The Duchess of Malfi: Act 4

She's sad as one long us'd to 't, and she seems
Rather to welcome the end of misery
Than shun it; a behaviour so noble
As gives a majesty to adversity

Her melancholy seems to be fortified
With a strange disdain.

and this restraint,
Like English mastives that grow fierce with tying,
Makes her too passionately apprehend
Those pleasures she is kept from.

Your elder brother, the Lord Ferdinand,
Is come to visit you, and sends you word,
'Cause once he rashly made a solemn vow
Never to see you more, he comes i' th' night;
And prays you gently neither torch nor taper
Shine in your chamber.

He will kiss your hand,
And reconcile himself; but for his vow
He dares not see you.

Call them your children;
For though our national law distinguish bastards
From true legitimate issue, compassionate nature
Makes them all equal.

Hereafter you may wisely cease to grieve
For that which cannot be recovered.

That's the greatest torture souls feel in hell,
In hell, that they must live, and cannot die.

O, fie! despair? Remember
You are a Christian.

I account this world a tedious theatre,
For I do play a part in 't 'gainst my will.

Let them, like tyrants,
Never be remembered but for the ill they have done

Go, howl them this, and say, I long to bleed:
It is some mercy when men kill with speed.

I will send her masques of common courtezans,
Have her meat serv'd up by bawds and ruffians

And, 'cause she'll needs be mad, I am resolv'd
To move forth the common hospital
All the mad-folk, and place them near her lodging;
There let them practise together, sing and dance,
And act their gambols to the full o' th' moon:
If she can sleep the better for it, let her.

thou shalt shortly thither,
To feed a fire as great as my revenge,
Which nev'r will slack till it hath spent his fuel

Nothing but noise and folly
Can keep me in my right wits; whereas reason
And silence make me stark mad.

Discourse to me some dismal tragedy.

I am acquainted with sad misery
As the tann'd galley-slave is with his oar;
Necessity makes me suffer constantly,
And custom makes it easy.

Let them loose when you please,
For I am chain'd to endure all your tyranny.

Ha! my tomb!
Thou speak'st as if I lay upon my death-bed,
Gasping for breath. Dost thou perceive me sick?

Our bodies are weaker than those paper-prisons boys use to keep flies in; more contemptible, since ours is to preserve earth-worms.

Hark, now everything is still,
The screech-owl and the whistler shrill
Call upon our dame aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shroud!
.

The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o' th' lungs,
Would do as much as they do.

The manner of your death should much afflict you:
This cord should terrify you.

What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smothered
With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits

Dispose my breath how please you; but my body
Bestow upon my women, will you?

I am not prepar'd for 't, I will not die;
I will first come to my answer, and know
How I have offended.

Only I must confess I had a hope,
Had she continu'd widow, to have gain'd
An infinite mass of treasure by her death

See, like a bloody fool,
Thou'st forfeited thy life, and thou shalt die for 't.

The wolf shall find her grave, and scrape it up,
Not to devour the corpse, but to discover
The horrid murder.

You have a pair of hearts are hollow graves,
Rotten, and rotting others; and your vengeance,
Like two chain'd-bullets, still goes arm in arm:
You may be brothers; for treason, like the plague,
Doth take much in a blood.

I would not change my peace of conscience
For all the wealth of Europe.

O sacred innocence, that sweetly sleeps
On turtles' feathers, whilst a guilty conscience
Is a black register wherein is writ
All our good deeds and bad, a perspective
That shows us hell!

These tears, I am very certain, never grew
In my mother's milk. My estate is sunk
Below the degree of fear: where were
These penitent fountains while she was living?

Then I'll post to Milan,
Where somewhat I will speedily enact
Worth my dejection.