_Cla._ O to think, whilst we are singing the last hymn, and ready to be turn'd off, some new tune is inventing by some metremonger, to a scurvy ballad of our death! Again, at our funeral sermons, to have the divine divide his text into fair branches! O, flesh and blood cannot endure it! Yet I will take it patiently like a grave man. Hangman, tie not my halter of a true lover's knot: I burst it if thou dost. _Tha._ Husband, I do beseech you on my knees, I may but speak with you. I'll win your pardon, Or with tears, like Niobe, bedew a-- 70 _Cla._ Hold thy water, crocodile, and say I am bound to do thee no harm; were I free, yet I could not be looser than thou; for thou art a whore! Agamemnon's daughter, that was sacrificed for a good wind, felt but a blast of the torments thou should'st endure; I'd make thee swound oftener than that fellow that by his continual practice hopes to become drum-major. What sayst thou to tickling to death with bodkins? But thou hast laugh'd too much at me already, whore! Justice, O duke! and let me not hang in suspense. 80 _Abi._ Husband, I'll nail me to the earth, but I'll win your pardon. My jewels, jointure, all I have shall fly; Apparel, bedding, I'll not leave a rug, So you may come off fairly. _Cla._ I'll come off fairly: thou[318] beg my pardon! I had rather Chirurgeons' Hall should beg my dead body for an anatomy[319] than thou beg my life. Justice, O duke! and let us die! _Duke._ Signior, think, and dally not with heaven, 90 But freely tell us, did you do the murder? _Rog._ I have confess'd it to my ghostly father, And done the sacrament of penance for it. What would your highness more? _Cla._ The like have I; what would your highness more? And here before you all take't o' my death. _Duke._ In God's name, then, on to the death with them. For the poor widows that you leave behind, Though by the law their goods are all confiscate, Yet we'll be their good lord, and give 'em them. 100 _Cla._ O, hell of hells! Why did not we hire some villain to fire our houses? _Rog._ I thought not of that; my mind was altogether of the gallows. _Cla._ May the wealth I leave behind me help to damn her! And as the cursèd fate of courtezan, What she gleans with her traded art, May one, as a most due plague, cheat from [her] In the last dotage of her tirèd lust, And leave her an unpitied age of woe! 110 _Rog._ Amen, amen! _Watch._ I never heard men pray more fervently.