A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 14
General
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 14
English drama
QUEEN-M. O, fly, my Eleazar; save thy life,
Else 'point a guard about thee; the mad people,
Tempestuous like the sea, run up and down,
Some crying _kill the bastard_, some, _the Moor_;
Some cry, _God save King Philip_; and some cry,
_God save the Moor_, some others, _he shall die_.
ELE. Are these your fears? Thus blow them into air.
I rushed amongst the thickest of their crowds,
And with a countenance majestical,
Like the imperious sun, dispers'd their clouds;
I have perfumed the rankness of their breath,
And by the magic of true eloquence
Transform'd this many-headed Cerberus,
This pied chamelion, this beast multitude,
Whose power consists in number, pride in threats,
Yet melt like snow when majesty shines forth,
This heap of fools who, crowding in huge swarms,
Stood at our court gates like a heap of dung,
Reeking and shouting out contagious breath
Of power to poison all the elements--
This wolf I held by th' ears, and made him tame,
And made them tremble at the Moor's great name:
No, we must combat with a grimmer foe;
That damn'd Mendoza overturns our hopes.
He loves you dearly.
QUEEN-M. By his secret letters
He hath entreated me to leave the court,
And fly into his arms.
ELE. The world cannot devise a stratagem
Sooner to throw confusion on his pride.
Subscribe to his desires, and in dead night
Steal to his castle; swear to him his love
Hath drawn you thither; undermine his soul,
And learn what villanies are there laid up;
Then for your pleasure walk to take the air:
Near to the castle I'll in ambush lie,
And seem by force to take you prisoner:
This done, I have a practice (plotted here)
Shall rid him of his life and us of fear.
About it, madam, this is all in all;
We cannot stand, unless Mendoza fall.
[_Exeunt._
ACT IV., SCENE 1.
_Enter_ EMANUEL, _King of Portugal_, PRINCE PHILIP, MENDOZA,
ALVERO, _with drums and soldiers marching_.
K. OF PORT. Poor Spain! how is the body of thy peace
Mangled and torn by an ambitious Moor.
How is thy prince and councillors abus'd,
And trodden under the base foot of scorn.
Wrong'd lords, Emanuel of Portugal partakes
A falling share in all your miseries;
And though the tardy hand of slow delay
Withheld us from preventing your mishaps
Yet shall revenge dart black confusion
Into the bosom of that damned fiend.
PHIL. But is it possible our mother-queen
Should countenance his ambition?
ALV. Her advice is as a steersman to direct his course;
Besides, as we by circumstance have learnt,
She means to marry him.
PHIL. Then, here upon my knees,
I pluck allegiance from her; all that love,
Which by innative duty I did owe her,
Shall henceforth be converted into hate.
This will confirm the world's opinion
That I am base-born, and the damned Moor
Had interest in my birth; this wrong alone
Gives new fire to the cinders of my rage;
I may be well transform'd from what I am,
When a black devil is husband to my dam.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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