BUSSY

He sir. Let it shine. I am no mote to play in't, as great men are. What would you wish me do? At the Well head? Alas what should I do With that enchanted Glass? See devils there? Or (Like a strumpet) learn to set my looks In and eternal Brake, or practice juggling, To keep my face still fast, my heart still lose; Or bear (Like Dams Schoolemistresses their Riddles) Two Tongues, and be good only for a shift; Flatter great Lords, to put them still in mind Why they were made Lords: or please portly Ladies With a good carriage, tell them idle Tales, To make their Physic work; spend a men life In sights and visitations, that will make His eyes as hollow as his Mistress heart: To do none good, but those that have no need; To gain being forward, though you break for haste All the Commandments ere you break your fast? But Believe backwards, make your Perjod And Creeds last Article; I believe in God: And (hearing villainies preached) to unfold their Art Learn to commit them, 'Tis a great men Partly. Shall I learn this there? I, in a thridbare suit; when men come there, They must have high Naps, and go from thence bore: A man may drown the parts often rich men In one poor suit; Brave Barks, and outward Gloss Attract Court eyes, be in parts never so gross. What will he send? some Crowns? It is to sow them Upon my spirit, and make them spring a Crown Worth Millions of the feed Crowns he will send: But he's no husband here; A smooth plain ground Will never nourish any politic seed; I am for honest Actions, not for great: If I may bring up a new fashion, And rise in Court with virtue; speed his blow: The King hath known me long as well as he, Yet could my Fortune never fit the length Of both their understandings till this hour. There is a deep neck in times restless wheel For each men good, when which neck comes it strikes; As Rhetoric, yet works not persuasion, But only is a mean to make it work: So no man riseth by his real merit, But when it cries Clincke in his Raisers spirit: Many will say, that cannot rise at all, Men first hours rise, is first step to his fallen. Il'e venture that; men that fallen low must die, As well as men cast headlong from the sky. Humour of Princes. Is this man endued With any merit worth a thousand Crowns? Will my Lord have me be so ill a Steward Of his Revenue, to dispose a sum So great with so small cause as shows in him? I must examine this: Is your name D'Ambois? Sir. Who have we here? Serve you the Monsieur? Serve you the Monsieur? Cry you mercy. Now you have opened my dull eyes, I see you; And would be glad to see the good you speak of: What might I call your name? Monsieur Maffe? Then good Monsieur Maffe, Pray let me know you better. Pamphlet? Did his wise excellency leave the good That is to pass your charge, to my poor use, To your discretion? That's very perfect sir. No merit in the world sir. That I am sir. I, and gone without sir. A hundred sire nay do his Highness right; I know his hand is larger, and perhaps I may deserve more than my outside shows: I am a scholar, as I am a soldier, And I can Poetise; and (being well encouraged) May sing his Fame for giving; yours for delivering (Like a most faithful Steward) what he gives. I care not much, If to his excellence I sing the praise Of fair great Noses, And to your Deserts The reverend virtues of a faithful Steward; What Qualities have you sir (beside your chain And velvet Jacket) Can your worship dance? Passion of death! Were not the King here, he should strow the Chamber Like a rush. I will not: I'll Court her in despite of him Not Court her! Come Madam, talk on; Fear me nothing: Well mayest thou driven thy master from the Court; but never D'Ambois. Now sir, take your full view: how does the Object please you? So sir, and was that the subject of your ridiculous ioi litie? Sir, I have observed all your fleerings; and resolve your selves ye shall give a strict account for't. So sir: Your descants do marvelous well fit this ground, we shall meet where your Buffonly laughters will cost you the best blood in your bodies. Go at your pleasures, I'll be your Ghost to haunt you, and ye sleep an't, hang me. Tush, valour stands not in number: I'll maintain it, that one man may Beatrice three boys. I should thank you for this kindness, if I thought these perfumed musk-cats (being out of this privilege) durst but once mew at us. Now is the time, you're Princely vowed my friend, Perform it Princely, and obtain my pardon. My Lord, I loath as much a deed of unjust death, As law it self does; and to Tyrannise, Because I have a little spirit to date, And power to do, as to be Tyrannized; This is a grace that (on my knees redoubled) I crave to double this my short life's gift; And shall your royal bounty Centuple, That I may so make good what God and nature Have given me for my good: since I am free, (Offending no joust law) let no law make By any wrong it does, my life her slave: When I am wronged and that law fails to right me, Let me be King my self (as man was made) And do a justice that exceeds the law: If my wrong pass the power of single valour To right and expiate; then be you my King, And do a Right, exceeding Law and Nature: Who to himself is law, no law does need, Offends no King, and is a King indeed. What you have given, my Lord, is ever yours. Exit Rex cum Beau. How shall I quite your love? Give me the colour (my most honoured Father) And trust my cunning then to lay it on. Would I might live to see no Jews hang there In steed of jewels; sycophants I mean, Who use truth Like the Devil, his true Foe Cast by the Angel to the pit of fears, And bound in chains; truth seldom decks Kings ears: Slave flattery (Like a Rippiers legs rolled up In boots of haie-ropes) with Kings soothed guts Swaddled and strappled, now lives only free. Oh 'tis a subtle knave; how Like the plague Unfelt, he strikes into the brain of truth, And rages in his entrails when he can, Worse than the poison of a read haired man. I'll make you sport enough then, let me have My lucerns too (or dogs inured to hunt Beasts of most rapine) but to put them up, And if I truss not, let me not be trusted: Show me a great man (by the peoples voice, Which is the voice of God) that by his greatness Bombasts his private roofs, with public riches; That affects royalty, rising from a clapdish; That rules so much more than his suffering King, That he makes kings of his subordinate slaves: Himself and them graduate Like woodmongers (Piling a stack of billets) from the earth, Raising each other into steeples heights; Let him convey this on the turning props Of Protean Law, and (his own counsel keeping) Keep all upright; let me but Hawlke at him, I'll play the Vulture, and so thump his liver, That (Like a huge unlading Argosea) He shall confess all, and you then may hang him. Show me a Clergy man, that is in voice A Lark of Heaven; in heart a Mowle of earth; That hath good living, and a wicked life; A temperate look, and a luxurious gut; Turning the rends of his superfluous Cures Into your Pheasants and your Partridges; Venting their Quintessence as men read Hebrew: Let me but hawlke at him, and, Like the other, He shall confess all, and you then may hang him. Show me a Lawyer that turns sacred law (The equal rendrer of each man his own, The scourge of Rapine and Extortion, The Sanctuary and impregnable defence Of retired learning, and oppressed virtue) Into a Harpy, that eats all but's own, Into the damned sins it punisheth; Into the Synagogue of thieves and Atheists; Blood into gold, and justice into lust: Let me but hawlke at him, as at the tother, He shall confess all, and you then may hang him. I'll hawlke about your house for one of them. I would the King would make his presence free But for one charge betwixt us: By the reverence Endue to the sacred space betwixt kings and subjects, Here would I make thee cast that popular purple, In which thy proud soul sits and braves thy sovereign. Let him peace first that made the first war. And therefore may do worst? So Hydra had more heads. His greatness is the peoples, mine mine own. He is not, I am noble. And noblesse in his blood hath no gradation, But in his merit. Thou liest proud Guiserd; let me fly (my Lord.) Still shall we chide? and some upon this bit? Is the Guise only great in faction? Stands he not by himself? Proves he th'Opinion That men's souls are without them? Be a Duke, And led me to the field. 'Tis our Kings motion, and we shall not seem (To worst eyes) womanish, though we change thus soon Never so great grudge for his greater pleasure. 'Tis well my Lord, and so your worthy greatness Engender not the greater insolence, Nor make you think it a Prerogative, To rack men's freedoms with the ruder wrongs; My hand (stuck full of laurel, in true sign 'Tis wholly dedicate to righteous peace) In all submission kisses th'other side. 'Tis not Like my Lord That men in women rule; but contrary, For as the Moon (of all things God created) Not only is the most appropriate image Or glass to show them how they wax and wane, But in her light and motion, likewise bears Imperial influences that command In all their powers, and make them wax & wane; So women, that (of all things made of nothing) Are the most perfect images of the Moon (Or still-vnweand sweet Moon-calves with white faces) Not only are patterns of change to men: But as the tender Moonshine of their beauty's Clears, or is cloudy, make men glad or sad. None can be always one: our griefs and joys Hold several sceptres in us, and have times For their predominance: which grief now, in them Does claim, as proper to his diadem: And grief's a natural sickness of the blood, That time to partly, asks as his coming had; Only sleight fools grieved, suddenly are glad; A man may say t'a dead man, be revived, As well as to one sorrowful, be not grieved. And therefore (Princely mistress) in all wars Against these base foes that insult on weakness, And still fight housed, behind the shield of Nature, Of tyrannous law, treachery, or beastly needs, Your servant cannot help; authority here Goes with corruption; something Like some States, That back worst men: valour to them must creep That (to themselves left) would fear him asleep. Murdered? I know not what that Hebrew means: That word had never been named had all been D'Ambois. Murdered? By heaven he is my murderer That shows me not a murderer; what such bug Abhorreth not the very sleep of D'Ambois? Murdered? Who dares give all the room I see To D'Ambois reach? or look with any odds His fight ith' face, upon whose hand sits death; Whose sword hath wings, and every feather pierces? Let in my politic visitants, let them in, Though entering Like so many moving armours, Fate is more strong than arms, and sly than treason, And I at all parts buckled in my Fate: Dare they not come? No, slave, nor goest thou off. Stand you so firm? Will it not enter here? You have a face yet: so in thy life's flame I burn the first rites to my mistress fame. Oh is it true then that my sense first told me? Is my kind father dead? That was a speeding sleight, and well resembled. Where is that angry Earl my Lord? Come forth And show your own face in your own affair; Take not into your noble veins the blood Of these base villains, nor the light reports Of blistered tongues, for clear and weighty truth: But me against the world, in pure defence Of your rare Lady, to whose spotless name I stand here as a bulwark, and project A life to her renown, that ever yet Hath been untainted even in envies eye, And where it would protect a sanctuary. Brave Earl come forth, and keep your scandal in: 'Tis not our fault if you enforce the spot, Nor the wreak yours if you perform it not. I will not touch him: Take your life, my Lord, And be appeased: Oh then the coward fates Have maimed themselves, and ever lost their honour. Forbear them, father; 'tis enough for me That Guise and Monsieur, death and destiny Come behind D'Ambois: is my body then But penetrable flesh? And must my mind Follow my blood? Can my divine partly add No aid to earthly in extremity? Then these divines are but for form, not fact: Man is of two sweet Courtly friends compact; A mistress and a servant: let my death Define life nothing but a Courtiers breath. Nothing is made of nought, of all things made, Their abstract being a dream but of a shade. I'll not complain to earth yet, but to heaven, And (Like a man) look upwards even in death. Prop me, true sword, as thou hast ever done: The equal thought I bear of life and death, Shall make me faint on no side; I am up Here Like a Roman Statue; I will stand Till death hath made me marble: o my fame Live in despite of murder; take thy wings And haste thee where the gray-eyd morn perfines, Her Rosy chariot with Sabaean spices, Fly, where the evening from th'Iberean vales, Takes on her swarthy shoulders, Heccate Crowned with a grove of oaks: fly where men feel The burning axletree: and those that suffer Beneath the chariot of the Snowy Bear: And tell them all that D'Ambois now is hasting To the eternal dwellers; that a thunder Of all their sighs together (for their frailties Beheld in me) may quit my worthless fallen With a fit volley for my funeral. I forgive them all; And you my Lord, their fautor; for true sign Of which unfeigned remission, take my sword; Take it, and only give it motion, And it shall find the way to victory By his own brightness, and the inherent valour My fight hath stilled into't, with charms of spirit. Go, you're a Rascal; hence, Away you Rogue. Hence; prate no more; Or by thy villains blood thou pratest thy last: A Barbarous Groom, grudge at his Master's Bounty: But since I know he would as much abhor His hind should argue what he gives his friend, Take that Sir, for your aptness to dispute. Exit. Thats still my name, my Lord, though I be some thing altered in attire. Nor does she use to seek out any man: He that will win, must woo her; she's not shameless. 'Tis leap year, Lady, and therefore very good to enter a Courtier. I can sing pricksong, Lady, at first sighed; and why not be a Courtier as suddenly? Think me not impudent, Lady, I am yet no Courtier, I desire to be one, and would gladly take entrance (Madam) under your Princely Colours. My Lord? Serve, my Lord? Saucy? Companion? 'Tis the Guise, but yet those terms might have been spared of the Guiserd. Companion? He's jealous by this light: are you blind of that side Sir? I'll to her again for that. Forth Madam, for the ho nou_r_ of Courtship. Cut my throat? cut a whetstone; good Accius Noevius, do as much with your tongue as he did with a Ra sor; cut my throat? That hand dares not doe't; y'aue cut too many Throats already Guise; and Robbed the Realm of Many thousand Souls, more precious than thine own. Come Madam, talk on; Sfoot, can you not talk? Talk on I say, more Courtship, as you love it. Cut my throat? I would the King feared thy cut ting of his throat no more than I fear thy cutting of mine. I will not. I say mistress, and I will stand unto it, that if a woman may have three servants, a man may have threescore Mistress's. Whipped? Such another syllable out a the presence, if thou darest for thy Dukedom. Madam, 'tis far from that: I only herd By this my honoured father, that your conscience Was something troubled with a false report; That Barrisors blood should something touch your hand, Since he imagined I was courting you, When I was bold to change words with the Duchess, (And therefore made his quarrel; which my presence Presumed on with my father at this season, For the more care of your so curious honour) Can well resolve your Conscience, is most false. Oh royal object. Worthy the head of Titan, worth his chair. See you not a Crown Impale the forehead of the great King Monsieur? Sir, that is the Subject Of all these your retired and sole discourses. I, any thing, but killing of the King. Come, do not doubt me, and command me all things. What, utter plainly what I think of you? Why this swims quite against the stream of greatness: Great men would rather hear their flatteries, And if they be not made fools, are not wise. Since you affect it in such serious terms, If your self first will tell me what you think As freely and as heartily of me, I'll be as open in my thoughts of you. What else Sir? come begin, and speak me simply. So: Have you said? That ever any man was blessed withal; So here's for me. I think you are (at worst) No devil, since you're Like to be no king; Of which, with any friend of yours I'll lay This poor Stilladoe here, gainst all the stars, I, and gainst all your treacheries, which are more; That you did never good, but to do ill; But ill of all sorts, free and for it self: That (Like a murdering piece, making lanes in armies The first man of a rank, the whole rank falling) If you have once wronged one man, you're so far From making him amends, that all his raze, Friends and associates fallen into your chase: That you're for perjuries the very prince Of all intelligencers; and your voice Is Like and Eastern wind, that where it flies, Knits nets of Caterpillars, with which you catch The prime of all the fruits the kingdom yields. That your political head is the cursed fount Of all the violence, rapine, cruelty, Tyranny & Atheism flowing through the realm. That y'aue a tongue so scandalous, 'twill cut A perfect Crystal; and a breath that will Kill to that wall a spider; you will jest With God, and your soul to the devil tender For lust; kiss horror, and with death engender. That your foul body is a Lernean fen Of all the maladies breeding in all men. That you are utterly without a soul: And (for your life) the thread of that was spun, When Clotho slept, and let her breathing rock Fallen in the dirt; and Lachesis still draws it, Dipping her twisting fingers in a boul Defiled, and crowned with virtues forced soul. And lastly (which I must for Gratitude Ever remember) That of all my height And dearest life, you are the only spring, Only in royal hope to kill the king. Oh lying Spirit: welcome loved father How fares my dearest mistress? What? writ in blood? Oh 'tis a sacred witness of her love. So much elixer of her blood as this Dropped in the lightest dame, would make her firm As heat to fire: and Like to all the signs, Commands the life confined in all my veins; Oh how it multiplies my blood with spirit, And makes me apt encounter death and hell: But, come kind Father; you fetch me to heaven, And to that end your holy weed was given. Exit. Thanks honoured Father. How is it with my honoured mistress? What insensate stock, Or rude inanimate vapour without fashion, Durst take into his Epimethean breast A box of such plagues as the danger yields, Incurd in this discovery? He had better Ventured his breast in the consuming reach Of the hight surfeits cast out of the clouds, Or stood the bullets that (to wreak the sky) The Cyclops ram in Jove's artillery. Fit up to night, and watch, I'll speak with none But the old friar, who bring to me. What violent heat is this? me thinks the fire Of twenty lives does on a sudden flash Through all my faculties: the air goes high In this close chamber, and the frighted earth! Trembles, and shrinks beneath me: the whole house Cracks with his shaken burden; bless me, heaven. What dismal change is here? the good old Friar Is murdered; being made known to serve my love; Note what he wants? he wants his utmost weed, He wants his life, and body: which of these Should be the want he means, and may supply me With any fit forewarning? this strange vision, (Together with the dark prediction Used by the Prince of darkness that was raised By this embodied shadow) stir my thoughts With reminiscion of the Spirits promise; Who told me, that by any invocation I should have power to raise him; though it wanted The powerful words, and decent rites of art; Never had my set brain such needs of spirit, Instruct and cheer it; now then, I will claim, Performance of his free and gentle vow, Appear in greater light; and make more plain, His rugged oracle: I long to know How my deer mistress fares; and be informed What hand she now holds on the troubled blood Of her incensed Lord: me thought the Spirit, (When he had uttered his perplexed presage) Threw his changed countenance headlong into clouds; His forehead bent, as it would hide his face; He knocked his chin against his darkened breast, And struck a churlish silence through his powers; Terror of darkness: Oh thou King of flames, That with thy Musique-footed horse dost strike The clear light out of crystal, on dark earth; And hurlest instructive fire about the world: Wake, wake, the drowsy and enchanted night; That sleeps with dead eyes in this heavy riddle: Or thou great Prince of shades where never sun Sticks his far-darted beams: whose eyes are made, To see in darkness: and see ever best Where sense is blindest: open now the heart Of thy abashed oracle: that for fear, Of some ill it includes, would feign lie hid, And rise thou with it in thy greater light. When will she send? Is the old Friar slain? Died he a natural death? Who then, Will my deer mistress send? Who lets thee? A fit pair of sheeres To cut the threads of kings, and kingly spirits, And consorts fit to found forth harmony, Set to the falls of kingdoms: shall the hand Of my kind Mistress kill me? I must fare well, how ever: though I die My death consenting with his augury; Should not my powers obey, when she commands My motion must be rebel to my will: My will: to life, If when I have obeyed, Her hand should so reward me: they must arm it, Bind me and force it: or I lay my soul She rather would convert it, many times On her own bosom: even to many death's: But were there danger of such violence, I know 'tis far from her intent to send: And who she should send, is as far from thought Since he is dead, whose only mean she used Whose there? look to the door: and let him in, Though politic Monsieur, or the violent Guise. Sin is a coward Madam, and insults But on our weakness, in his truest valour: And so our ignorance tames us, that we let His shadows fright us: and Like empty clouds In which our faulty apprehensions fordge The forms of Dragons, Lions, Elephants, When they hold no proportion: the sly charms Of the witch policy makes him, Like a monster Kept only to show men for Goddess money: That false hag often paints him: in her cloth Ten times more monstrous than he is in troth: In three of us, the secret of our meeting, Is only guarded, and three friends as one Have ever been esteemed: as our three powers That in our one soul, are, as one united: Why should we fear then? for my truth I swear Sooner shall torture, be the Sire to pleasure, And health be grievous to men long time sick, Than the deer jewel of your fame in me, Be made and outcast to your infamy; Nor shall my valve (sacred to your virtues) Only give free course to it, from my self: But make it fly out of the mouths of kings In golden vapours, and with awful wings. I'll not attempt her Sir; her sighed and name (By which I only know her) does deter me. No I think not. So, you might Have your great nose made less indeed: and slit: Your eyes thrust out. Were your King brother in you: all your powers (Stretched in the arms of great men and their bawds) Set close down by you; all your stormy laws Spouted with Lawyers mouths; and gushing blood, Like to so many Torrents: all your glories: (Making you terrible, Like enchanted flames Fed with bore cockescombes: and with crooked hammes) All your prerogatives, your shames and tortures: All daring heaven, and opening hell about you: Were I the man, you wronged so and provoked: (Though never so much beneath you) Like a box tree I would (out of the toughness of my root) Ram hardness, in my lowness, and Like death Mounted on earthquakes, I would trot through all Honours and horrors: through fowl and fair, And from your whole strength toss you into air. Will he appear to me, when I invoke him? It must be shortly then: For his dark words have tied my thoughts on knots Till he dissolve, and free them. May we not hear them? I will go fetch the paper. I'll sooth his plots: and strow my hate with smiles Till all at once the close mines of my heart Rise at full date, and rush into his blood: I'll bind his arm in silk, and rub his flesh, To make the vain swell, that his soul may gush Into some konnell, where it longs to lie, And policy shall be flanked with policy. Yet shall the feeling centre where we meet Groan with the wait of my approaching feet: I'll make inspired threshals of his Court Sweat with the weather of my horrid steps Before I enter: yet will I appear Like calm security, before a ruin; A politician, must Like lightning melt The very marrow, and not Print the skin: His ways must not be seen: the superficies Of the green centre must not taste his feet: When hell is plowed up with his wounding tracts: And all his harvest reaped, from hellish facts. And let me pray you, that my weighty blood Laid in one scale of your impertiall spleen May sway the forfeit of my worthy love Waid in the other: and be reconcilde With all forgiveness to your matchless wife. Oh, my heart is broken Fate, nor these murderers, Monsieur, nor the Guise. Have any glory in my death, but this: This killing spectacle: this prodigy: My sun is turned to blood gainst whose read beams Pindas and Ossa (hid in endless snow Laid on my heart and liver; from their vains) Melt Like two hungry torrents: eating rocks Into the Ocean of all humane life, And make it bitter, only with my blood: Oh frail condition of strength, valour; virtue, (Like warning fire upon the top Of some steep Beakon, on a steeper hill) Made to express it: Like a falling star Silently glanced, that Like a thunderbolt, Looked to have stuck and shook the firmament. Who are fates ministers?