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[ Enter] A NTONIO and D ELIO 1
DELIO. YOU are welcome to your country, dear Antonio; | |
| You have been long in France, and you return | |
| A very formal Frenchman in your habit: | |
| How do you like the French court? | 4 |
| ANT. I admire it: | |
| In seeking to reduce both state and people | |
| To a fix’d order, their judicious king | |
| Begins at home; quits first his royal palace | 8 |
| Of flattering sycophants, of dissolute | |
| And infamous persons,—which he sweetly terms | |
| His master’s master-piece, the work of heaven; | |
| Considering duly that a prince’s court | 12 |
| Is like a common fountain, whence should flow | |
| Pure silver drops in general, but if ’t chance | |
| Some curs’d example poison ’t near the head, | |
| Death and diseases through the whole land spread. | 16 |
| And what is ’t makes this blessed government | |
| But a most provident council, who dare freely | |
| Inform him the corruption of the times? | |
| Though some o’ the court hold it presumption | 20 |
| To instruct princes what they ought to do, | |
| It is a noble duty to inform them | |
| What they ought to foresee. 2—Here comes Bosola, | |
| The only court-gall’ yet I observe his railing | 24 |
| Is not for simple love of piety: | |
| Indeed, he rails at those things which he wants; | |
| Would be as lecherous, covetous, or proud, | |
| Bloody, or envious, as any man, | 28 |
| If he had means to be so.—Here’s the cardinal. | |
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[Enter CARDINAL and BOSOLA]
BOS. I do haunt you still. | |
| CARD. So. | |
| BOS. I have done you better service than to be slighted thus. Miserable age, where only the reward of doing well is the doing of it! | 32 |
| CARD. You enforce your merit too much. | |
| BOS. I fell into the galleys in your service: where, for two years together, I wore two towels instead of a shirt, with a knot on the shoulder, after the fashion of a Roman mantle. Slighted thus! I will thrive some way. Black-birds fatten best in hard weather; why not I in these dog-days? | |
| CARD. Would you could become honest! | |
| BOS. With all your divinity do but direct me the way to it. I have known many travel far for it, and yet return as arrant knaves as they went forth, because they carried themselves always along with them. [Exit CARDINAL.] Are you gone? Some fellows, they say, are possessed with the devil, but this great fellow were able to possess the greatest devil, and make him worse. | 36 |
| ANT. He hath denied thee some suit? | |
| BOS. He and his brother are like plum-trees that grow crooked over standing-pools; they are rich and o’erladen with fruit, but none but crows, pies, and caterpillars feed on them. Could I be one of their flattering panders, I would hang on their ears like a horseleech, till I were full, and then drop off. I pray, leave me. Who would rely upon these miserable dependencies, in expectation to be advanc’d to-morrow? What creature ever fed worse than hoping Tantalus? Nor ever died any man more fearfully than he that hoped for a pardon. There are rewards for hawks and dogs when they have done us service; but for a soldier that hazards his limbs in a battle, nothing but a kind of geometry is his last supportation. | |
| DELIO. Geometry? | |
| BOS. Ay, to hang in a fair pair of slings, take his latter swing in the world upon an honourable pair of crutches, from hospital to hospital. Fare ye well, sir: and yet do not you scorn us; for places in the court are but like beds in the hospital, where this man’s head lies at that man’s foot, and so lower and lower. [Exit.] | 40 |
| DEL. I knew this fellow seven years in the galleys | |
| For a notorious murder; and ’twas thought | |
| The cardinal suborn’d it: he was releas’d | |
| By the French general, Gaston de Foix, | 44 |
| When he recover’d Naples. | |
| ANT. ’Tis great pity | |
| He should be thus neglected: I have heard | |
| He ’s very valiant. This foul melancholy | 48 |
| Will poison all his goodness; for, I ’ll tell you, | |
| If too immoderate sleep be truly said | |
| To be an inward rust unto the soul, | |
| If then doth follow want of action | 52 |
| Breeds all black malcontents; and their close rearing, | |
| Like moths in cloth, do hurt for want of wearing. | |
