Jove by his just and everlasting doom This times before record and times to come O happy wight that suffers not the snare [The style of this old play is stiff and cumbersome, like the dresses of its times. There may be flesh and blood underneath, but we cannot get at it. Sir Philip Sidney has praised it for its morality. One of its authors might easily furnish that. Norton was an associate to Hopkins, Sternhold, and Robert Wisdom, in the Singing Psalms. I am willing to believe that Lord Buckhurst supplied the more vital parts. The chief beauty in the extract is of a secret nature. Marcella obscurely intimates that the murdered prince Porrex and she had been lovers.], THE SPANISH TRAGEDY: OR HIERONIMO IS MAD AGAIN. A TRAGEDY BY THOMAS KYD. Horatio, the son of Hieronimo, is murdered while he is sitting with his mistress Belimperia by night in an arbour in his father's garden. The murderers (Balthazar, his rival, and Lorenzo, the brother of Belimperia) hang his body on a tree. Hieronimo is awakened by the cries of Belimperia, and coming out into his garden, discovers by the light of a torch, that the murdered man is his son. Upon this he goes distracted. HIERONIMO mad. Hier. My son and what's a son? A thing begot within a pair of minutes, there about: A lump bred up in darkness, and doth serve To balance those light creatures we call women; To make a father doat, rave or run mad? He must be fed, be taught to go, and speak. Ay, or yet? why might not a man love a calf as well? Or melt in passion o'er a frisking kid, as for a son? Methinks a young bacon, Or a fine little smooth horse colt, Should move a man as much as doth a son; Will grow to some good use; whereas a son He was my comfort, and his mother's joy, Our hopes were stored up in him, None but a damned murderer could hate him. He had not seen the back of nineteen years, When his strong arm unhors'd the proud prince Bal thazar ; And his great mind, too full of honour, took To mercy that valiant but ignoble Portuguese. Well heaven is heaven still! And there is Nemesis, and furies, And things call'd whips, And they sometimes do meet with murderers: They do not always 'scape, that's some comfort. Ay, ay, ay, and then time steals on, and steals, and steals, Till violence leaps forth, like thunder Wrapt in a ball of fire, And so doth bring confusion to them all. JAQUES and PEDRO, servants. [Exit. Jaq. I wonder, Pedro, why our master thus At midnight sends us with our torches light, When man and bird and beast are all at rest, Save those that watch for rape and bloody murder. Ped. O Jaques, know thou that our master's mind Is much distract since his Horatio died: And, now his aged years should sleep in rest, See here he comes. HIERONIMO enters. Hier. I pry thro' every crevice of each wall, Ped. We are your servants that attend you, sir. What make you with your torches in the dark? Ped. You bid us light them, and attend you here. ceiv'd: Was I so mad to bid you light your torches now ? Light me your torches at the mid of noon, When as the sun god rides in all his glory; Ped. Then we burn day light. Hier. Let it be burnt; night is a murd'rous slut, I'll prove it to thee; and were I mad, how could I? She should have shone: search thou the book: Had the moon shone in my boy's face, there was a kind of grace, That I know, nay I do know had the murd'rer seen him, Alack, when mischief doth it knows not what, What shall we say to mischief? Tags of points. ISABELLA his wife, enters. Isa. Dear Hieronimo, come in a doors, Not I indeed, we are very merry, very merry. Isa. How? be merry here, be merry here? And when our hot Spain could not let it grow, Till at length it grew a gallows, and did bear our son. Hier. Bid him come in, and paint some comfort, The Painter enters. Pain. God bless you, sir, Hier. Wherefore? why, thou scornful villain? How, where, or by what means should I be blest? Isa. What wouldst thou have, good fellow? Pain. Justice, madam. Hier. O ambitious beggar, wouldst thou have that |