When Tigranes, to whom he has offered that sister in marriage, presumes to address her, with what majestic inconsistency the king rebukes him: The least word that she speaks Is worth a life. Rule your disorder'd tongue Or I will temper it! And so, now struggling, now wading on in sin, till that heart-rending crisis is reached in which he confesses the incestuous love to his friend and faithful general, Mardonius; nay, even tries to win the friend's support in his lustful suit, and is gloriously defeated. Then follow the easy compliance of Bessus with his wish, and, with equal precipitancy, the revulsion of a kingly sense of rectitude against the willing pander: Thou art too wicked for my company, Though I have hell within me, and mayst yet Corrupt me further, The climax in which Arbaces can no longer refrain is of Beaumont's best: Nay, you shall hear the cause in short, Panthea; And when thou hear'st it, thou will blush for me And hang thy head down like a violet Full of the morning's dew. And she, recoiling, "Heaven forbid" and "I would rather ... in a grave sleep with my innocence," still kisses him; and then in a panic, nobler than self-suppression, cries: If you have any mercy, let me go To prison, to my death, to anything: I feel a sin growing upon my blood Worse than all these! By a series of sensational _bouleversements_, and in a dramatic agony of suspense, we are keyed to the scene in which relief is granted: the princess who now is Queen is no sister to the King, who is now no King. With the exception of a half-scene (Act IV, 2{^_b_}) of somewhat bustling mechanism and rant by Fletcher, the whole of the King's portrayal is Beaumont's; and with the exception of eighty lines written by Fletcher (Act IV, 1) of dramatic dialogue containing information necessary to the minor love-affair, the story of the birdlike quivering, fond Panthea is, also, entirely Beaumont's. The Mardonius of Beaumont, in the first three acts and the fifth, is a fine, honest, blunt, soldierly companion and adviser to the King; but when Fletcher takes him in hand (Act IV, 2{^_b_}), he declines to a stock character wordy with alliteration and commonplace. The Bessus of Beaumont whose "reputation came principally by thinking to run away" is, in Acts I-III, Falstaffian or Zagloban; the Bessus of Fletcher, in IV, 3 and V, 1 and 3, is a figure of low comedy, amusing to be sure, and reminiscent of Bobadill, but a purveyor of sophomoric quips and a tool for horse-play. The rural scene with its graphic humours of the soil is Beaumont's.