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)
Rousard! | Rous. | Rou. | Rousa. | Rusa.
Words
422
Characters
2239
Typicality
0.41 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP id
A13840
BritDrama no.
1625
Cluster
Cluster 1 — Wives, widows & intimate counsel
Important excerpts
No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).
Full speech
I send you a suitor to Castabella. To this Gentleman's discretion I commit the managing of your suit His good suc cease shall be most thankful to your trust. Follow his instru ctions, he will be your leader. My leader? does your Lordship think me too weak to give the onset my self. To say true, so I think you had need, for a sick man can hardly get a woman's good will without help. I will not leave thee, till th'ast entertained me for thy servant. The service of a Gentlewoman consists most in cham ber work, and sick men are fittest for the chamber. I pr thee give me a favour. I lack but your black eye. Nay if you grow bitter, I'll dispraise your black eye. The grey eie'd Morning makes the fairest day. Any toy: any light thing. Wilt give me a bracelet o'thy hair then? No faith I'll want no hair, so long as I can have it for money. Wear it for thy sake sweet heart. Come you are so witty now, and so sensible. Bitter again? What's that? Smelling? What favour? a kiss? I prithee give me another. How should I show it? Well in plain terms, dost love me? That's the purpose of my coming. Give me thy hand vpon't. This Equivocation is for the jest now. With all my heart. Call you this a Jewel to hang in mine ear? T'is no light favour, for I'll be sworn it comes somewhat heavily to me. Well. I will not leave her for all this. Me thinks it animates a man to stand too't, when a woman desires to be rid of him at the first sighed. Sweet wife! Thy joyful husband thus salutes Thy cheek. And melancholic too, me thinks. Ooh. In-faith howsoever she entertains it; I shall hardly please her; therefore let her rest. That should make her light. With that sweetness thou shalt be surely blessed, Unless my groaning wake thee. Do not moan. Nay'troth sweet heart, I will not trouble thee. Thou shalt not loose thy maidenhead too night. Wilt go to bed. Mother, good night. Embracing? I behold the object that Mine eye affects. Dear Cousin Charlemont. Sick indeed. A general weakness did surprise my health The very day I married Castabella. As if my sickness were a punishment, That did arrest me for some injury I then committed. Credit me (my Love) I pity thy ill fortune to be matched With such a weak unpleasing bedfellow. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh.
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.…