Bos. I am the common bell-man, 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 person's By degrees to mortification: Listen. Dirge. Hark, now every thing is still; The screech-owl, and the whistler shrill, And bid her quickly d'on her shroud. Of what is 't fools make such vain keeping? Their death, a hideous storm of terror. '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 folks. Farewell, Cariola. I pray thee look thou giv'st my little boy Some syrop for his cold; and let the girl Say her pray'rs ere she sleep.-Now, what you please; What death? Bos. Strangling. Here are your executioners. Duch. I forgive them; The The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o'the lungs, 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; Duch. Not a whit. What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls? 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, Best gift is, they can give or I can take. I would fain put off my last woman's fault; Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly arch'd 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. Bos. Do you not weep? Other Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out. But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens. Ferd. Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died O fie upon this single life: forego it. We read how Daphne, for her peevish flight, Was frozen into marble: whereas those 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 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. 66 Fable. Fable. Upon a time, Reputation, Love, and Death, If once I part from any man I meet, I am never found again. Another. A Salmon, as she swam unto the sea, That for the calmest and fresh time of the year 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 Bra. May it thrive with you. (Lays a rich gown under him.) Bra. 69 The Authors'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 |