The action takes place at Naples

Enter Ercole and Contarino.


Contarino:
You'll not forgo your interest in my mistress?

Ercole:
My sword shall answer that: come, are you ready?

Contarino:
Before you fight sir, think upon your cause
It is a wondrous foul one, and I wish
That all your exercise these four days past
Had been employ'd in a most fervent prayer,
And the foul sin for which your are to fight
Chiefly remembered in't.

Ercole:
I'd as soon take
Your counsel in divinity at this present,
As I would take a kind direction from you
For the managing my weapon: and indeed,
Both would show much alike.
Come, are you ready?
Contarino:
Bethink yourself,
How fair the object is that we conted for.

Ercole:
O, I cannot forget it.


They fight. Ercole is wounded.


Contarino:
You are hurt.

Ercole:
Did you come hither only to tell me so,
Or to do it? I mean well, but 'twill not thrive.

Contarino:
Your cause, your cause, sir:
Will you yet be a man of conscience, and make
Restitution for your rage upon your death-bed?

Ercole:
Never, till the grave father one of us

They fight again


Contarino:
That was fair, and home I think.


Wounds Ercole


Ercole:
You prate as if you were in a fence-school.

Contarino:
Spare your youth, have compassion on yourself.

Ercole:
When I am all in pieces; I am now unfit
For any lady's bed; take the rest with you.


Contarino wounded, falls upon Ercole


Contarino:
I am lost in too much daring; yield your sword.
Ercole:
To the pangs of death I shall, but not to thee.

Contarino:
You are now at my rapairing, or confusion:
Beg your life.

Ercole:
O, most foolishly demanded,
To bid me beg that which thou canst not give.


Enter Romelio, Prospero, Baptista, Ariosto, and Julio


Prospero:
See both of them are lost: we come too late.

Romelio:
Take up the body, and convey it
To Saint Sebstian's monastery.

Contarino:
I will not part with his sword, I have won't.

Julio:
You shall not: take him up gently; so:
And bow his body, for fear of bleeding inward.
Well, these are perfect lovers.

Prospero:
Why, I pray?

Julio:
It has ever been my opinion,
That there are none love perfectly indeed,
But those that hang or drown themselves for love:
Now these have chose a death next to beheading;
They have cut one another's throats,
Brave valiant lads.

Prospero:
Come, you do ill, to set the name of valour
Upon a violent and mad despair.
Hence may all learn, that count such actions well,
The roots of fury shoot themselves to hell.

Exit