TIMOCLEA

Who speaks so loud? You wake me. Where am I? Hah, my graven! Who speaks unto me? o forbear: I am not for your presence: see my bed Lies much unseemly: who attends me there? What means this impudent intrusion? I know your face and yet I fear my being Gives cause of fear. Accept me in your arms. Some Church I think. O free me from amazement, what strange accident Brought me so n ere my death? I am now my self And truly capable of a discourse. My love and life are thine: speak openly, What breast could be so cruelly ambitious? Whose honour or whose Fortune's could my life Eclipse or darken? By life, by love and by that happiness, My soul assures me in the faith I hold, By that which binds me more—by this kiss him. I swear this night to prosecute revenge On my lives enemy. My husband. As full as Jealousy: or the wife of Jason Robbed by the fair Corinthian of her love. BLush not thou chased and modest Queen of night, Nor hide thy silver crescent in a cloud, To see me thus Rhamnusia Like attired: Stare on you Argus eyed heavens and see a woman More full of vengeance, then your jealous Queen. Medusa sometime the love of Neptune, (But after for thy lust transformed a monster) Lend me those serpents that about thy head Curl up Like Else-knots, at whose horrid sighed The Sun may vanish or stand still aff ight. Or you you Furies ministers of fear, (That at Astraea's feet lie bound in snakes Attending her joust sentence to begin Terror of conscience in the breast of sin) This night be powerful in me and inspire My face with fear, my heart with rancke-swolne ire Venice, Venice, great Venice: Julia thy love. Didst thou love Julia ? Then see thy Julia and revenge her wrongs. I am. Venice I was murdered. My uncle Borgias. Stay. Hear and be advised: To morrow when the Senate sits be there, And in the ears of the whole state proclaim, And justify my words gainst Borgias : In this alone I will great Venice prove, Do it as ever thou didst Julia love. While I born upon air attend my bliss. Remember Julia. Y to prosper and go on, for Julia's ghost My false shape takes: abused Duke's afire, Through Borgias blood I'll run to my desire. Whom have we here? I am espied: his fear does apprehend me for a ghost, And I must feed it. Julia Exit. My Lord, what, drowned in contemplation? Mull asses: love. What means my Lord? awake, Timoclea speaks. Would: Amada : dearest Lord: your sense And know me. I am: if what you speak may make me blessed. Neither my life nor hope to be so blessed Makes me so happy as thy love deer Turk. Were I a Venus thou shouldst be my Mars, And I would court thee even in Phebus sighed, Although it moved and envy in the gods. Be Io jal : & Like Salmecis, thy love Shall cling about thy neck. I'll dance before thee Like a Fairy Nymph, And with my pleasing motions make thee spor : I'll court thee naked, as did the Queen of thoughts Her sullen boy, and all to make thee sport. Not pleasing gentle Turk? Time hath not set the characters of age On my smooth brow: my pulses beat as high, As when my first youth lifted up my blood, I buy no beauty: nor hath nature be A niggard in my face: I am yet young Fresh and delight some, as the checkered spring, The Lily and the Rose grow in my I kes, And make a bed for love to rest him on. Rest thee on my breast. Love me and unto love I'll built a shrine And on and Altar offer to our loves, The thighs of Sparrows and of Turtle Doves. Amada : Minion is it you? Makes me thus sue unheard? my daughter Amada Have I in my bosom nursed a snake: No fierce streamed torrent nor no storm at Sea, No stepdame is half so raging: my blood was not so strong, When thou Wertenberg God: now us Like the Sea, My soul a Bark that runs with wind and tied And cannot stop: the Anchor of my thoughts (Reason) is lost, and Like the vine-gods pries S Running down Ni a or from Pindus top, I am unstaid and doubtful in my cou see. Oh the strong power of sense: I must do that Which all succeeding times to come shall speak You not believe; all say it done, yet none Say it well done. Love is a God, Strong, free, unbounded, and as some define, Fears nothing, pitieth none: such love is mine. Exit. Away: Amada. Away. Contain thy fear, I live. Would they were poigniards digging at thy breast. Keep in thy short-drawne accents: let not the Carry the softest clamour to the ear Of waking Iealo sie: if it do— How Lust and Nature do divide my soul? The one does plead prescription in my blood, And sues as plaintive with such clamorous spells, As might conjure the violent rape of Lust To modest continence: Oh but it is a vice Sooner condemned then banished: easily spoke against But yet t'wil fawn as smoothly on our flesh, As Circe on the Grecian travelers, When she detained them in the shape of beasts. Amada knowest thou my face? It was her beauty that I offered up Unto thy love my dearest Mulleasses. As Lucius Catalline Rome's terror did for Orestilla, killed My child: no more: for Mulleasses love, I would outgo examples, and exceed As in desire, all others so indeed. I run. Exit. Borgias. Timoclea thy poisoned wife. Revenge and horror. Despair and vengeance. A messenger of death. Not till I meet thee in the shades of death. I'll haunt thee to despair. Exit Borgias. Timocl following him Thou art at farthest. Like Lucifer from heaven. discendit Timoclea. Delu iue counterfeit. I Valentine I live And am the actor of mine own revenge. That cup of poison made against my life, Was by my dearest Mulleasses love Turned to a philter: and my working sense, Charmed in the silence of a quiet sleep, Showed as if death had locked my pulses up, But posting time brought motion on my blood. And now my full veins Like a water-brook, Than sliding gently at some proud hills foot, In pipes of led are carried to the top, And the e in amorous branches spreading forth, Courts the curled mountain thus, thus, and thus: she kisses him. My beloved Turk. Love Hipolitus. My kind Jason. So with thy death the Embri m of my love Takes perfect shape. Now Like the Sestian maid May I court Leander swimming in my arms And with our pleasing motions mock the seas That rose and fell to wanton with his thighs: Now ther's no Hellespont betwixt our loves: I am not jealous: Agamemnon's dead, And Clitemnestra with A g sthus plays: Pleasure is free. O stop those killing accents, be more mild I do forgive what you did speak: and ask But a kind thought for all my loving task. These eyes have seen you smile: look gently on me, And let me read some milder characters: I am no Lamia nor no Lostrigon, No high-prizd Lais : that thou shouldst esteem Repentance purchased at too deer a rate: Kings shall not come to Corinth where thou mayest, Not with a common Ephereian ull, Purchase a minutes pleasure: but with me (As fair but yet more chaste by far then she) Spend years of sweet content. O would I had a Sire's charming voice, I'de use no incantations but to thy ears, Or were my tongue Like Orpheus golden lyre, To which the winds were hushed and herd it play It should be silent but to please thy ears, Or Like the dying swan, would I might sing A funeral elegy to my parting soul, So that the music might but please thy ears: What should I say? Not till thou love, or else of life bereave me. Exeunt. HEll and you furies wheresoever you be, show me your tortures, and present your selves Or let the burning monarch clad in flame, Make and infernal echo to my name. I know not what I say: Timoclea wronged, Loue-slighted and contemned: Oh my wish! That Like the crosse-eyd witch of Thessaly My voice could through the rivets of the earth Hollo and call revenge: or rather: what? My dangerous ghost attired Like Nemesis About her middle for a virgin Zone Girded with a forckt-tooth'd serpent, vent at my breast That did exceed a stepdame in my lust. Forbear yet gentle maid; thy father's soul Kneels at the brazen Throne of Radamanth And craves that office: Whither am I born? Despair, thou art a false glass to the soul, And in the conscience dazeld with thy gilded Of many sins, dost vary forms of fear. I not believe thy forced suggestions, I am seduced by passion: death and terror. False air thou liest I err not: my loves wrong I'll tear out of my breast: forget those Hope's Made my hands bloody: I am clear unstained: Forbear thy thunder gentle, gentle voice, Beat not my conscience torments gainst the walls, To make the Court ring with thy clamorous answers: Heavens let my tears redeem me unto life. Of my terror: I desire not: speak of death. Of my daughter: how easy through the air Our sins are hurried: thou canst tell of murder. I of my husband: night thy coalblack wings Though darker then the Moons eclipsed brow Are not fit Canopies for sin. Distraction of my soul, who breathes my name! By me Despair. But never gain. Forgive me. Justice in heaven is Like my sin gainst thee Cruel: and sooner may I with my knees Eat through the centre: from these pearly eyes Should there fallen down more tears of penitence Then the clouds drop to purchase a new spring I could not be forgiven. Be thou then justice executioner Revengeful spirit: in this flesh of mine Carve thy revenge in characters of blood Blast me: or from the centers hollow deep Let lose some conjured tempests: whose loud storms Driven through the air sings horror to the world, And let them hurl me gainst the labouring clouds Sink to the brazen-gated deep Abyss, Where furies fit curling their snakes in knots, And pull a viper from Alectos head, And on these breasts that in thy heat of life, Have be as pillows to advance thy lust Let it suck freely: the Egyptian Queen Near died more daring. And to the stern commissioners of blood, Be a glad Hermes : tell them, Timoclea Takes vengeance on her self dull Element be gone. You speak not Like a lover. It shall, it shall: Hard hap of misery, it hath many hands, That Like the windings of a labyrinth, Leads the despairing wretch into a maze: But not and Ariadn in the world, That lends a clewe to led us out the world. The very maze of horror. Cease thou that stands first mover of the Spheres From whose high concave all inferior fires Derive successive motion. Stand you night-wandering planets in a maze, And from your hollow Fabrics view Timoclea, Or else you heavens put in your flaring lights, And on your azure-seiled arches hang A raven-black Canopy of congealed clouds That you may seem a Chaos to the world, And boade eternal darkness: thou Wertenberg not made to kill, Nor was the Diadem of her Ponticke Queen Made as a fatal instrument of death, And yet it was the engine stop her breath As thou must mine. Soul of Borgias Thus to thy ghost I sacrifice my life, To buy thy requiem. Dost think I have no life? See st not my blood in a continual pulse Beatrice through the azure conduits of my flesh? Feel how I burn: what star' to thou on me? Am I transparent? canst see from my heart Death in the shape of jealousy: stand Like a chief organ guiding all my frame, Unto some tragic Actium? I live, the time befits not inquisition Of tedious circumstance: Amada I live: But thou must die, and by thy mother's hand. Why Like Creusa hast thou stolen my Iasen ? My Mulleasses he worser tes upon thee: I am debarred his breast, Robbed of his love by thy alluring looks. Sad discontent wound in his folded arms, Sighs nought but Amada : but by my better Hope's My blood shall Like Medusa's first turn to serpe ts And taint thy flesh, ere it shall lose that fire Which makes it boil and burn in his desire. My pleasure gave thee life, and it resumes That life again, because it kills my pleasure: Th'art Like and Ivy nourished at the root Of some proud oak: that not content to creep And feed upon the sap, but stretching up, Proudly presumst to overlook the top: So that the verdure of the ambitious imp, Detains all admiration: the Oak wants grace, Only because the Ivy is in place. But I'll displant thee for no weed shall grow So near the root f om whence my sap does flow. Say on my dearest Lord, who bribed thy love? What barbarism, or what desert of mine Moved this attempt against my life? Yield then and I have done.