“‘In the country of Thessalia (alas! why name I that accursed country which brings forth nothing but matters of tragedy? but name it I must) in Thessalia, I say, there was (well may I say {133} there was) a prince, no, no prince, whom bondage wholly possessed, but yet accounted a prince, and named Musidorus. O Musidorus, Musidorus! But to what serve exclamations, where there are no ears to receive the sound? This Musidorus being yet in the tenderest age, his worthy father payed to nature, with a violent death, her last duties, leaving his child to the faith of his friends, and the proof of time: death gave him not such pangs as the foresightful care he had of his silly successor. And yet if in his foresight he could have seen so much, happy was that good prince in his timely departure which barred him from the knowledge of his son’s miseries, which his knowledge could neither have prevented nor relieved. The young Musidorus (being thus, as for the first pledge of the destinies goodwill, deprived of his principal stay) was yet for some years after, as if the stars would breathe themselves for a greater mischief, lulled up in as much good luck as the heedful love of his doleful mother, and the flourishing estate of his country could breed unto him. “‘But when the time now came that misery seemed to be ripe for him, because he had age to know misery, I think there was a conspiracy in all heavenly and earthly things to frame fit occasions to lead him unto it. His people, to whom all foreign matters in foretime were odious, began to wish in their beloved prince, experience by travel: his dear mother, whose eyes were held open only with the joy of looking upon him, did now dispense with the comfort of her widowed life, desiring the same her subjects did, for the increase of her son’s worthiness.