HENRY

Duchess of Guise, your Grace is much enriched, In the attendance of this English virgin, That will initiate her Prime of youth, (Disposed to Court conditions) under hand Of your preferred instructions and Command, Rather than any in the English Court, Whose Ladies are not matched in Christendom, For graceful and confirmed behaviours; More than the Court, where they are bred is equaled. Assure you Cousin Guise, so great a Courtier, So full of majesty and Royal parts, No Queen in Christendom may boast her self, Her Court approves it, Thats a Court indeed; Not mixed with Rudeness used in common houses; But, as Courts should be abstracts of their kingdoms, In all the Beauty, State, and Worth they hold; So is hers, amply, and by her informed. The world is not contracted in a man, With more proportion and expression Than in her Court, her Kingdom: Our French Court Is a mere mirror of confusion to it: The King and subject, Lord and every slave Dance a continual Hay; Our Rooms of State, Kept Like our stables; No place more observed Than a rude Market place: And though our Custom Keep this assured deformity from our sighed, 'Tis never the less essentially unsightly, Which they would soon see, would they change their form To this of ours, and then compare them both; Which we must not affect, because in Kingdoms, Where the Kings change does breed the Subjects terror, Pure Innovation is more gross than error. No Question they much wrong their real worth, In affectation of outlandish Scum; But they have faults, and we; They foolish-proud, To be the Pictures of our vanity; We proud, that they are proud of foolery. D'Ambois, I think. I Like your alteration, and must tell you, I have expected offer of your service; For we (in fear to make mild virtue proud) Use not to seek her out in any man. If you have wooed and wone, then Brother wear him. You have the mate. Another. This desperate quarrel sprung out of their envies To D'Ambois sudden bravery, and great spirit. Less then either Will make the Gall of Envy overflow; She feeds on outcast entrails Like a Kite: In which foul heap, if any ill lies hid, She sticks her beak into it, shakes it up, And hurl's it all abroad, that all may view it. Corruption is her Nutriment; but touch her With any precious ointment, and you kill her: When she finds any filth in men, she feasts, And with her black throat bruits it through the world; (Being found and healthful) But if she but taste The slenderest pittance of commended virtue, She surfeits of it, and is Like a fly, That passes all the bodies so dest parts, And dwells upon the sores; or if her squint eye Have power to find none there, she forges some: She makes that crooked ever which is strait; Call's valour giddiness, Justice Tyranny: A wise man may shun her, she not her self; Whither soever she flies from her Harms, She bears her Foe still clasped in her own Arms: And therefore cousin Guise let us avoid her. What Atlas, or Olympus lifts his head So far passed Covert, that with air enough My words may be informed? And from his height I may be seen, and herd through all the world? A tale so worthy, and so fraught with wonder, Sticks in my jaws, and labours with event. Comest thou from D'Ambois? Relate at large what thou hast seen and herd. Passed there no sort of words at their encounter? Such, often soonest end. Thy felt report calls on, we long to know On what events the other have arrived. All slain outright? Brother I know your suit; these wilful murders Are ever passed our pardon. This would make every man that thinks him wronged, Or is offended, or in wrong or right, Lay on this violence, and all vaunt themselves, Law-menders and suppliers though mere Butchers; Should this fact (though of justice) be forgiven? Well brother, rise, and raise your friend withal From death to life: and D'Ambois, let your life (Refined by passing through this merited death) Be purged from more such foul pollution; Nor on your escape, nor valour more presuming, To be again so violent. Enjoy what thou intreatest, we give but ours. Speak home my Bussy, thy impartial words Are Like brave Falcons that dare truss a Foul Much greater than themselves; Flatterers are Kites That check at nothing; thou shalt be my Eagle, And bear my thunder underneath thy wings: Truths words Like jewels hang in ears of Kings. Fly at him and his brood, I cast thee off, And once more give thee surname of mine Eagle. Not in my face; (my Eagle) violence flies The Sanctuaries of a Princes eyes. Stay them, stay D'Ambois; Cousin Guise, I wonder Your equal disposition brooks so ill A man so good, that only would uphold Man in his native noblesse, from whose fallen All our dissensions rise; that in himself (Without the outward patches of our frailty, Riches and honour) knows he comprehends Worth with the greatest: Kings had never born Such boundless eminence over other men, Had all maintained the spirit and state of D'Ambois; Nor had the full impartial hand of nature That all things gave in her original, Without these definite terms of Mine and Thine, Been turned unjustly to the hand of Fortune: Had all preserved her in her prime, Like D'Ambois; No envy, no disjunction had dissolved, Or plucked out one stick of the golden faggot, In which the world of Saturn was comprised, Had all been held together with the nerves, The genius and th'ingenuous soul of D'Ambois. Let my hand therefore be the Hermean rod To partly and reconcile, and so conserve you, As my combined embracers and supporters. LAdies, you have not done our banquet right, Nor looked upon it with those cheerful rays That lately turned your breathes to floods of gold; Your looks, me thinks, are not drawn out with thoughts, So clear and free as heretofore, but fare As if the thick complexions of men Governed within them. So do they all men else. But me thinks Her Courtship is more pure than heretofore: True Courtiers should be modest, but not nice: Bold, but not impudent: pleasure love, not vice. Here's nought but whispering with us: Like a calm Before a tempest, when the silent air Lays her soft ear close to the earth to Harken For that she fears is coming to afflict her; Some fate does join our ears to hear it coming. Come, my brave eagle, let's to Covert fly: I see Almighty Aether in the smoke Of all his clouds descending: and the sky Hid in the dim oftents of Tragedy. Exit Hen. with D'Amb. Thanks to you both: and kindly I invite you Both to a banquet where weel sacrifice Full cups to confirmation of yours loves; At which (fair Ladies) I entreat your presence. Exeunt Henry, D'Amb. Ely. Ta.