, OR THE LASCIVIOUS QUEEN. A TRAGEDY [PRODUCED ABOUT 1600: NOT BY MARLOWE]. BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [1564-1593] The Queen Mother of Spain loves an insolent Moor.2 QUEEN. ELEAZAR, the Moor.

Queen. Chime out your softest strains of harmony, And on delicious Music's silken wings

Send ravishing delight to my love's ears;

That he may be enamour'd of your tunes.

Eleaz. Away, away.

Queen. No, no, says aye; and twice away, says stay.

Come, come, I'll have a kiss; but if you'll strive,

For one denial you shall forfeit five.3

Eleaz. Be gone, be gone.

Queen. What means my love?

Burst all those wires; burn all those instruments;

For they displease my Moor.

Art thou now pleased ?

Or wert thou now disturb'd? I'll wage all Spain
To one sweet kiss, this is some

new device

To make me fond and long. O, you men

Have tricks to make

poor women die for you.

Eleaz. What, die for me? Away.

Queen. Away, what way? I prithee, speak more kindly.

Why dost thou frown? at whom?

1[For other extracts from Peele see pages 437, 440, 453 and 568.]
Such another as Aaron in Titus Andronicus,

'[Nine and a half lines omitted.]

Eleaz. At thee.

Queen. At me?

O, why at me? for each contracted frown,
A crooked wrinkle interlines my brow:
Spend but one hour in frowns, and I shall look
Like to a Beldam of one hundred years.
I prithee, speak to me, and chide me not.
I prithee, chide, if I have done amiss ;
But let my punishment be this, and this.
I prithee, smile on me, if but a while;
Then frown on me, I'll die. I prithee, smile.
Smile on me; and these two wanton boys,
These pretty lads that do attend on me,
Shall call thee Jove, shall wait upon thy cup
And fill thee nectar: their enticing eyes
Shall serve as crystal, wherein thou may'st see
To dress thyself; if thou wilt smile on me.
Smile on me; and with coronets of pearl
And bells of gold, circling their pretty arms,
In a round ivory fount these two shall swim,
And dive to make thee sport:

Bestow one smile, one little little smile,
And in a net of twisted silk and gold
In my all-naked arms thyself shalt lie.

[Act i., Sc. 1.1]

Kit Marlowe, as old Isaac Walton assures us, made that smooth song which begins "Come live with me and be my love." The same romantic invitations "in are given by the queen in the play, and the lover in the folly ripe in reason rotten,' ditty. He talks of "beds of roses, buckles of gold:

Thy silver dishes for thy meat,

As precious as the Gods do eat,

Shall on an ivory table be

Prepared each day for thee and me.

The lines in the extract have a luscious smoothness in them, and they were the most temperate which I could pick out of this Play. The rest is in King Cambyses' vein; rape, and murder, and superlatives; "huffing braggart puft" lines 2 such as

[Dodsley, Old English Plays, ed. Hazlitt, 1874, vol. xiv.]
2 Take a specimen from a speech of the Moor's [Eleazar]:-

Now Tragedy, thou minion of the night,
Rhamnusia's pue-fellow, to thee I'll sing
Upon a harp made of dead Spanish bones,
The proudest instrument the world affords;
When thou in crimson jollity shalt bathe
Thy limbs, as black as mine, in springs of blood
Still gushing from the conduit head of Spain.
To thee that never blush'st, though thy cheeks
Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee
I consecrate my murders, all my stabs,
My bloody labours, tortures, stratagems,

The volume of all wounds that wound from me;
Mine is the Stage, thine is the Tragedy.

[Act v., Sc. 6.]