Act 1 Scene 1
Enter in magnificent state to the sound of loud music, the King and Queen, as from church, attended by the Cardinal, Count Malateste, Marquis Daenia, Roderigo, Valasco, Alba, Carlo, and ladies-in waiting. The King and Queen with courtly compliments salute and part. She [exits] with one half attending her. King, Cardinal and the other half stay, the King seeming angry and desirous to be rid of them. King, Cardinal, Daenia and others [remain].
KING
Give us what no man here is master of:
Breath. Leave us pray, my father Cardinal
Can by the physic of philosophy
Set all again in order. Leave us pray.
Exeunt [King and Cardinal remain].
CARDINAL
How is it with you, sir?
KING
As with a ship
Now beat with storms, now safe. The storms are vanished
And having you my Pilot, I not only
See shore, but harbour; I to you will open
The book of a black sin, deep printed in me.
Oh father, my disease lies in my soul.
CARDINAL
The old wound sir?
KING
Yes that, it festers inwards.
For though I have a beauty to my bed
That even creation envies at, as wanting
Stuff to make such another, yet on her pillow
I lie by her, but an adulterer,
And she as an adulteress. She is my queen
And wife, yet but my strumpet though the church
Set on the seal of marriage. Good Onaelia,
Niece to our Lord High Constable of Spain
Was precontracted mine.
CARDINAL
Yet when I stung
Your conscience with remembrance of the act
Your ears were deaf to counsel.
KING
I confess it.
CARDINAL
Now to untie the knot with your new Queen
Would shake your crown half from your head.
KING
Even Troy, though she has wept her eyes out,
Would find tears to wail my kingdom’s ruins.
CARDINAL
What will you do then?
KING
She has that contract written, sealed by you,
And other churchmen witnesses unto it.
A kingdom should be given for that paper.
CARDINAL
I would not, for what lies beneath the moon,
Be made a wicked engine to break in pieces
That holy contract.
KING
’Tis my soul’s aim
To tie it upon a faster knot.
CARDINAL
I do not see
How you can with safe conscience get it from her.
KING
Oh I know
I wrestle with a lioness. To imprison her
And force her to it, I dare not. Death! What King
Did ever say ‘I dare not’? I must have it;
A bastard have I by her, and that cock
Will have, I fear, sharp spurs, if he crow after
Him that trod for him. Something must be done
Both to the hen and the chicken. Haste you therefore
To sad Onaelia, tell her I’m resolved
To give my new hawk bells, and let her fly.
My Queen, I’m weary of, and her will marry.
To this, our text, add you what gloss you please;
The secret drifts of kings are depthless seas.
Exeunt