in The Atheist's Tragedy, or The Honest Man's Revenge — Tourneur, Cyril
Metadata
Play
The Atheist's Tragedy, or The Honest Man's Revenge
Author
Tourneur, Cyril
Year (catalogued)
1611
First performance
1611
Decade
1610s
Genre
Tragedy
Play type
Adult Professional
Company
Unknown
Speech prefix(es)
Mont.
Words
296
Characters
1615
Typicality
0.35 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP id
A13840
BritDrama no.
1625
Cluster
Cluster 10 — Mourners, mothers & doleful voices
Important excerpts
No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).
Full speech
I prithee let this current of my tears, Divert thy inclination from the war. For of my children thou are only left, To promise a succession to my house. And all the honour thou canst get by arms, Will give but vain addition to thy name; Since from thy ancestors thou dost derive A dignity sufficient; and as great As thou hast substance to maintain and bear. I prithee stay at home. Morrow good brother. Your importunities have overcome. Pray God my forced grant prove not ominous. Your favour had by his duty been prevented, If we had not withheld him in the way. Heaven give your marriage that I am deprived of, joy. Oh my spirit, it does dissuade my tongue to question him, as if it knew his answer would displease. Oh what became of my deer Charlemont? Oh Charlemont! Torment me not with witnesses of that, Which I desire, not to believe; yet must. I cannot sir. I am uncapable Of comfort. My turn will be next. I feel My self not well. I'll withdraw a while; And crave the honest counsel of this man. Brother now good night. My soul's oppressed with grief Lies heavy at my heart, Oh my departed Son! ere long I shall be with Oh, oh, oh. Return to France; for thy old Father's dead; And thou by murder, disinherited. Attend with patience the success of things; But leave revenge unto the King of kings. Hold Charlemont! Let him revenge my murder, and thy wrongs, To whom the lustice of Revenge belongs. D'am ille! With all thy wisdom th'art a oole. Not Like those fools that we term innocents; But a most wretched miserable fool. Which instantly; to the confusion of Thy projects with despair thou shalt behold.
Plot summary
Plot — The Atheist's Tragedy, or The Honest Man's Revenge
Montferrers has forbidden his son Charlemont from going to war and refused him the money necessary to equip himself. Charlemont gets a subvention from his uncle, D’Amville, and this persuades Montferrers to change his mind. But D’Amville is an atheist who believes that he must make his happiness in this world rather than wait for reward or punishment in the next, and he has an ulterior motive for wanting his nephew out of the way. Castabella loves Charlemont, and has privately agreed to marry him when he returns. They entrust their secret only to the Puritan Languebeau Snuffe. D’Amville bribes Snuffe to betray them and persuade Belleforest, her father, to make her marry Rousard, his son. Castabella is pressured into the match, despite the protestations of Sebastian, Rousard’s younger brother. As soon as he is married, Rousard falls ill with symptoms which include impotence. On the wedding day, D’Amville’s accomplice Borachio brings false news that Charlemont has been killed in battle. Montferrers makes a new will in D’Amville’s favour. D’Amville gets Montferrers’s torchbearers drunk at the wedding celebrations, and tricks them into quarrelling with one another when lighting their master home; the torches go out in the fight, allowing Borachio to murder Montferrers under cover of darkness. Montferrers’s ghost appears to Charlemont, tells him of the murder, and enjoins him not to take revenge. Charlemont returns to France to find himself presumed dead and his fiancée unhappily married. He confronts D’Amville and has an altercation with Sebastian, but another appearance by the ghost prevents him from getting carried away. D’Amville fabricates an unpaid debt in order to have Charlemont imprisoned, but Sebastian, who has been slightly injured, asks for money to pay a surgeon and uses it to pay the supposed debt and get Charlemont released. D’Amville takes steps to secure the future of his estate. Reasoning that Rousard will beget no son and that Sebastian, a libertine, will never marry, he decides that he will have to produce a bastard to be his heir, and selects Castabella as the mother. He commissions Borachio to murder Charlemont in the churchyard, but Charlemont kills Borachio instead. Snuffe uses the same churchyard for an assignation, intending to scare off any unwanted attention by disguising himself as the ghost of Montferrers, but he is himself frightened by Charlemont and runs away leaving the disguise behind. Charlemont hides in the charnel house.…