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[ Enter] C ARDINAL and F ERDINAND with a letter 1
FERD. I have this night digg’d up a mandrake. 2 | |
| CARD. Say you? | |
| FERD. And I am grown mad with ’t. | |
| CARD. What ’s the prodigy? | 4 |
| FERD. Read there,—a sister damn’d: she ’s loose i’ the hilts; 3 | |
| Grown a notorious strumpet. | |
| CARD. Speak lower. | |
| FERD. Lower! | 8 |
| Rogues do not whisper ’t now, but seek to publish ’t | |
| (As servants do the bounty of their lords) | |
| Aloud; and with a covetous searching eye, | |
| To mark who note them. O, confusion seize her! | 12 |
| She hath had most cunning bawds to serve her turn, | |
| And more secure conveyances for lust | |
| Than towns of garrison for service. | |
| CARD. Is ’t possible? | 16 |
| Can this be certain? | |
| FERD. Rhubarb, O, for rhubarb | |
| To purge this choler! Here ’s the cursèd day | |
| To prompt my memory; and here ’t shall stick | 20 |
| Till of her bleeding heart I make a sponge | |
| To wipe it out. | |
| CARD. Why do you make yourself | |
| So wild a tempest? | 24 |
| FERD. Would I could be one, | |
| That I might toss her palace ’bout her ears, | |
| Root up her goodly forests, blast her meads, | |
| And lay her general territory as waste | 28 |
| As she hath done her honours. | |
| CARD. Shall our blood, | |
| The royal blood of Arragon and Castile, | |
| Be thus attainted? | 32 |
| FERD. Apply desperate physic: | |
| We must not now use balsamum, but fire, | |
| The smarting cupping-glass, for that ’s the mean | |
| To purge infected blood, such blood as hers. | 36 |
| There is a kind of pity in mine eye,— | |
| I ’ll give it to my handkercher; and now ’tis here, | |
| I ’ll bequeath this to her bastard. | |
| CARD. What to do? | 40 |
| FERD. Why, to make soft lint for his mother’s wounds, | |
| When I have hew’d her to pieces. | |
| CARD. Curs’d creature! | |
| Unequal nature, to place women’s hearts | 44 |
| So far upon the left side! 4 | |
| FERD. Foolish men, | |
| That e’er will trust their honour in a bark | |
| Made of so slight weak bulrush as is woman, | 48 |
| Apt every minute to sink it! | |
| CARD. Thus ignorance, when it hath purchas’d honour, | |
| It cannot wield it. | |
| FERD. Methinks I see her laughing,— | 52 |
| Excellent hyena! Talk to me somewhat quickly, | |
| Or my imagination will carry me | |
| To see her in the shameful act of sin. | |
| CARD. With whom? | 56 |
| FERD. Happily with some strong-thigh’d bargeman, | |
| Or one o’ th’ wood-yard that can quoit the sledge 5 | |
| Or toss the bar, or else some lovely squire | |
| That carries coals up to her privy lodgings. | 60 |
| CARD. You fly beyond your reason. | |
| FERD. Go to, mistress! | |
| ’Tis not your whore’s milk that shall quench my wild-fire, | |
| But your whore’s blood. | 64 |
| CARD. How idly shows this rage, which carries you, | |
| As men convey’d by witches through the air, | |
| On violent whirlwinds! This intemperate noise | |
| Fitly resembles deaf men’s shrill discourse, | 68 |
| Who talk aloud, thinking all other men | |
| To have their imperfection. | |
| FERD. Have not you | |
| My palsy? | 72 |
| CARD. Yes, [but] I can be angry | |
| Without this rupture. There is not in nature | |
| A thing that makes man so deform’d, so beastly, | |
| As doth intemperate anger. Chide yourself. | 76 |
| You have divers men who never yet express’d | |
| Their strong desire of rest but by unrest, | |
| By vexing of themselves. Come, put yourself | |
| In tune. | 80 |
| FERD. So I will only study to seem | |
| The thing I am not. I could kill her now, | |
| In you, or in myself; for I do think | |
| It is some sin in us heaven doth revenge | 84 |
| By her. | |
| CARD. Are you stark mad? | |
| FERD. I would have their bodies | |
| Burnt in a coal-pit with the ventage stopp’d, | 88 |
| That their curs’d smoke might not ascend to heaven; | |
| Or dip the sheets they lie in in pitch or sulphur, | |
| Wrap them in ’t, and then light them like a match; | |
| Or else to-boil 6 their bastard to a cullis, | 92 |
| And give ’t his lecherous father to renew | |
| The sin of his back. | |
| CARD. I ’ll leave you. | |
| FERD. Nay, I have done. | 96 |
| I am confident, had I been damn’d in hell, | |
| And should have heard of this, it would have put me | |
| Into a cold sweat. In, in; I ’ll go sleep. | |
| Till I know who [loves] my sister, I ’ll not stir: | 100 |
| That known, I ’ll find scorpions to string my whips, | |
| And fix her in a general eclipse. Exeunt. | |
