Act Five Scene Two
Enter Medina, Daenia, Alba, Carlo and The Faction with Rosemary <53> in their hats.
MEDINA
Keep locked the door, and let none enter to us
But who shares our fortunes.
DAENIA
Lock the doors.
ALBA
What entertainment did the King bestow
Upon your letters and the Cardinal’s?
MEDINA
With a devouring eye he read them o’er,
Swallowing our offers into his empty bosom,
As gladly as the parched earth drinks healths
Out of the cup of heaven.
CARLO
Little suspecting
What dangers closely lie enambushed.
DAENIA
Let us not trust to that. There’s in his breast
Both fox and lion, and both these beasts can bite.
We must not now behold the narrowest loop-hole,
But presently suspect a winged bullet
Flies whizzing by our ears.
MEDINA
For when I let
The plummet fall to sound his very soul
In his close-chamber, being French-Doctor like,
He to the Cardinal’s ear sung sorcerous notes,
The burden of his song, to mine, was death,
Onaelia’s murder, and Sebastian’s.
And think you his voice alters now? ’Tis strange,
To see how brave this tyrant shows in court,
Throned like a god. Great men are pretty stars,
When his rays shine, wonder fills up all eyes
By sight of him, let him but once check sin,
About him round all cry, oh excellent King!
Oh Saint-like man! But, let this King retire
Into his closet to put off his robes,
He like a player leaves his part too.
Open his breast, and with a sunbeam search it,
There’s no such man. This King of gilded clay,
Within is ugliness, lust, treachery,
And a base soul, though reared Colossus-like.
Balthazar beats to come.
DAENIA
None till he speaks, and that we know his voice.
Who are you?
BALTHAZAR (within) An honest house-keeper in Rosemary Lane <54> too, if you dwell in the same parish.
MEDINA
Oh ’tis our honest soldier, give him entrance.
BALTHAZAR Men show like coarses, for I meet few but are stuck with Rosemary. Every one asked me who was married today, and I told them Adultery and Repentance, and that Shame and a Hangman followed them to church.
MEDINA
There’s but two parts to play, shame has done hers,
But execution must close up the scene,
And for that cause these sprigs are worn by all,
Bags of marriage, now of funeral,
For death this day turns courtier.
BALTHAZAR
Who must dance with him?
MEDINA
The King, and all that are our opposites.
That dart or this must fly into the court
Either to shoot this blazing star from Spain,
Or else so long to wrap him up in clouds,
Till all the fatal fires in him burn out,
Leaving his state and conscience clear from doubt
Of following uproars.
ALBA
Kill not, but surprise him.
CARLO
That’s my voice still.
MEDINA
Thine, soldier?
BALTHAZAR Oh, this colic of a kingdom, when the wind of treason gets amongst the small guts, what a rumbling and a roaring it keeps. And yet, make the best of it you can, it goes on stinking. Kill a King?
DAENIA
Why?
BALTHAZAR If men should pull the sun out of heaven every time ’tis eclipsed, not all the wax nor tallow in Spain would serve to make us candles for one year.
MEDINA
No way to purge
The sick state, but by opening a vein.
BALTHAZAR Is that your French physic? If every one of us should be whipped according to our faults, to be lashed at a cart’s tail would be held but a flea biting.
Enter Signor No.
MEDINA whispers
What are you? Come from the King?
NO
No.
BALTHAZAR
No? More no’s? I know him, let him enter.
MEDINA
Signor, I thank your kind intelligence,
The news long since was sent into our ears,
Yet we embrace your love, so fare you well.
CARLO
Will you smell to a sprig of rosemary?
NO
No.
BALTHAZAR
Will you be hanged?
NO
No.
BALTHAZAR
This is either Signor No, or no Signor.
MEDINA
He makes his love to us a warning piece
To arm ourselves against we come to court,
Because the guard is doubled.
ALL
Tush, we care not.
BALTHAZAR If any here arms his hand to cut off the head, let him first pluck out my throat. In any noble act I’ll wade chin-deep with you. But to kill a King?
MEDINA
No hear me…
BALTHAZAR You were better, my Lord, sail five hundred times to Bantam <55> in the West Indies, that once to Barathrum in the Low Countries. It’s hot going under the line there, the calenture <56> of the soul is a most miserable madness.
MEDINA
Turn then this wheel of fate from shedding blood
Till with her own hand Justice weighs all.
BALTHAZAR
Good.
Exeunt.