Those wounds which thou to my heart didst give,
When, in despite of God, this state, and me,
Thou didst from death mine elder brother free.
The smart of king's oppression doth not die:
Time rusteth malice; rust wounds cruelly.
King. Flatter thy wickedness; adorn thy rage;
To wear a crown, tear up thy father's age.
Kill not thy sister: it is lack of wit

To do an ill that brings no good with it.
Alaham. Go, lead them hence. Prepare the funeral.
Hasten the sacrifice and pomp of woe.

Where she did hide him, thither let them go.

A NUNTIUS (or Messenger) relates to ALAHAM the manner of his Father's, Brother's, and Sister's deaths, and the popular discontents which followed. ALAHAM, by the sudden working of remorse, is distracted, and imagines that he sees their ghosts.

ALAHAM. NUNTIUS.

Nuntius. The first which burnt, as Cain1 his next of kin, In blood your brother, and your prince in state, Drew wonder from men's hearts, brought horror in. This innocent, this soul too meek for sin,

Yet made for others to do harm withal,

With his self-pity tears drew tears from us;

His blood compassion had; his wrong stirr'd hate:
Deceit is odious in a king's estate.

Repiningly he goes unto his end:

Strange visions rise; strange furies haunt the flame;

People cry out, Echo repeats, his name.

These words he spake, ev'n breathing out his breath:
Unhappy weakness! never innocent!

If in a crown, yet but an instrument.

People! observe; this fact may make you see,
Excess hath ruin'd what itself did build:

But ah! the more oppress'd the more you yield."
The next was he whose age had reverence,
His gesture something more than privateness;
Guided by one, whose stately grace did move
Compassion, ev'n in hearts that could not love
As soon as these approached near the flame,

1 The execution, to make it plausible to the people, is coloured with the pretext, that the being burnt is a voluntary sacrifice of themselves by the victims at the funeral of Cain a bashaw and relative.

R

The wind, the steam, or Furies raised their veils ;
And in their looks this image did appear:

Each unto other, life to neither, dear.

:

These words he spake :- "Behold one that hath lost
Himself within; and so the world without;
A king, that brings authority in doubt:
This is the fruit of power's misgovernment.
People! my fall is just; yet strange your fate,
That, under worst, will hope for better state."
Grief roars aloud. Your sister yet remain'd;
Helping in death to him in whom she died;
Then going to her own, as if she gain'd,

These mild words spake with looks to heaven bent :-
"O God, 'tis thou that sufferest here, not we:
Wrong doth but like itself in working thus:
At thy will, Lord! revenge thyself, not us."
The fire straight upward bears the souls in breath:
Visions of horror circle in the flame

With shapes and figures like to that of Death,
But lighter-tongued and nimbler-wing'd than Fame:
Some to the church; some to the people fly:
A voice cries out: "Revenge and liberty.
Princes, take heed; your glory is your care;
And power's foundations, strengths, not vices, are."
Alaham. What change is this, that now I feel within ?
Is it disease that works this fall of spirits ?
Or works this fall of spirits my disease?
Things seem not as they did; horror appears.
What Sin embodied, what strange sight is this?
Doth sense bring back but what within me is,
Or do I see those shapes which haunt the flame?
What summons up remorse? Shall conscience rate
Kings' deeds, to make them less than their estate?
Ah silly ghost! is 't you that swarm about?
Wouldst thou, that art not now, a father be?
These body laws do with the life go out.
What thoughts be these that do my entrails tear?
You wandering spirits frame in me your hell;
I feel my brother and my sister there.

*

MUSTAPHA: A TRAGEDY.

BY FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE.

ROSSA, wife to SOLYMAN the Turkish Emperor, persuades her husband, that MUSTAPHA, his son by a former marriage, and heir to his crown, seeks his life; that she may make way, by the death of MUSTAPHA, for the advancement of her own children, ZANGER and CAMENA. CAMENA, the virtuous daughter of Rossa, defends the innocence of MUSTAPHA, in a conference which she holds with the Emperor.

CAMENA. SOLYMAN.

Cam. They that from youth do suck at Fortune's breast,
And nurse their empty hearts with seeking higher,
Like dropsy-fed, their thirst doth never rest;
For still, by getting, they beget desire:

Till thoughts, like wood, while they maintain the flame
Of high desires, grow ashes in the same.

But Virtue! those that can behold thy beauties,
Those that suck, from their youth, thy milk of goodness,
Their minds grow strong against the storms of Fortune,
And stand, like rocks in winter-gusts, unshaken;
Not with the blindness of desire mistaken.

O Virtue therefore! whose thrall I think Fortune,
Thou who despisest not the sex of women,
Help me out of these riddles of my fortune,
Wherein (methinks) you with yourself do pose me:
Let fates go on: sweet Virtue! do not lose me.
My mother and my husband have conspired,
For brother's good, the ruin of my brother
My father by my mother is inspired,
For one child to seek ruin of another.
I that to help by nature am required,

While I do help, must needs still hurt a brother.
While I see who conspire, I seem conspired
Against a husband, father, and a mother.
Truth bids me run, by truth I am retired;
Shame leads me both the one way and the other.
In what a labyrinth is honour cast,

Drawn divers ways with sex, with time, with state,
In all which, error's course is infinite,
By hope, by fear, by spite, by love, and hate ;
And but one only way unto the right,
A thorny way, where pain must be the guide,
Danger the light, offence of power the praise!

Such are the golden hopes of iron days.
Yet Virtue, I am thine, for thy sake grieved
(Since basest thoughts, for their ill-placed desires,
In shame, in danger, death, and torment, glory)
That I cannot with more pains write thy story.
Chance, therefore, if thou scornest those that scorn thee;
Fame, if thou hatest those that force thy trumpet
To sound aloud, and yet despise thy sounding:
Laws, if you love not those that be examples
Of nature's laws, whence you are fallen corrupted;
Conspire that I, against you all conspired,
Joined with tyrant virtue, as you call her,
That I, by your revenges may be named,
For virtue, to be ruin'd, and defamed.
My mother oft and diversely I warn'd,
What fortunes were upon such courses builded:
That fortune still must be with ill maintain'd,
Which at the first with any ill is gain'd.

I Rosten' warn'd, that man's self-loving thought
Still creepeth to the rude-embracing might
Of princes' grace: a lease of glories let,

Which shining burns; breeds sereness when 'tis set.
And, by this creature of my mother's
's making,

This messenger, I Mustapha have warn'd,
That innocence is not enough to save,

envy

Where good and greatness, fear and
Till now, in reverence I have forborne

To ask, or to presume to guess, or know

have.

My father's thoughts; whereof he might think scorn:
For dreadful is that power that all may do ;.
Yet they, that all men fear, are fearful too.
Lo, where he sits! Virtue, work thou in me,
That what thou seekest may accomplish'd be.
Solym. Ah death! is not thyself sufficient anguish,
But thou must borrow fear, that threatening glass,
Which, while it goodness hides, and mischief shows,
Doth lighten wit to honour's overthrows?

But hush! methinks away Camena steals;
Murder, belike, in me itself reveals.

you from me

Camena! whither now? why haste
Is it so strange a thing to be a father?

1 Her husband.

Or is it I that am so strange a father? Cam. My lord, methought, nay, sure I saw you busy: Your child presumes, uncall'd, that comes unto you. Solym. Who may presume with fathers, but their own, Whom nature's law hath ever in protection, And gilds in good belief of dear affection?

Cam. Nay, reverence, sir, so children's worth doth hide,
As of the fathers it is least espied.

Solym. I think 'tis true, who know their children least,
Have greatest reason to esteem them best.
Cam. How so, my lord? since love in knowledge lives,
Which unto strangers therefore no man gives.
Solym. The life we gave them soon they do forget,
While they think our lives do their fortunes let.
Cam. The tenderness of life it is so great,

As any sign of death we hate too much;
And unto parents sons, perchance, are such.
Yet nature meant her strongest unity
'Twixt sons and fathers; making parents cause
Unto the sons, of their humanity;

And children pledge of their eternity.

Fathers should love this image in their sons.
Solym. But streams back to their springs do never run.
Cam. Pardon, my lord, doubt is succession's foe:
Let not her mists poor children overthrow.
Though streams from springs do seem to run away,
'Tis nature leads them to their mother sea.
Solym. Doth nature teach them, in ambition's strife,
To seek his death, by whom they have their life?
Cam. Things easy, to desire impossible do seem:

Why should fear make impossible seem easy?
Solym. Monsters yet be, and being are believed.
Cam. Incredible hath some inordinate progression:
Blood, doctrine, age, corrupting liberty,
Do all concur, where men such monsters be.
Pardon me, sir, if duty do seem angry :
Affection must breathe out afflicted breath,
Where imputation hath such easy faith.
Solym. Mustapha is he that hath defiled his nest;
The wrong the greater for I loved him best.
He hath devised that all at once should die,
Rosten, and Rossa, Zanger, thou, and I.