TAMYRA

Has he never been Courtier, my Lord? The man's a Courtier at first sighed. It pity else: For though his great spirit something overflow, All faults are still born, that from greatness grow: But such a sudden Courtier saw I never. True, for it argued his no endue conceit Both of the place, and greatness of the persons: Nor of our sex: all which (we all being strangers To his encounter) should have made more manners Deserve more welcome. Ahlas, love give her joy; I am so far From Envy of her honour, that I swear, Had he encountered me with such proud sleight: I would have put that project face of his To a more test, than did her Dutchesship. I, and stand him still. Letting her husband give her servant place: Though he did manly, she should be a woman. D'Ambois is pardoned: where's a king? where law? See how it runs, much Like a turbulent sea; Here high, and glorious, as it did contend To wash the heavens, and make the stars more pure: And here so low, it leaves the mud of hell To every common view: come count Montsurry We must consult of this. Stay not, sweet Lord. Yes, to good purpose. And your cause is as good to seek him too And haunt his company. Matter of death, were I some husbands wife: I cannot live at quiet in my chamber For opportunities almost to rapes Offered me by him. True my Lord, and never My fruitless love shall let your serious profit, Yet, sweet Lord, do no stay, you know my soul Is so long time without me, and I dead As you are absent. The morn shall let me see you: This is my comfort, that the sun hath left The whole world's beauty ere my sun leaves me. Farewell my light and life: But not in him. Alas, that in the wave of our affections We should supply it with a full dissembling, In which each youngest maid is grown a mother, Frailty is fruitful, one sin gets another: Our loves Like sparkles are that brightest shine, When they go out most vice shows most divine: Go maid, to bed, lend me your book I pray: Not Like your self, for form, I'll this night trouble None of your services: Make sure the doors, And call your other fellows to their rest. Now all the peaceful regents of the night, Silently-gliding exhalations, Languishing winds, and murmuring falls of waters, Sadness of heart, and ominous secureness, Enchantments, dead sleeps, all the friends of rest, That ever wrought upon the life of man, Extend your utmost strengths; and this charmed hour Fix Like the Centre; make the violent wheels Of Time and Fortune stand; and Great Existens (The Makers treasury) now not seem to be, To all but my approaching friends and me: They come, alas they come, fear, fear and hope Of one thing, at one instant fight in me: I love what most I loath, and cannot live Unless I compass that that holds my death: For love is hateful without love again, And he I love, will loath me, when he sees I fly my sex, my virtue, my Renown, To run so madly on a man unknown. See, see the gulf is opening, that will swallow Me and my fame for ever; I will in, And cast my self off, as I never had been. Exit. Alas, I fear my strangeness will retire him: If he go back, I die; I must prevent it, And cheer his onset with my sighed at least, And thats the most; though every step he takes Goes to my heart, I'll rather die than seem Not to be strange to that I most esteem. And is it therefore that you come good sir? Then crave I now your pardon and my father's, And swear your presence does me so much comfort, That all I have, it binds to your requital: Indeed sir, 'tis most true that a report Is spread, alleging that his love to me Was reason of your quarrel, and because You shall not think I feign it for my glory, That he importuned me for his Court service, I'll show you his own hand, set down in blood To that vain purpose: Good Sir, then come in. Father I thank you now a thousand fold. Oh My deer servant, in thy close embraces, I have set open all the doors of danger To my encompassed honour, and my life: Before I was secure against death and hell; But now am subject to the heartless fear: Of every shadow, and of every breath, And would change firmness with and aspen leaf: So confident a spotless conscience is; So weak a guilty: Oh the daugerous siege Sin lays about us? and the tyranny He exercises when he hath expugned: Like to the horror of a winter's thunder, Mixed with a gushing storm, that suffer nothing To stir abroad on earth, but their own rages; Is sin, when it hath gathered head above us: No roof, no shelter can secure us so, But he will drown our cheeks in fear or woe. It rests as all kings seals were set in thee. Exit D' Amb. Manet Tamy. Both, (my deer Lord) not all this night made I My self unready, or could sleep a wink. I am in no pour earthly, but in yours; To what end should I go to bed my Lord, That wholly missed the comfort of my bed? Or how should sleep possess my faculties, Wanting the proper closer of mine eyes? Nay, good my Lord esteem not my desires Such doters on their humours, that my judgement Cannot subdue them to your worthier pleasure: A wives pleased husband must her object be In all her acts, not her soothed fantasy. Oh no my Lord, your holy Friar says, All couplings in the day that touch the bed, Adulterous are, even in the married; Whose graven and worthy doctrine, well I know, Your faith in him will liberally allow. What, he that was but yesterday his maker? His raiser and preserver? What says he? How fares my Lord? Takes my Love any thing to heart he says? What my Lord? Will you wreak Your anger's joust cause given by him, on me? How's that, my Lord? Oh woe is me. Oh my Lord, I have too long lived to hear this from you. See how he flies me still: 'Tis a foul heart That fears his own hand: Good my Lord make haste To see the dangerous paper: Be not nice For any trifle, ieweld with your honour, To pawn your honour; and with it confer My nearest woman here, in all she knows; Who (if the sun or Cerberus could have seen Any stain in me) might as much as they: And Pero, here I charge thee by my love, And all proofs of it, (which I might call bounties) By all that thou hast seem seem good in me, And all the ill which thou shouldst spit from thee, By pity of the wound, my Lord hath given me, Not as thy Mistress now, but a poor woman (To death given over:) rid me of my pains, Pour on thy powder: clear thy breast of me: My Lord is only here: here speak thy worst, Thy best will do me mischief; If thou sparest me, Never shine good thought on thy memory: Resolve my Lord, and leave me desperate. No, I will write (for I shall never more Speak with the fugitive) where I will defy him, Were he ten times the brother of my king. Exeunt. Away, deliver it: Oh may my lines (Filled with the poison of a woman's hate When he shall open them) shrink up his eyes With torturous darkness, such as stands in hell, Stuck full of inward horrors, never lighted; With which are all things to be feared, affrighted; Father? Oh servant help, and save me from the gripes Of shame and infamy. Oh honoured spirit: fly into the fancy Of my offended Lord: and do not let him Believe what there the wicked man hath written. Hath my Lord slain my woman? In mean time Dear servant, till your powerful voice revoke him, Be sure to use the policy he advised: Lest fury in your too quick knowledge taken Of our abuse, and your defence of me Accuse me more than any enemy: And Father, you must on my Lord impose Your holiest charges, and the churches power To temper his hight spirit: and disperse The cruelty and the blood, I know his hand Will shower upon our heads, if you put not Your finger to the storm, and hold it up, As my deer servant here must do with Monsieur. Oh good my Lord forbear In wreak of great sins, to engender greater, And make my loves corruption generate murder. Sweet Lord enjoin my sin Some other penance than what makes it worse: Hide in some gloomy dungeon my loathed face, And let condemned murderers let me down (Stopping their noses) my abhorred food. Hang me in chains, and let me eat these arms That have offended: Bind me face to face To some dead woman, taken from the Cart Of Execution, till death and time In grains of dust dissolve me; I'll endure: Or any torture that your wraths invention Can fright all pity from the world withal: But to betray a friend with show of friendship, That is too common, for the rare revenge Your rage affects; here then are my breasts, Last night your pillows; here my wretched arms, As late the wished confines of your life: Now break them as you please, and all the bounds Of manhood, noblesse, and religion. Oh Lord. Oh kill me, kill me: Dear husband be not crueler than death; You have beheld some Gorgon: Feel, o feel How you are turned to stone; with my heart blood Dissolve your self again, or you will grow Into the image of all Tyranny. And yet I live. Poor man: o my father, Father? look up; o let me down my Lord, And I will write. He was, he was, kind innocent man he was. They come. He is my love. It the Earl my husband in his weed that brought thee. Favour (my Lord) my love, o favour him. Forgive thou me deer servant, and this hand That led thy life to this unworthy end, Forgive it, for the blood with which 'tis stained In which I writ the summons of thy death: The forced summons, by this bleeding wound, By this here in my bosom: and by this That makes me hold up both my hands imbrued For thy deer pardon. Sweet Lord forgive me, and I will be gone, And till these wounds, that never balm shall close Till death hath entered at them (so I love them Being opened by your hands) by death be cured I never more will grieve you with my sighed: Never endure that any roof shall partly Mine eyes and heaven: but to the open deserts (Like to hunted Tigers) I will fly: Eating my heart, shunning the steps of men, And look on no side till I be arrived. Would that would please me. I cannot cloak it: but; as when a fume, Hight, dry and gross: within the womb of earth Or in her superficies begotten: When extreme cold hath stroke it to her heart, The more it is compressed, the more it rages; Exceeds his prisons strength that should contain it, And then it tosses Temples in the air; All bars made engines, to his insolent fury: So, of a sudden, my licentious fancy Riots within me: not my name and house Nor my religion to this hour observed Can stand above it: I must utter that That will in parting break more strings in me, Than death when life parts: and that holy man That, from my cradle, counseled for my soul: I now must make and agent for my blood. Yet unanswered? Thats not my study: one way I am sure You shall not pull down me: my husbands height Is crown to all my Hope's: and his retiring To any mean state, shall be my aspiring: Mine honour's in mine own hands, spite of kings. Wise wives they are that on such strings depend, With a firm husband, weighing a dissolute friend. Then I pray be answered: For in good faith my Lord I do not Like you In that sort you Like. Now it comes So ill prepared, that I may take a poison, Under a medicine as good cheap as it: I will not have it were it worth the world. By this light my Lord You're a vile fellow: and I'll tell the King Your occupation of dishonouring Ladies And of his Court: a Lady cannot live As she was born; and with that sort of pleasure That fits her state: but she must be defamed With and infamous Lords detraction: Who would endure the Court if these attempts, Of open and professed lust must be born? Whose there? come on Dame, your are at your book When men are at your mistress; have I taught you Any such waiting woman's quality? Ah. Oh father, but at this suspicious hour You know how apt best men are to suspect us, In any cause, that makes suspicious shadow No greater than the shadow of a hair: And you're to blame: what though my Lord and husband Lie forth to night? and since I cannot sleep When he is absent, I fit up to night, Though all the doors are sure, & all our servants As sure bound with their sleeps; yet there is one That sits above, whose eye no sleep can bind: He sees through doors, and darkness, and our thoughts; And therefore as we should avoid with fear, To think amiss our selves before his search; So should we be as curious to shun All cause that other think not ill of us. Me thinks the man hath answered for us well. Man is a name of honour for a King: Additions take away from each chief thing: The School of Modesty, not to learn, learns Dams: They fit in high forms there, that know men's names. Knew all my Lord? what mean you? That you know? speak it. By him my Lord, I have admired You could all this time be at concord with him, That still hath played such discords on your honour. Oh happy woman! Comes my stain from him? It is my beauty, and that innocence proves, That slew Chymaeram, rescued Peleus From all the savage beasts in Peleon; And raised the chaste Athenian prince from Hell: All suffering with me; they for women's lustest, I for a men; that the Egean stable Of his foul sin would empty in my lap: How his gilded shunned me? sacred innocence That where thou fearest, art dreadful; and his face Turned in flight from thee, that had thee in chase: Come, bring me to him: I will tell the serpent Even to his teeth (whence, in mine honours soil, A pitched field starts up betwixt my Lord and me) That his throat lies, and he shall curse his fingers, For being so governed by his filthy soul. Good father raise him in some beauteous form, That with least terror I may brook his sighed. My Lord, my fault (as you may censure it With too strong arguments) is passed your pardon: But how the circumstances may excuse me God knows, and your more temperate mind hereafter May let my penitent Misery's make you know. Oh who is turned into my Lord and husband? Husband? My Lord? None but my Lord and husband. Heaven, I ask thee remission of my sins, Not of my pains: husband, o help me husband. I will, I will. I'll write, but in my blood that he may see, These lines come from my wounds and not from me. Oh wretched piety, that art so distract In thine own constancy; and in thy right Must be unrighteous: if I right my friend I wrong my husband: if his wrong I shun, The duty of my friend I leave undone; Ill plays on both sides; here and there, it riseth; No place: no good so good, but ill compriseth; My soul more scruple breeds, than my blood, sin, Virtue imposeth more than any stepdame: Oh had I never married but for form, Never vowed faith but purposed to deceive: Never made conscience of any sin, But clok't it privately and made it common: Nor never honoured been, in blood, or mind, Happy had I been then, as others are Of the Like licence; I had then been honoured: Lived without envy: custom had benumbed All sense of scruple, and all note of frailty: My fame had been untouched, my heart unbroken: But (shunning all) I strike on all offence, Oh husband? deer friend? Oh my conscience? It is not I, but urgent destiny, That (as great states men for their general end In politic justice, make poor men offend) Enforceth my offence to make it joust: What shall weak Dams do, when whole work of Nature Hath a strong finger in each one of us? Needs must that sweep away the silly cobweb Of our still-undone labours; that lays still Our powers to it: as to the line, the stone, Not to the stone, the line should be opposed; We cannot keep our constant course in virtue: What is alike at all parts? every day Differs from other: every hour and minute: I, every thought in our false clock of life, Oft times inverts the whole circumference: We must be sometime one, sometime another: Our bodies are but thick clouds to our souls; Through which they cannot shine when they desire: When all the stars, and even the sun himself, Must stay the vapours times that he exhales Before he can make good his beams to us: Oh how can we, that are but motes to him, Wandering at random in his ordered rays, Disperse our passion fumes, with our weak labors, That are more thick & black than all earth's vapours? Oh father, have my dumb woes waked your death? When will our humane griefs be at their height? Man is a tree, that hath no top in cares; No root in comforts; all his power to live Is given to no end, but to have power to grieve. Away, (my love) away, thou wilt be murdered.