EPIRE. Your best of friends, your dearest Philocles, Usurps your bed, and makes you a cornute. A creature uncreate in paradise, And one that's only of a woman's making. CYP. Is't possible! can I give faith to this? EPIRE. Nay, be but patient, smooth your brow a little, And you shall take them, as they clip each other, Even in their height of sin[206], then damn them both, And let them sink before they ask God pardon, That your revenge may stretch unto their souls. CYP. To be a cuckold doth exceed all grief. EPIRE. To have a pleasant scoff at majesty. CYP. To taste the fruit forbidden from my tree! EPIRE. But he shall lose his paradise for that. CYP. The slave will make base songs in my disgrace. EPIRE. And wound your reputation in strange lands. CYP. This injury sads all my joys on earth. EPIRE. Horns are not shunn'd by wisdom, wealth, or birth. CYP. Watch their close meetings, and then give us notice; Mean space, my love shall in thy bosom rest. My grief is like my birth, great--great and high. Give close intelligence: till then farewell. Lust is the broadest path which leads to hell. [_Exit_ CYPRUS. IRE. He's gone with black suspicion in his heart: And his soul made a slave to jealousy, My plots shall drive him to his own destruction; And I gain both revenge and dignity. He shall no sooner put his queen to death, But I'll proclaim her spotless innocence; All men will hate him for so vile an act, And mad with rage depose him from his crown. Then I will be his death: his state doth give: Kings once depos'd long after must not live. For, like a ph[oe]nix rare in jealousy, He shall consume himself in scorching flames, Whilst from his ashes I a phoenix spring. Many renounce their God to be a king, And I'll be one to kill men with a frown, None dare dispute the actions of a crown. [_Exit._ FOOTNOTES: [180] [Edits., _thee_.] [181] Alluding to the old law for pressing prisoners who refused to plead. [182] _i.e._, Dove's down.--_Steevens._ [183] Another allusion to the book mentioned in "Eastward Hoe!" Since the note on that passage was written, I have discovered that there were two books with titles nearly similar: one of them, "The Seckman's Salve," by Thomas Becon, 8o, 1591: and the other: "The Salve of a Sickman; or, A treatise concerning the nature, difference, and kinds of death," by William Perking, 8o, 1595. [It does not appear at all necessary to conclude that any partcular look is referred to.] [184] Mr Reed, without any authority from the old copies, and without the slightest notice, gave the lines that follow to Alphonso, and inserted his name accordingly: they are most clearly a continuation of Epire's speech: he draws the distinction between their situations.--_Collier._