صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

Light. To murder you, my most gracious lord!
Far is it from my heart to do you harm.
The queen sent me to see how you were used,
For she relents at this your misery :

And what eyes can refrain from shedding tears,
To see a king in this most piteous state?

Edw. Weep'st thou already? list a while to me,
And then thy heart, were it as Gurney's is,
Or as Matrevis', hewn from the Caucasus,
Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale.
This dungeon where they keep me is a sink
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls.

[blocks in formation]

Light. O villains!

55

Edw. And there, in mire and puddle, have I stood

This ten days' space; and lest that I should sleep,

One plays continually upon a drum;

They give me bread and water, being a king;

So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,

60

My mind's distempered, and my body's numbed,
And whether I have limbs or no I know not.
O would my blood drop out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tattered robes!
Tell Isabel, the queen, I looked not thus,
When for her sake I ran at tilt in France,
And there unhorsed the Duke of Cleremont.

65

Light. O speak no more, my lord! this breaks my heart.

Lie on this bed, and rest yourself a while.

Edw. These looks of thine can harbour nought but death:

I see my tragedy written in thy brows.

71

Yet stay a while; forbear thy bloody hand,

And let me see the stroke before it comes,

That even then when I shall lose my life,
My mind may be more steadfast on my God.

75

Light. What means your highness to mistrust me thus ? Edw. What mean'st thou to dissemble with me thus ? Light. These hands were never stained with innocent blood,

Nor shall they now be tainted with a king's.

Edw. Forgive my thought, for having such a thought. 80

One jewel have I left, receive thou this.

Still fear I, and I know not what's the cause,
But every joint shakes as I give it thee.

Oh, if thou harbour'st murder in thy heart,

Let the gift change thy mind, and save thy soul.
Know that I am a king: O, at that name

I feel a hell of grief. Where is my crown?
Gone, gone; and do I still remain alive?

[Gives jewel.

85

Light. You're overwatched, my lord; lie down and rest. Edw. But that grief keeps me waking, I should sleep; 90 For not these ten days have these eyes' lids closed. Now as I speak they fall, and yet with fear Open again. O wherefore sitt'st thou here? Light. If

you mistrust me, I'll be gone, my lord. Edw. No, no; for if thou mean'st to murder me, Thou wilt return again; and therefore stay.

Light. He sleeps.

95

[Sleeps,

Edw. (awaking). O let me not die; yet stay, O stay a

while.

Light. How now, my lord?

Edw. Something still buzzeth in mine ears,
And tells me, if I sleep, I never wake;

This fear is that which makes me tremble thus.
And therefore tell me, wherefore art thou come?
Light. To rid thee of thy life.-Matrevis, come !
Edw. I am too weak and feeble to resist :
Assist me, sweet God, and receive my soul.

NOTES.

50-1. Gurney and Matrevis, his keepers. 52. Yet will it melt. 'It' is redundant, the subject 'heart' being already given. But when an adverbial clause intervenes (as here) between subject and verb, the redundancy is very common, especially when the principal clause is introduced by 'yet,' 'so,' &c. (See Murison's First Work in English, sect. 537-)

66. Ran at tilt. In tournaments, 'to tilt' is to run or ride at each other, thrusting with (blunt) lances.

100

105

69. Lie on this bed. 'A feather-bed' is in the list of Lightborn's apparatus mentioned just before our extract begins. It must have been thrust upon the stage from the wing, when he came in. (Cf. Edward's account of the dungeon.)

71. Tragedy. A tragedy is a dramatic

poem, representing an action, or a series of actions, having a mournful issue and impressing some great moral truth. Hence, tragedy' is used generally to signify a melancholy end or fatal event. From Gr.

tragödia (through Lat. tragœdia, Fr. tragédie), from tragos (a goat, a goat-eared attendant of Bacchus the wine-god, a satyr) and ōdē (a song); tragodia is thus originally the hymn of a chorus of 'satyrs,' which was of a lyrical nature.

80. Forgive my thought, &c.; play upon two different meanings of the word 'thought.' A very common conceit in Elizabeth's time.

89. Overwatched, exhausted by too much watching, by being kept too long awake.

"The death-scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted' (Charles Lamb). According to Aristotle's famous definition, 'pity and terror' are the emotions properly roused by tragedy.

HERO.

(From Hero and Leander, Sestiad I.)

[HERO, 'Venus' nun,' priestess of Aphrodité at Sestos, was beloved by LEANDER, a beautiful youth of Abydos. These towns lay on opposite sides of the Hellespont (Straits of the Dardanelles), at the narrowest part; and Leander used to swim from Asia to Europe to visit Hero, who placed a light in her window to guide and cheer him. One rough night he was drowned, and Hero in despair threw herself into the sea. Marlowe took the story from a poem by 'divine Musæus,' a Greek grammarian, of whom hardly anything is known. He left the poem incomplete at his death. What he had written Chapman

broke up into two divisions-or 'Sestiads,' as he called them, from Sestos-to which he added, by way of completing the piece, the remaining four Sestiads.]

At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair,
Whom young Apollo courted for her hair,
And offered as a dower his burning throne
Where she should sit, for men to gaze upon.

5

The outside of her garments were of lawn,

The lining, purple silk, with gilt stars drawn ;

10

Upon her head she wore a myrtle wreath
From whence her veil reached to the ground beneath:
Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves,

Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives.
Many would praise the sweet smell as she past,
When 'twas the odour which her breath forth cast;
And there for honey bees have sought in vain,
And, beat from thence, have lighted there again.

20

About her neck hung chains of pebble-stone,
Which, lightened by her neck, like diamonds shone.
She ware no gloves; for neither sun nor wind
Would burn or parch her hands, but, to her mind,
Or warm or cool them, for they took delight
To play upon those hands, they were so white.
Buskins of shells, all silvered, usèd she,

25

30

And branched with blushing coral to the knee;
Where sparrows perched, of hollow pearl and gold,
Such as the world would wonder to behold :

Those with sweet water oft her handmaid fills,

35

Which, as she went, would cherup through the bills.
Some say, for her the fairest Cupid pined,

And, looking in her face, was strooken blind.

But this is true; so like was one the other,
As he imagined Hero was his mother;
And oftentimes into her bosom flew,

[ocr errors]

And laid his childish head upon her breast,

40

And, with still panting rock, there took his rest.
So lovely fair was Hero, Venus' nun,

45

As Nature wept, thinking she was undone,
Because she took more from her than she left,
And of such wondrous beauty her bereft :
Therefore, in sign her treasure suffered wrack,
Since Hero's time hath half the world been black.

50

NOTES.

9. Were. Such instances of loose syntax are not uncommon. The plural is perhaps owing to the intervention of garments' between the singular subject 'outside' and the predicate verb. There is a clash between form and sense: in form the singular has prominence, in sense the plural has prominence; and when we come to the verb, the form yields to the sense. Most blunders of this sort arise from oversight or sheer carelessness, especially in long sentences. 'One of

the marischals were slain' (Hume, Hist. of England, ch. xvi.) is an extraordinary example. 27. Ware, wore. Cf. line 17. 35. Fills. The co-ordinate verbs are in the past tense.

37-8. Compare Lyly's conceit, Cupid and Campaspe.

38. Strooken, struck. It retains the

en, which struck' has lost. Cf. 'stricken.'

40. As, used again for 'that:' cf. 46, and notes to Lyly (second extract), page 79.

EDMUND SPENSER.-1552?-1599.

EDMUND SPENSER was born in London, and studied at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge (1569-76). On graduating M.A., he seems to have gone for a time to the north of England; at anyrate, he came south in 1578, and formed a close friendship with Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated his first poem (1579). The following year, through the influence of Sidney and his uncle, the Earl of Leicester, Spenser became secretary to Lord Grey, viceroy of Ireland; and he probably remained in Ireland very nearly all the rest of his life, holding successive official appointments, as clerk to the Irish Court of Chancery (1581), clerk to the Council of Munster (1588), and Sheriff of Cork (1598). In 1586 he obtained 'his Mulla plains,' a grant of 3000 acres of forfeited land at Kilcolman in the county of Cork. On the outbreak of Tyrone's rebellion, Kilcolman Castle was burned (1598), Spenser and his wife escaping with difficulty, and leaving a little child in the flames. A few weeks later the poet died in London (January 16, 1599), and was laid by the side of Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.

The Shepherd's Calendar, comprising twelve pastorals, one for each month, was published in 1579. The Faery Queen, already begun, was elaborated at Kilcolman,

' amongst the coolly shade Of the green alders by the Mulla's shore;'

and Spenser, accompanied by Raleigh, came over to London in 1590, and published the first three Books. Having been introduced to the queen, his greatest Gloriana,' 'great lady of the greatest isle,' from whom he received a yearly pension of £50, he returned to Ireland. In 1591 he published several minor poems: The Ruins of Time (dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney's sister, 'to the Right Noble and Beautiful Lady, the Lady Mary, Countess of Pembroke'), The Tears of the Muses, &c. Probably in 1595 appeared Colin Clout's Come Home Again (containing interesting references to his own history and to contemporaries), Amoretti (Love-sonnets), Epithalamion (Marriage-song), &c. In 1596 he went to London again with three more Books of The Faery Queen, which were published along with a second edition of the first three. Nine Comedies are among the most important of his works now lost.

The Spenserian Stanza, the stanza of The Faery Queen, is characterised by the final long line called an ‘alexandrine.' Shelley represents the universal feeling when he calls it 'a measure inexpressibly beautiful.' He speaks, further, of 'the brilliancy and magnificence of

« السابقةمتابعة »