Q. Mar.
Mischance and Sorrow go along with you!
Heart's Discontent and sour Affliction
Be play-fellows to keep you company!
There's two of you, the devil make a third,
And threefold vengeance tend upon your steps!

Suf.
Cease, gentle Queen, these execrations;
And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.

Q. Mar.
Fy, coward woman, and soft-hearted wretch,
Hast thou not spirit to curse thine enemy?

Suf.
A plague upon them! Wherefore should I curse them?

^{1 note}Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
I would invent as bitter searching terms,
As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear,
Deliver'd strongly through my fixed teeth,
With full as many signs of deadly hate,
As lean fac'd envy in her loathsome cave.
My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words,
Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint,
Mine hair be fixt on end like one distract:
Ay, ev'ry joint should seem to curse and ban.
And even now my burden'd heart would break,
Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink!
Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest meat they taste!
Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees!
Their chiefest prospect murd'ring basilisks!
Their softest touch, as smart as lizards' stings!
Their musick frightful as the serpent's hiss!
And boading screech-owls make the concert full!
All the foul terrors in dark seated hell—

Q. Mar.
Enough, sweet Suffolk, thou torment'st thyself;
And these dread curses, like the sun 'gainst glass,
Or like an over-charged gun, recoil
And turn the force of them upon thyself.

Suf.
* ^noteYou bad me ban, and will you bid me leave?
Now, by the ground that I am banish'd from,
Well could I curse away a winter's night,

Though standing naked on a mountain top
Where biting Cold would never let grass grow,
And think it but a minute spent in sport.

Q. Mar.
Oh, let me entreat thee cease. Give me thy hand,
That I may dew it with my mournful tears;
Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place,
To wash away my woful monuments.
Oh, could this kiss be printed in thy hand, [Kissing his hand.
^{2 note}
That thou might'st think upon these by the seal,
Through whom a thousand sighs are breath'd for thee.
—So—Get thee gone, that I may know my grief;
'Tis but surmis'd, whilst thou art standing by,
As one that surfeits, thinking on a Want.
—I will repeal thee, or, be well assur'd,
Adventure to be banished myself;
And banished I am, if but from thee.
—Go, speak not to me; even now be gone—
Oh, go not yet—Ev'n thus two friends condemn'd
Embrace and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,
Loather a hundred times to part than die.
—Yet now farewel, and farewel life with thee!

Suf.
Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished,
Once by the King and three times thrice by thee.
'Tis not the Land I care for, wert thou hence;
A wilderness is populous enough,
So Suffolk had thy heav'nly company.
For where thou art, there is the world itself,
With ev'ry sev'ral pleasure in the world,
And where thou art not, Desolation.
I can no more—Live thou to joy thy life;
Myself no joy in aught but that thou liv'st.

Previous section

Next section