A tahle set forth With two tapers, a death's head, a book.
Jolenta in mourning, Romelio sits by her.

Romelio:
Why do you grieve thus? Take a looking glass,
And see if this Sorrow become you; that pale face
Will make men think you us'd Some art before,
Some odious painting: Contarino's dead.

Jolenta:
O that he should die so soon!

Romelio:
Why, I pray tell me,
Is not the shortest fever the best? And are not bad plays
The Worse for their length?

Jolenta:
Add not to'th' ill y'ave done
An odious slander. He stuck i'th' eyes a'th' Court
As the most choice jewel there.

Romelio:
O be not angry.
Indeed the Court to well composed nature
Adds much to perfection; for it is, or should be,
As a bright crystal mirror to the World,
To dress itself; but I must tell you sister,
If th 'excellency of the place could have wrought salvation,
The devil had ne'er fall'n from heaven; he Was proud —

Jolenta rises angrily to go away.


Leave us, leave us?
Come, take your seat again, I have a plot,
If you will listen to it seriously,
That goes beyond example; it shall breed
Out of the death of these two noblemen,
The advancement of our house.

Jolenta:
O take heed,
A grave is a rotten foundation.

Romelio:
Nay, nay, hear me.
'Tis somewhat indirectly, I confess:
But there is much advancement in the world,
That comes in indirectly. I pray mind me:
You are already made by absoIute will,
Contarino's heir: now, if it can be prov'd
That you have issue by Lord Ercole,
I will make you inherit his land too.

Jolenta:
How's this?
Issue by him, he dead, and I a virgin?
Romelio:
I knew you would wonder how it could be done,
But I have laid the case so radically,
Not all the lawyers in Christendom
Shall find any the least flaw in' t. I have a mistress
Of the Order of St Clare, a beauteous nun,
Who being cloister'd ere she knew the heat
Her blood would arrive to, had only time enough
To repent, and idleness sufficient
To fall in love with me; and to be short,
I have so much disorder'd the holy Order,
I have got this nun with child.

Jolenta:
Excellent work, made for a dumb midwife!

Romelio:
I am glad you grow thus pleasant.
Now will I have you presently give out,
That you are full t'vvo months quick'ned with child
By Ercole: which rumour can beget
No scandal to you, since we will affirm,
The precontract was so exactly done,
By the same words used in the form of marriage,
That with a little dispensation,
A money matter, it shall be register'd
Absolute matrimony.
Jolenta:
So, then I conceive you,
My child must prove your bastard.

Romelio:
Right;
For at such time my mistress fall in labour,
You must feign the like.

Jolenta:
'Tis a pretty feat this,
But I am not capable of it.

Romelio:
Not capable?

Jolenta:
No, for the thing you would have me counterfeit,
Is most essentially put in practice: nay, 'tis done,
I am with child already.

Romelio:
Ha, by whom?

Jolenta:
By Contarino. Do not knit the brow,
The precontract shall justify it, it shall:
Nay, I will get some singular fine churchman,
Or though he be a plural one, shall affirm
He coupl'd us together.

Romelio:
O misfortune!
Your child must then be reputed Ercole's.

Jolenta:
Your hopes are dash'd then, since your votary's Issue
Must not inherit the land.

Romelio:
No matter for that,
So I preserve her fame. I am strangely puzzl'd:
Why, suppose that she be brought abed before you,
And we conceal her issue till the time
Of your delivery, and then give out
That you have two at a birth. Ha, were't not excellent?

Jolenta:
And what resemblance think you, would they have
To one another? Twins are still alike:
But this is not your aim; you would have your child
Inherit Ercole's land —O my sad soul,
Have you not made me yet wretched enough,
But after all this frosty age in youth,
Which you have witch' d upon me, you will seek
To poison my fame?

Romelio:
That's done already.

Jolenta:
No sir, I did but feign it, to a fatal
Purpose, as I thought.

Romelio:
What purpose?

Jolenta:
If you had lov'd or tend'red my dear honour,
You would have locked your poniard in my heart,
When I nam'd I was with child. But I must live
To linger out, till the consumption
Of my own sorrow kill me.

Romelio: aside:
This will not do.
The devil has on the sudden furnish'd me
With a rare charm, yet a most unnatural
Falsehood: no matter, so 'twill take.
Stay sister, I would utter to you a business,
But I am very loath: a thing indeed,
Nature would have compassionately conceal'd,
Till my mother's eyes be clos'd.

Jolenta:
Pray what's that sir?

Romelio:
You did observe
With what a dear regard our mother tend'red
The Lord Contarino, yet how passionately
She sought to cross the match: why this was merely
To blind the eye o'th' world; for she did know
That you would marry him, and he was capable.
My mother doted upon him, and it was plotted
Cunningly between them, after you were married,
Living all three together in one house,
A thing I cannot whisper without horror:
Why the malice scarce of devils would suggest
Incontinence 'tween them two.

Jolenta:
I remember since his hurt,
She has been very passionately enquiring
After his health.

Romelio:
Upon my soul, this jewel
With a piece of the holy cross in't, this relic,
Valued at many thousand crowns, she would
Have sent him, lying upon his death-bed.

Jolenta:
Professing, as you say, love to my mother:
Wherefore did he make me his heir?

Romelio:
His will was made afore he went to fight,
When he was first a suitor to you.

Jolenta:
To fight: O well rememb'red!
If he lov'd my mother, wherefore did he lose
His life in my quarrel?

Romelio:
For the affront sake, a word you understand not;
Because Ercole was pretended rival to him,
To clear your suspicion: I was gulled in't too.
Should he not have fought upon't,
He had undergone the censure of a coward.

Jolenta:
How came you by this wretched knowledge?

Romelio:
His surgeon overheard it,
As he did sigh it out to his confessor,
Some half hour 'fore he died.

Jolenta:
I would have the surgeon hang'd
For abusing confession, and for making me
So wretched by'th' report. Can this be truth?

Romelio:
No, but direct falsehood,
As ever was banish' d the Court. Did you ever hear
Of a mother that has kept her daughter's husband
For her own tooth? He fancied you in one kind,
For his lust, and he lov'd our mother
In another kind, for her money;
The gallant's fashion right. But come, ne'er think on't,
Throw the fowl to the devil that hatch' d it, and let this
Bury all ill that's in't; she is our mother.

Jolenta:
I never did find anything i'th' world,
Turn my blood so much as this: here's such a conflict
Between apparent presumption, and unbelief,
That I shall die in't.
O, if there be another world i'th' moon,
As some fantastics dream, I could wish all men,
The whole race of them, for their inconstancy,
Sent thither to people that. Why, I protest
I now affect the Lord Ercole's memory
Better than the other's.

Romelio:
But were Contarino
Living?

Jolenta:
I do call anything to witness,
That the divine law prescrib'd us to strengthen
An oath, were he living and in health, I would never
Marry with him. Nay, since I have found the world
So false to me, I'll be as false to it;
I will mother this child for you.

Romelio:
Ha?

Jolenta:
Most certainly it will beguile part of my sorrow.

Romelio:
O most assuredly; make you smile to think
How many times i'th'world lordships descend
To divers men that might, and truth were known,
Be heir, for anything that belongs to'th' flesh,
As well to the Turk's richest eunuch.

Jolenta:
But do you not think
I shall have a horrible strong breath now?

Romelio:
Why?

Jolenta:
O, with keeping your counsel, 'tis so terrible
foul.

Romelio:
Come, come, come, you must leave these bitter
flashes.

Jolenta:
Must I dissemble dishonesty? You Have divers
Counterfeit honesty: but I hope here's none
Will take exceptions; I now must practise
The art of a great-bellied woman, and go feign
Their qualms and swoundings.

Romelio:
Eat unripe fruit, and oatmeal,
To take away your colour.

Jolenta:
Dine in my bed
Some two hours after noon.

Romelio:
And when you are up,
Make to your petticoat a quilted preface,
To advance your belly.

Jolenta:
I have a strange conceit now.
I have known some women when they were with child,
Have long'd to beat their husbands: what if I,
To keep decorum, exercise my longing
Upon my tailor that way, and noddle him soundly?
He'll make the larger bill for't.

Romelio:
I'll get one shall be as tractable to't as stockfish.

Jolenta:
O my fantastical sorrow! Cannot I now
Be miserable enough, unless I wear
A pied fool's coat? Nay worse, for when our passions
Such giddy and uncertain changes breed,
We are never well, till we are mad indeed.


Exit.


Romelio:
So, nothing in the world could have done this,
But to beget in her a strong distaste
Of the Lord Contarino. O jealousy,
How violent, especially in women,
How often has it rais'd the devil up
In form of a law-case! My especial care
Must be, to nourish craftily this fiend,
'Tween the mother and the daughter, that the deceit
Be not perceiv'd. My next task, that my sister,
After this suppos'd childbirth, be persuaded
To enter into religion: 'tis concluded
She must never marry; so I am left guardian
To her estate: and lastly, that my two surgcons
Be wag'd to tlle East Indies. Let them prate
When they are beyond the line: the callenture,
Or the scurvy, or the Indian pox, I hope,
Will take ordcr for their coming back.

Enter Leon[ora].

O here's my mother. I ha' strange new.s for you,
My sister is with child.

Leonora:
I do look now
For some great misfortunes to follow.
For indeed mischiefs are like the visits
Of Franciscan friars, they never come
To prey upon us single. In what estate
Left you Contarino?

Romelio:
Strange that you
Can skip from the former sorrow to such a question?
I'll tell you: in the absence of his surgeon,
My charity did that for him in a trice,
They would have done at leisure, and been paid for't.
I have kill'd him.

Leonora:
I am twenty years elder
Since you last opened your lips.

Romelio:
Ha?

Leonora:
You have given him the wound you speak of
Quite thorough your mother's heart.

Romelio:
I will
Heal it presently mother: for this sorrow
Belongs to your error. You would have him live
Because you think he's father of the child;
But Jolenta vows by all the rights of truth,
'Tis Ercole's. It makes me smile to think
How cunningly my sister could be drawn
To the contract, and yet how familiarly
To his bed. Doves never couple without
A kind of murmur.

Leonora:
O I am very sick.

Romelio:
Your old disease; when you are griev'd, you are
troubl' d
With the motller.

Leonora: aside:
I am rapt with the mother indeed,
That I ever bore such a son.

Romelio:
Pray tend my sister,
I am infinitely full of business.

Leonora:
Stay, you will mourn for Contarino?

Romelio:
O by all means, 'tis fit; my sister is his heir.

Exit.

Leonora:
I will make you chief mourner, believe it.
Never was woe like mine: O that my care
And absolute study to preserve his life, .
Should be his absolute ruin! Is he gone then?
There is no plague i'th' world can be compar'd
To impossible desire, for they are plagu' d
In the desire itself: never, O never
Shall I behold him living, in whose life
I liv'd far sweetlier than in mine own.
A precise curiosity has undone me: why did I not
Make my love known directly? 'T had not been
Beyond example, for a matron to affect
I'th' honourable way of marriage,
So youthful a person. O I shall run mad:
For as we love our youngest children best,
So the last fruit of our affection,
Wherever we bestow it, is most strong,
Most violent, most unresistable,
Since 'tis indeed our latest harvest-home,
Last merriment 'fore winter. And we widows,
As men report of our best picture makers,
We love the piece we are in hand with better
Than all the excellent work we have done before:
And my son has depriv'd me of all this. Ha, my son!
I'll be a fury to him; like an Amazon lady,
I'd cut off this right pap, that gave him suck,
To shoot him dead. I'll no more tender him,
Than had a wolf stol'n to my teat i'th' night,
And robb'd me of my milk: nay, such a creature
I should love better far. -Ha, ha, what say you?
I do talk to somewhat, methinks: it may be
My evil genius. Do not the bells ring?
I have a strange noise in my head. O, fly in pieces!
Come age, and wither me into the malice
Of those that have been happy; let me have
One more property more than the Devil of Hell,
Let me envy the pleasure of youth heartily,
Let me in this life fear no kind of ill,
That have no good to hope for: let me die
In the distraction of that worthy princess,
Who loathed food, and sleep, and ceremony,
For thought of losing that brave gentIeman,
She would fain have sav'd, had not a false conveyance
Express'd him stubborn-hearted. Let me sink,
Where neither man, nor memory may ever find me.


Leonora falls down. [Enter Capuchin and Ercole.]


Capuchin:
This is a private way which I command,
As her confessor. I would not have you seen yet,
Till I prepare her.


Ercole withdraws.


Peace to you lady.

Leonora:
Ha?

Capuchin:
You are well employ'd, I hope; the best pillow
I'th' world for this your contemplation,
Is the earth, and the best object, heaven.

Leonora:
I am whispering to a dead friend.

Capuchin:
And I am come
To bring you tidings of a friend was dead,
Restor'd to life again.

Leonora:
Say sir?

Capuchin:
One whom I dare presume, next to your children,
You tend'red above life.

Leonora:
Heaven will not suffer me
Utterly to be lost.

Capuchin:
For he should have been
Your son-in-law; miraculously sav'd,
When surgery gave him o'er.

Leonora:
O may you live
To win many souls to heaven, worthy sir,
That your crown may be the greater. Why my son
Made me believe he stole into his chamber,
And ended that which Ercole began
By a deadly stab in's heart.

Ercole aside:
Alas, she mistakes,
'Tis Contarino she wishes living; but I must fasten
On her last words, for my own safety.

Leonora:
Where,
O where shall I meet this comfort?

Ercole reveals himself:
Here in the vow'd comfort of your
daughter.

Leonora:
O I am dead again; instead of the man,
You present me the grave swallowed him.

Ercole:
Collect yourself, good lady
Would you behold brave Contarino living?
There cannot be a nobler chronicle
Of his good than myself: if you would view him dead,
I will present him to you bleeding fresh,
In my penitency.

Leonora:
Sir, you do only live
To redeem another ill you have committed,
That my poor innocent daughter perish not
By your vile sin, whom you have got : with child.

Ercole: aside:
Here begin all my compassion: O poor soul!
She is with child by Contarino, and he dead;
By whom should she preserve her fame to'th' world,
But by myself that lov'd her 'bove the world?
There never was a way more honourable
To exercise my virtue, than to father it,
And preserve her credit, and to marry her.
I'll suppose her Contarino's widow, bequeath'd to me
Upon his death: for sure she was his wife,
But that the ceremony a'th' Church was wanting.
To Leonora Report this to her, madam, and withal,
That never father did conceive more joy
For the birth of an heir, than I to understand
She had such confidence in me. I will not now
Press a visit upon her, till you have prepar'd her:
For I do read in your distraction,
Should I be brought a'th' sudden to her presence,
Either the hasty fright, or else the shame
May blast the fruit within her. I will leave you
To commend as loyal faith and service to her,
As e'er heart harbour'd. By my hope of bliss,
I never liv'd to do good act but this.

Capuchin aside to Ercole:
Withal, and you be wise,
Remember what the mother has reveal'd
Of Romelio' s treachery.


Exeunt Ercole, Capuchin.


Leonora:
A most noble fellow! In his loyalty
I read what worthy comforts I have lost
In my dear Contarino, and all adds
To my despair. -Within there!


Enter Winifrid.


Fetch the picture
Hangs in my inner closet.

Exit Win[ifrid].

I remember
I let a word slip of Romelio's practice
At the surgeons': no matter, I can salve it,
I have deeper vengeance that's preparing for him:
To let him live and kill him, that's revenge
I meditate upon.


Enter Win[ifrid] and the picture.


So, hang it up.
I was enjoin'd by the party ought that picture,
Forty years since, ever when I was vex'd,
To look upon that. What was his meaning in't,
I know not, but methinks upon the sudden
It has furnish'd me with mischief; such a plot
As never mother dreamt of. Here begins
My part i'th' play: my son's estate is sunk
By loss at sea, and he has nothing left
But the land his father left him. 'Tis concluded,
The law shall undo him. Come hither,
I have a weighty secret to impart,
But I would have thee first confirm to me,
How I may trust that thou canst keep my counsel
Beyond death.

Winifrid:
Why mistress, 'tis your only way
To enjoin me first that I reveal to you
The worst act I e'er did in all my life:
So one secret shall bind another.

Leonora:
Thou instruct'st me
Most ingeniously, for indeed it is not fit,
Where any act is plotted, that is nought,
Any of counsel to it should be good;
And in a thousand ills have happ'd i'th' world,
The intelligence of one another's shame
Have wrought far more effectually than the tie
Of conscience, or religion.

Winifrid:
But think not, mistress,
That any sin which ever I committed
Did concern you; for proving false in one thing,
You were a fool if ever you would trust me
In the least matter of weight.

Leonora:
Thou hast liv'd with me
These forty years; we have grown old together,
As many ladies and their women do,
With talking nothing, and with doing less:
We have spent our life in that which least concerns life,
Only in putting on our clothes. And now I think on't,
I have been a very courtly mistress to thee,
I have given thee good words, but no deeds;
Now's the time to requite all. My son has
Six lordships left him.

Winifrid:
'Tis truth.

Leonora:
But he cannot
Live four days to enjoy them.

Winifrid:
Have you poison'd him?

Leonora:
No, the poison is yet but brewing.

Winifrid:
You must minister it to him with all privacy.

Leonora:
Privacy? It shall be given him
In open court. I'll make him swallow it
Before the judge's face. If he be master
Of poor ten arpines of land forty hours longer,
Let the world repute me an honest woman.

Winifrid:
So 'twill I hope.

Leonora:
O thou canst not conceive
My inimitable plot. Let's to my ghostly father,
Where first I will have thee make a promise
To keep my counsel, and then I will employ thee
In such a subtle combination,
Which will require to make the practice fit,
Four devils, five advocates, to one woman's wit.

Exeunt.