Act Three Scene Two
Enter Cornego and Onaelia.
Cornego Here’s a parcel of man’s flesh has been hanging up and down all this morning to speak with you.
ONAELIA
Is’t not some executioner?
CORNEGO
I see nothing about him to hang in but his garters.
ONAELIA
Sent from the King to warn me of my death:
I prithee bid him welcome.
CORNEGO
He says he is a poet.
ONAELIA
Then bid him better welcome.
Belike he’s come to write my epitaph,
Some scurvy thing I’ll warrant. Welcome Sir.
Enter Poet.
POET
Madam, my love presents this book unto you.
ONAELIA
To me? I am not worthy of a line,
Unless at that Line hang some hook to choke me:
[Onaelia reads book.]
To the Most Honoured Lady - Onaelia.
Fellow thou liest, I’m most dishonoured:
Thou should’st have writ to the most wronged Lady.
The title of this book is not to me,
I tear it therefore as mine honour’s torn.
CORNEGO
Your verses are lamed in some of their feet, Master poet.
ONAELIA
What does it treat of?
POET
Of the solemn triumphs
Set forth at coronation of the Queen.
ONAELIA
Hissing, the poet’s whirlwind, blast thy lines!
Com’st thou to mock my tortures with her triumphs?
POET
‘Las Madam!
ONAELIA
When her funerals are past,
Crown thou a dedication to my joys,
And thou shalt swear each line a golden verse.
Cornego, burn this idol.
CORNGO
Your book shall come to light, Sir.
Exit Cornego [with book.]
ONAELIA
I have read legends of disastrous dames;
Will none set pen to paper for poor me?
Canst write a bitter satire? Brainless people
Do call them libels. Darest thou write a libel?
POET
I dare mix gall and poison with my ink.
ONAELIA
Do it then for me.
POET
And every line must be
A whip to draw blood.
ONAELIA
Better.
POET
And to dare
The stab from him it touches. He that writes
Such libels, as you call them, must launch wide
The sores of men’s corruptions, and even search
To the quick for dead flesh, or for rotten cores:
A poet’s ink can better cure some sores
Than surgeon’s balsam.
ONAELIA
Undertake that cure
And crown thy verse with bays.
POET
Madam, I’ll do it,
But I must have the party’s character.
ONAELIA
The King.
POET
I do not love to pluck the quills,
With which I make pens, out of a lion’s claw.
The King! Should I be bitter ’gainst the King,
I shall have scurvy ballads made of me,
Sung to the hanging tune. I dare not, Madam.
ONAELIA
This baseness follows your profession.
You are like common beadles, apt to lash
Almost to death poor wretches not worth striking,
But fawn with slavish flattery on damned vices
So great men act them. You clap hands at those,
Where the true poet indeed doth scorn to guild
A gaudy tomb with glory of his verse,
Which coffins stinking carrion. No, his lines
Are free as his invention. No base fear
Can shake his pen to temporise even with kings,
The blacker are their crimes, he louder sings.
Go, go, thou canst not write: ’tis but my calling
The muses help, that I may be inspired.
Canst a woman be a poet, Sir?
POET
Yes, Madam, best of all. For poesie
Is but feigning, feigning is to lie,
And women practice lying more than men.
ONAELIA
Nay, but if I should write, I would tell truth.
How might I reach a lofty strain?
POET
Thus Madam:
Books, music, wine, brave company and good cheer
Make poets to soar high and sing most clear.
ONAELIA
Are they born poets?
POET
Yes.
ONAELIA
Die they?
POET
Oh, never die.
ONAELIA
My misery is then a poet sure,
For time has given it an eternity.
What sort of poets are there?
POET
Two sorts lady:
The great poets and the small poets.
ONAELIA
Great and small!
Which do you call the great? The fat ones?
POET
No:
But such as have great heads, which emptied forth,
Fill all the world with wonder at their lines;
Fellows which swell big with the wind of praise.
The small ones are but shrimps of poesie.
ONAELIA
Which in the kingdom now is the best poet?
POET
Emulation.
ONAELIA
Which the next?
POET
Necessity.
ONAELIA
And which the worst?
POET
Self-love.
ONAELIA
Say I turn poet, what should I get?
POET
Opinion.
ONAELIA
Alas, I have got too much of that already,
Opinion is my evidence, judge and jury.
Mine own guilt and opinion now condemn me.
I’ll therefore be no poet, no nor make
Ten muses of your nine. I’ll swear for this;
Verses, though freely born, like slaves are sold,
I crown thy lines with bays, thy love with gold:
So fare thou well.
POET
Our pen shall honour thee.
Exit Poet, enter Cornego.
CORNEGO The poet’s book Madam, has got the inflammation of the liver, it died of a burning fever.
ONAELIA
What shall I do, Cornego? For this poet
Has filled me with a fury. I could write
Strange satires now against adulterers,
And marriage-breakers.
CORNEGO
I believe you Madam - but here comes your uncle.
Enter Medina, Alanzo, Carlo, Alba, Sebastian, Daenia.
MEDINA
Where’s our niece?
Turn your brains round, and recollect your spirits,
And see your noble friends and kinsmen ready
To pay revenge his due.
ONAELIA
That word revenge,
Startles my sleepy soul, now thoroughly wakened
By the fresh object of my hapless child
Whose wrongs reach beyond mine.
SEBASTIAN
How doth my sweet mother?
ONAELIA
How doth my prettiest boy?
ALANZO
Wrongs, like great whirlwinds,
Shake highest battlements. Few for heaven would care,
Should they be ever happy. They are half gods
Who both in good days, and good fortune share.
ONAELIA
I have no part in either.
CARLO
You shall in both,
Can swords but cut the way.
ONAELIA
I care not much, so you but gently strike him,
And that my child escape the lightening.
MEDINA
For that our nerves are knit; is there not here
A promising face of manly princely virtues,
And shall so sweet a plant be rooted out
By him that ought to fix it fast in the ground?
Sebastian, what will you do to him
That hurts your mother?
SEBASTIAN
The King my father shall kill him I trow.
DAENIA
But sweet cousin, the King loves not your mother.
SEBASTIAN
I’ll make him love her when I am a King.
MEDINA
La you, there’s in him a king’s heart already.
As therefore we before together vowed,
Lay all your warlike hands upon my sword,
And swear.
SEBASTIAN
Will you swear to kill me, Uncle?
MEDINA
Oh not for twenty worlds.
SEBASTIAN
Nay then draw and spare not, for I love fighting.
MEDINA
Stand in the midst, sweet coz, we are your guard.
These hammers shall for thee beat out a crown
If all hit right. Swear therefore, noble friends,
By your high bloods, by true nobility,
By what you owe religion, owe to your country,
Owe to the raising your posterity,
By love you bear to virtue, and to arms,
The shield of innocence, swear not to sheath
Your swords, when once drawn forth.
ONAELIA
Oh not to kill him
For twenty thousand worlds.
MEDINA
Will you be quiet?
Your swords when once drawn forth, till they have forced
Yon godless, perjurous, perfidious man…
ONAELIA
Pray rail not at him so.
MEDINA
Art mad? You’re idle
Till they have forced him
To cancel his late lawless bond he sealed
At the high altar to his Florentine strumpet,
And in his bed lay this his troth-plight wife.
ONAELIA
I, I that’s well. Pray swear.
ALL
To this we swear.
SEBASTIAN
Uncle, I swear too.
MEDINA
Our forces let’s unite, be bold and secret,
And lion-like with open eyes let’s sleep,
Streams smooth and slowly running are most deep.
Exeunt.