The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster [famous ebook reader .TXT] 📗

Must I see her again?

Yes.

Never.

You must.

Never in mine own shape;
That’s forfeited by my intelligence91
And this last cruel lie: when you send me next,
The business shall be comfort.

Very likely;
Thy pity is nothing of kin to thee, Antonio
Lurks about Milan: thou shalt shortly thither,
To feed a fire as great as my revenge,
Which nev’r will slack till it hath spent his fuel:
Intemperate agues make physicians cruel.

Another room in the lodging of the Duchess.

What hideous noise was that?

’Tis the wild consort92
Of madmen, lady, which your tyrant brother
Hath plac’d about your lodging. This tyranny,
I think, was never practis’d till this hour.

Indeed, I thank him. Nothing but noise and folly
Can keep me in my right wits; whereas reason
And silence make me stark mad. Sit down;
Discourse to me some dismal tragedy.

O, ’twill increase your melancholy!

Thou art deceiv’d:
To hear of greater grief would lessen mine.
This is a prison?

Yes, but you shall live
To shake this durance off.

Thou art a fool:
The robin-red-breast and the nightingale
Never live long in cages.

Pray, dry your eyes.
What think you of, madam?

Of nothing;
When I muse thus, I sleep.

Like a madman, with your eyes open?

Dost thou think we shall know one another
In th’ other world?

Yes, out of question.

O, that it were possible we might
But hold some two days’ conference with the dead!
From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,
I never shall know here. I’ll tell thee a miracle:
I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow:
Th’ heaven o’er my head seems made of molten brass,
The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.
I am acquainted with sad misery
As the tann’d galley-slave is with his oar;
Necessity makes me suffer constantly,
And custom makes it easy. Who do I look like now?

Like to your picture in the gallery,
A deal of life in show, but none in practice;
Or rather like some reverend monument
Whose ruins are even pitied.

Very proper;
And Fortune seems only to have her eyesight
To behold my tragedy.⁠—How now!
What noise is that?

I am come to tell you
Your brother hath intended you some sport.
A great physician, when the Pope was sick
Of a deep melancholy, presented him
With several sorts93 of madmen, which wild object
Being full of change and sport, forc’d him to laugh,
And so the imposthume94 broke: the selfsame cure
The duke intends on you.

Let them come in.

There’s a mad lawyer; and a secular priest;
A doctor that hath forfeited his wits
By jealousy; an astrologian
That in his works said such a day o’ the month
Should be the day of doom, and, failing of’t,
Ran mad; an English tailor craz’d i’ the brain
With the study of new fashions; a gentleman-usher
Quite beside himself with care to keep in mind
The number of his lady’s salutations
Or “How do you,” she employ’d him in each morning;
A farmer, too, an excellent knave in grain,95
Mad ’cause he was hind’red transportation:96
And let one broker that’s mad loose to these,
You’d think the devil were among them.

Sit, Cariola.⁠—Let them loose when you please,
For I am chain’d to endure all your tyranny.

Here by a Madman this song is sung to a dismal kind of music.