Doubly beset with enemies, wrath and fire?
It comes nearer-rivers and fountains, fall.
It sucks away my breath: I cannot give
A curse to sin, and hear 't out while I live.
Help, help!
[She falls,
Vor. Burn, burn, now I can tend thee.
Take time with her in torment; call her life
Afar off to thee: dry up her strumpet-blood,
And hardly parch the skin. Let one heat
strangle her;

| Another fetch her to her sense again;
And the worst pain be only her reviving.
Follow her eternally-Oh mystical harlot !
Thou hast thy full due. Whom lust crown'd
queen before,

Flames crown her now a most triumphant whore. And that end crown them all! [He falls.

In

Aur. Our peace is full

yon usurper's fall; nor have I known A judgment meet more fearfully. Here, take this ring, deliver the good queen, And those grave pledges of her murder'd honour, (Her worthy father, and her noble uncle.) How now! the meaning of these sounds? Enter HENGIST, DEVONSHIRE, STAFFORD, and Soldiers.

Hen. The consumer has been here; she's gone, she's lost,

In glowing cinders now lie all my joys.
The headlong fortune of my rash captivity
Strikes not so deep a wound into my hopes
As thy dear loss.

Aur. Her father and her uncle!

1st Lord. They are indeed, my lord. Aur. Part of my wishes.

What fortunate power has prevented me, And ere my love came, brought them victory? 1st Lord. My wonder sticks in Hengist, king

SCENE I.

A place being provided for the Devils' Consistory, enter St DUNSTAN with his beads, book, and crosier-staff, &c.

St Dun. Envy, that always waits on virtue's
train,

And tears the graves of quiet sleeping souls,
Hath brought me, after many hundred years,
To shew myself again upon the earth.

Know then (who list) that I am English born,
My name is Dunstan; whilst I liv'd with men,
Chief primate of the holy English church:
I was begotten in West Saxony:

My father's name was Heorston, my mother's
Cinifred,

Endowed with my merit's legacy,

I flourish'd in the reign of seven great kings;
The first was Adelstane, whose niece Elfleda,
Malicious tongues reported, I defiled:
Next him came Edmond, then Edred, and
Edwin:

And after him reign'd Edgar, a great prince,
But full of many crimes, which I restrain'd;
Edward his son, and lastly Egelred.
With all these kings was I in high esteem,
And kept both them and all the land in awe ;
And, had I liv'd, the Danes had never boasted
Their then beginning conquest of this land.
Yet some accuse me for a conjurer,
By reason of those many miracles
Which Heaven for holy life endowed me with;
But whoso looks into the golden legend,
(That sacred register of holy saints)
Shall find me by the pope canoniz'd,
And happily the cause of this report
Might rise by reason of a vision,
Which I beheld in great king Edgar's days,
Being that time abbot of Glassenbury,
Which (for it was a matter of some worth)
I did make known to few, until this day:

But now I purpose that the world shall see
How much those slanderers have wronged me;
Nor will I trouble you with courts and kings;
Or drive a feigned battle out of breath;
Or keep a coil myself upon the stage;
But think you see me in my secret cell,
Arm'd with my portass, bidding of my beads.
But on a sudden I'm o'ercome with sleep!
If aught ensue, watch you, for Dunstan dreams.
He layeth him down to sleep; lightning and
thunder; the curtains drawn on a sudden;
PLUTO, MINOS, EACUS, RHADAMANTHUS, set
in counsel; before them MALBECCO's Ghost
guarded with Furies.

Plu. You ever-dreaded judges of black hell,
Grim Minos, Æacus, and Rhadamant,
Lords of Cocytus, Styx, and Phlegiton,
Princes of darkness, Pluto's ministers,
Know that the greatness of his present cause
Hath made ourself in person sit as judge,
To hear the arraignment of Malbecco's ghost.
Stand forth, thou ghastly pattern of despair,
And to this powerful synod tell thy tale,
That we may hear if thou canst justly say
Thou wert not author of thy own decay.

+ Mal. Infernal Jove, great prince of Tartary,
With humble reverence poor Malbecco speaks;
Still trembling with the fatal memory
Of his so late concluded tragedy.

I was (with thanks to your great bounty) bred
A wealthy lord, whilst that I liv'd on earth;
And so might have continu'd to this day,
Had not that plague of mankind fall'u on me:
For I (poor man) join'd woe unto my name,
By choosing out a woman for my wife.
A wife? a curse ordained for the world.
Fair Helena! fair she was indeed,
But foully stain'd with inward wickedness.
I kept her bravely, and I lov'd her dear;
But that dear love did cost my life, and all.

To reckon up a thousand of her pranks, Her pride, her wasteful spending, her unkindness, Her false dissembling, seeming sanctity, Her scolding, pouting, prating, meddling, And twenty hundred more of the same stamp, Were but to reap an endless catalogue Of what the world is plagu'd with every day. But for the main of that I have to tell, It chanced thus: Late in a rainy night A crew of gallants came unto my house, And (will I, nill I) would forsooth be lodg'd: I brought them in, and made them all good cheer, (Such as I had in store) and lodg'd them soft. Amongst them one, 5 ycleped Paridell, (The falsest thief that ever trod on ground) Robb'd me; and with him stole away my wife. I (for I lov'd her dear) pursu'd the thief; And after many days in travel spent, Found her amongst a crew of satyrs wild, "Kissing and colling all the live-long night. I spake her fair, and pray'd her to return; But she in scorn commands me to be gone, And glad I was to fly, to save my life; But when I backward came unto my house, I find it spoil'd, and all my treasure gone. Desp'rate and mad, I ran, I knew not whither, Calling and crying out on Heaven and fate; Till seeing none to pity my distress, I threw myself down headlong on a rock, And so concluded all my ills at once. Now, judge you, justice benchers, if my wife Were not the instrument to end my life.

Plu. Can it be possible (you lords of hell) Malbecco's tale of women should be true? Is marriage now become so great a curse, That whilome was the comfort of the world? Min. Women, it seems, have lost their native shame,

And here he comes; Belphagor, so it is,
We in our awful synod have decreed,
(Upon occasions to ourselves best known)
That thou from hence shall go into the world,
And take upon thee the shape of a man;
In which estate thou shalt be married;
Choose thee a wife that best may please thyself,
And live with her a twelvemonth and a day;
Thou shalt be subject unto human chance,
So far as common wit cannot relieve thee;
Thou shalt of us receive ten thousand pounds,
Sufficient stock to use for thy increase:
But whatsoever happens in that time,
Look not from us for succour or relief;

Erasmus Praise of Folie, 1549. Sign. B 2.

Wily beguiled. 1606.

The Witch, by Middleton. MSS.

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