[Enter Countess.]
See where she comes; was never father had Against his child an embassage so bad?
COUNTESS. My Lord and father, I have sought for you: My mother and the Peers importune you To keep in presence of his majesty, And do your best to make his highness merry.
WARWICK. [Aside.] How shall I enter in this graceless arrant? I must not call her child, for where's the father That will in such a suit seduce his child? Then, 'wife of Salisbury'; shall I so begin? No, he's my friend, and where is found the friend That will do friendship such indammagement?
[To the Countess.]
Neither my daughter nor my dear friend's wife, I am not Warwick, as thou thinkst I am, But an attorney from the Court of hell, That thus have housed my spirit in his form, To do a message to thee from the king. The mighty king of England dotes on thee: He that hath power to take away thy life, Hath power to take thy honor; then consent To pawn thine honor rather than thy life: Honor is often lost and got again, But life, once gone, hath no recovery. The Sun, that withers hay, doth nourish grass; The king, that would disdain thee, will advance thee. The Poets write that great Achilles' spear Could heal the wound it made: the moral is, What mighty men misdo, they can amend. The Lyon doth become his bloody jaws, And grace his forragement by being mild, When vassel fear lies trembling at his feet. The king will in his glory hide thy shame; And those that gaze on him to find out thee, Will lose their eye-sight, looking in the Sun. What can one drop of poison harm the Sea, Whose huge vastures can digest the ill And make it loose his operation? The king's great name will temper thy misdeeds, And give the bitter potion of reproach, A sugared, sweet and most delicious taste. Besides, it is no harm to do the thing Which without shame could not be left undone. Thus have I in his majesty's behalf Appareled sin in virtuous sentences, And dwell upon thy answer in his suit.
COUNTESS. Unnatural besiege! woe me unhappy, To have escaped the danger of my foes, And to be ten times worse injured by friends! Hath he no means to stain my honest blood, But to corrupt the author of my blood To be his scandalous and vile solicitor? No marvel though the branches be then infected, When poison hath encompassed the root: No marvel though the leprous infant die, When the stern dame invenometh the Dug. Why then, give sin a passport to offend, And youth the dangerous reign of liberty: Blot out the strict forbidding of the law, And cancel every cannon that prescribes A shame for shame or penance for offence. No, let me die, if his too boistrous will Will have it so, before I will consent To be an actor in his graceless lust.
WARWICK. Why, now thou speakst as I would have thee speak: And mark how I unsay my words again. An honorable grave is more esteemed Than the polluted closet of a king: The greater man, the greater is the thing, Be it good or bad, that he shall undertake: An unreputed mote, flying in the Sun, Presents a greater substance than it is: The freshest summer's day doth soonest taint The loathed carrion that it seems to kiss: Deep are the blows made with a mighty Axe: That sin doth ten times aggravate it self, That is committed in a holy place: An evil deed, done by authority, Is sin and subornation: Deck an Ape In tissue, and the beauty of the robe Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast. A spatious field of reasons could I urge Between his glory, daughter, and thy shame: That poison shews worst in a golden cup; Dark night seems darker by the lightning flash; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds; And every glory that inclines to sin, The shame is treble by the opposite. So leave I with my blessing in thy bosom, Which then convert to a most heavy curse, When thou convertest from honor's golden name To the black faction of bed blotting shame.
COUNTESS. I'll follow thee; and when my mind turns so, My body sink my soul in endless woe!
[Exeunt.]
ACT II.