Enter Brachiano, Francisco disguised like Mulinassar, Lodovico
and Gasparo, bearing their swords, their helmets down, Antonelli,
Farnese.
Brach. You are nobly welcome. We have heard at full
Your honourable service 'gainst the Turk.
To you, brave Mulinassar, we assign
A competent pension: and are inly sorry,
The vows of those two worthy gentlemen
Make them incapable of our proffer'd bounty.
Your wish is, you may leave your warlike swords
For monuments in our chapel: I accept it,
As a great honour done me, and must crave
Your leave to furnish out our duchess' revels.
Only one thing, as the last vanity
You e'er shall view, deny me not to stay
To see a barriers prepar'd to-night:
You shall have private standings. It hath pleas'd
The great ambassadors of several princes,
In their return from Rome to their own countries,
To grace our marriage, and to honour me
With such a kind of sport.
Fran. I shall persuade them to stay, my lord.
Brach. Set on there to the presence.
[Exeunt Brachiano, Flamineo, and Hortensio.
Lodo. Noble my lord, most fortunately welcome;
[The conspirators here embrace.
You have our vows, seal'd with the sacrament,
To second your attempts.
Gas. And all things ready;
He could not have invented his own ruin
(Had he despair'd) with more propriety.
Lodo. You would not take my way.
Fran. 'Tis better order'd.
Lodo. T' have poison'd his prayer-book, or a pair of beads,
The pummel of his saddle, his looking-glass,
Or th' handle of his racket,--O, that, that!
That while he had been bandying at tennis,
He might have sworn himself to hell, and strook
His soul into the hazard! Oh, my lord,
I would have our plot be ingenious,
And have it hereafter recorded for example,
Rather than borrow example.
Fran. There 's no way
More speeding that this thought on.
Lodo. On, then.
Fran. And yet methinks that this revenge is poor,
Because it steals upon him like a thief:
To have ta'en him by the casque in a pitch'd field,
Led him to Florence----
Lodo. It had been rare: and there
Have crown'd him with a wreath of stinking garlic,
T' have shown the sharpness of his government,
And rankness of his lust. Flamineo comes.
[Exeunt Lodovico, Antonelli, and Gasparo.
Enter Flamineo, Marcello, and Zanche
Marc. Why doth this devil haunt you, say?
Flam. I know not:
For by this light, I do not conjure for her.
'Tis not so great a cunning as men think,
To raise the devil; for here 's one up already;
The greatest cunning were to lay him down.
Marc. She is your shame.
Flam. I pray thee pardon her.
In faith, you see, women are like to burs,
Where their affection throws them, there they 'll stick.
Zan. That is my countryman, a goodly person;
When he 's at leisure, I 'll discourse with him
In our own language.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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