SRI AUROBINDO
Collected Plays and Short Stories
Part Two
or Love Shuffles the Cards
A Comedy
Cupid
Ate
King Philip of Spain
Count Beltran, a nobleman.
Antonio, his son.
Basil, his nephew.
Count Conrad, a young nobleman.
Roncedas,
Guzman, Courtiers.
The Miller.
Acinto, his son.
Jeronimo, a student.
Carlos, a student.
Friar Baltasar, a pedagogue.
Euphrosyne, the maid of the farm.
Ismenia, sister of Conrad.
Brigida, her cousin.
Scene I
The King’s Court at Salamanca.
King Philip, Conrad, Beltran, Roncedas, Guzman, Antonio, Basil, Ismenia, Brigida, Grandees.
Count Beltran.
It is no secret, Sire. And yet so little5
This toy is mine, the name’s far off from me.
Castilians, forgèd iron of old time
Armies to wield and empires, we’re astray6
With these smooth, silken things. We were never valiant
Vega with Calderon to weigh and con
Devices. But our sons, Sire, have outstripped
Their rough begetters, almost they are Frenchmen.
Of Paris and the Rape of Spartan Helen.
Antonio?
O my poor eyes misled,
Whither have you wandered?
The fitter for a masque that’s heard but once.14
For15 the swift action of the stage speeds on
And16 slow conception labouring after it
Roughens its subtleties, blurs o’er its17 shades,
Sees masses only. Then if18 the plot is new,
The mind engrossed with incidents, omits19
To take the breath of flowers and lingering shade
In hurrying with the stream.20 But the plot known21,
It is at leisure and may cull in running22
Those delicate, scarcely-heeded strokes, which lost23
Perfection’s disappointed. There art comes in24
To justify genius. Being old besides25
The subject occupies26 creative labour
To make old new. The other’s but invention,27
A frail thing28, though a gracious. He’s creator
Who greatly handles great material,
Calls order out of the abundant deep,
Not who invents sweet shadows out of air.
Pardon, Sir, I forgot my limits thus29
To speak at random in so great a presence.
You have a hopeful son, Lord Beltran, modest30
And witty, a fair conjunction, a large critic
And taking speaker.
My heart out of my bosom.
Will you hush?
Count, I have heard your lands are very lavish31
In Nature’s best. I think I have not seen them.32
Indeed I grudge each rood of Spanish earth
My eyes have not perused, my heart stored up.
Yet33 what with foreign boyhood, strange extraction
And hardly reaching with turmoil to power
I am a stranger purely34. I have swept
Through beautiful Spain more like a wind than man,
Now fugitive, now blown into my right
On a mere35 whirlwind of success. But maybe36
Great occupation has disabled you37
From this poor trifle also.
My son would answer better, Sire. I care not
Whether this tree be like a tower or that
A dragon: and I never saw myself
Difference twixt field and field, save the main one
Of size, boundary and revenue; and those
Were great once,— why now lessened and by whom
I will not move you by repeating, Sire,
Although my heart speaks of it feelingly.
Speak39 then, Antonio, but tell me not
Of formal French demesnes and careful parks,
Life dressed like a stone lady, statuesque,
They please the judging eye, but not the heart.
When Nature is disnatured, all her glowing
Great outlines chillingly disharmonised
Into stiff lines, the heart’s dissatisfied,
Asks freedom, wideness, it compares the sweep
Of the large heavens above and feels a discord.
Your architects plan beauty by the yard,
Weigh sand with sand, parallel line with line
But miss the greatest. Since uncultured force
Though rude, yet striking home, by far exceeds
Artisan’s work, mechanically good.
Our fields, Sire40, are a rural holiday,
Not Nature carved?
Has she a voice to you?
Yes, we have brooks
Muttering through sedge and stone, and willows by them
Leaning dishevelled and forget-me-nots,
Wonders of lurking azure, rue and mallow,
Honeysuckle and painful meadowsweet,
And when we’re tired of watching the rich bee
Murmur absorbed about one lonely flower
Then we can turn and hear a noon of birds.
Each on his own heart’s quite intent, yet all
Join sweetness at melodious intervals.
You have many trees?
Glades, Sire, and green assemblies
And separate giants bending to each other
As if they longed to meet. Some are pranked out,
Others wear merely green like foresters.
Can hatred sound so sweet? Are enemies’ voices
Like hail of angels to the ear, Brigida?
Hush, fool. We are too near. Someone will mark you.
Why, cousin, if they do, what harm? Sure all
Unblamed may praise sweet music when they hear it.
Rule your tongue, madam. Or must I leave you?
You have made me sorrowful. How different
Is this pale picture of a Court, these walls
Shut out from honest breathing; God kept not
His quarries in the wild and distant hills
For such perversion. It was sin when first
Hands serried stone with stone. Guzman, you are
A wise, a patient41 reasoner,— is it not better
To live in the great air God made for us,
A peasant in the open glory of earth,
Feeling it, yet not knowing it, like him
To drink the cool life-giving brook nor crave
The sour fermented madness of the grape
Nor the dull exquisiteness of far-fetched viands
For the tired palate, but black bread or maize,
Mere wholesome ordinary corn. Think you not
A life so in the glorious sunlight bathed,
Straight nursed and suckled from the vigorous Earth
With shaping labour and the homely touch
Of the great hearty mother, edifies
A nobler kind than nourished is in Courts?
But42 we are even as children quite43 removed
From those her streaming breasts, and44 of the sun
Defrauded and the lusty salutation
Of wind and rain, grow up amphibious nothing,
Non-man45, who are too sickly wise for earth
And too46 corrupt to be the47 heirs of heaven.
I think not so, Your Highness.
Not so, Guzman?
Is not a peasant happier than a king?
For he has useful physical toil and sleep
Unbroken as a child’s. He is not hedged
By swathing ceremony which forbids
A king to feel himself a man. He has friends,
For he has equals. And in youth he marries
The comrade of his boyhood whom he loved
And gets on that sweet helper stalwart children,
Then brings his grandchildren climbing on his knees,48
A happy calm old man; because he lived
Man’s genuine life and goes with task accomplished
Thro’ death as thro’ a gate, not questioning.
Each creature labouring in his own vocation
Desires another’s and deems the heavy burden
Of his own fate the world’s sole heaviness.
Each thing’s to its perceptions limited,
Another’s are to it intangible,
A shadow far away, quite bodiless,
Lost in conjecture’s wide impalpable.
On its unceasing errand through the void
The earth rolls on, a blind and moaning sphere.
It knows not Venus’ sorrows, but it looks
With envy crying, “These have light and beauty,
I only am all dark and comfortless.”
The land yearning for life, endeavours seaward,
The sea, weary of motion, pines to turn
Into reposeful earth: yet were this done
Each would repine again and hate the doer;
The land would miss its flowers and grass and birds,
The sea long for the coral and the cave.
For he who made labour the base49 of life,
Gave with it power, a thing so dear to existence,50
To lose’t is death. Toil is the form of power;
Nay, toil’s self creates answering energy
And makes the loss of toil a wretchedness.
The labourer physically is divine,
Inward a void, yet in his limits blest.
But were the city’s cultured son, who turns
Watching an51 envious, crying “Were I simple,
Primeval in my life as he, how happy!”,
Into such environs confined, how then
His temperament would beat against the bars
Of circumstance and rage for wider field.
Uninterchangeable their natures stand
And self-confined; for so Earth made them, Earth,
The brute and kindly mother groping for mind.
She of her vigorous nature bore her sons
Made lusty with her milk and the warm force52
Redundant in her veins, else like the lark53
Aiming from her to heaven. And souls are there
Who rooted in her puissant animalism
Are greatly earthy, yet widen to the void54
And heighten to the sky55. But these are rare
And of no privileged country citizens
Nor to the city bounded nor the field.
They are wise and royal in the furrow, keep
In schools their chastened vigour from the soil
To base their spirits vastly. Man is strong56
Antaeuslike, based on his native Earth
From which being lifted great communities
Die in their intellectual grandeur. So57 then
Let the soil’s son and grafting of the city58
Keep their conditions, heightened or refreshed
With59 breath and force of each a different spirit
If may be; one not admit untutored envy
The other vain imagination making
Return to nature a misleading name
For a reversion most unnatural.
You reason well, Guzman; nor must we pine
At stations where God and his saints have set us.
And yet because I’d60 feel the rural air,
Of greatness unreminded, I will go
Tomorrow as a private nobleman.61
My lords, forget for one day I’m the king
Nor watch my moods, nor with your eyes wait on me
Nor disillusionize by high62 observance
But keep as to an equal courtesy.
But, Your63 Majesty —
Well, Sir, Your Ancient Wisdom —
The Kings of Spain —
Are absolute, you’ld say,
Over men only? Custom masters kings.
I’ll not be ruled by your stale ceremonies
As kings are by an arrogating Senate,
But will control them, wear them when I will,
Walk disencumbered when I will. Enough
You have done your part in protest. I have heard you.
Your Highness is obeyed.
Tell on, Antonio, who perform the masque.
That can I tell Your Highness, rural girls,
The daughters of the soil, whom country air
Has given the ruddy64 health to bloom in their cheeks65.
Full of our Spanish sunlight are they, voiced
Like Junos and will make our ladies pale
Before them. There’s a Miller’s66 lovely daughter,
A marvel. Robed in excellent apparel
As she will be, there’s not a maid in Spain
Can stand beside her and stay happy. My sons
Have spared nor words nor music nor array
Nor beauty to express their loyal duty.
I am much graced by this their gentle trouble
And yet, Lord Beltran, there are nobler things
Than these brocaded masques, not that I scorn these,
Do not believe I would be so ungracious,—
Nor anything belittle in which true hearts
Interpret their rich silence. Yet there’s one
Desire, I would exchange for many masques,
’Tis noble67: an easy word bestows it wholly,
And yet, I fear, for you too difficult.
My lord, you know my service and should not
Doubt my compliance. Name and take it. Else judge me.
Why, noble reconcilement, Conde Beltran;
Sweet friendship between mighty jarring houses
And by great intercession war renounced
Betwixt magnificent hearts: these are the masques
Most sumptuous, these the glorious theatres
That subjects should present to princes. Conrad
And noble Beltran, I respect the wrath
Sunders your pride: yet mildness has the blessing
Of God and is religion’s perfect mood.
Admit that better weakness. Throw your hearts
Wide to the knocks68 of entering peace: let not
The ashes of a rage the world renounces
Smoulder between you nor outdated griefs
Keep living. What, quite silent? Will you, Conrad,
Refuse to me your answer69, who so often
Have for my sake your very life renounced?
My lord, the hate that I have never cherished
I know not how to abandon. Not in the sway
Of other men’s affections I have lived
But walked in the straight road my fortunes build me.
Let any love who will or any hate who will,
I take both with a calm, unburdened spirit,
Inarm my lover as a friend, embrace
My enemy as a wrestler: do my will,
Because it is my will, go where I go,
Because my path lies there. If any cross me,
That is his choice, not mine. And if he suffer,
Again it is his choice, not mine. It’s70 I,
That is my star. I curse him not for it:
My fate’s beyond his making as my spirit’s
Above affection by him. I hate no man,
And if Lord Beltran give to me his hand,
I will most gladly clasp it and forget71
Outdated injuries and wounds long healed.
O you72 are most noble, Conrad, most benign.
Who now can say the ill-doer ne’er forgives?
Conrad has dispossessed my kinsmen, slain
My vassals, me of ancient lands relieved,
Thinned my great house; but Beltran is forgiven.
Will you not now enlarge your generous nature,
Wrong me still more, have new and ampler room
For exercise to your forgiving heart,
I must73 embrace misfortune and fresh loss
Before your friendship, lord.
No more of this.
Pardon, Your Highness; this was little praise
For so deep74 Christianity. Lord Conrad,
I will not trouble you further. And perhaps
With help of the good saints and holy Virgin
I too shall make me some room to pardon in.
I fear you not, Lord Count. Our swords have clashed:
Mine was the stronger. For what I have won75,
I got it by decree of arms. So you
Had won mine, had you taken sides with fortune
And kept her faithful with your sword. Your satire
Has no sharp edge till it cut that from me.
This is unprofitable. No more of it.
Lord Conrad, you go homeward with the dawn?
Winning your gracious leave to have with me
My sisters, Sir.
The Queen is very loth
To lose her favourite76, but to disappoint you
Much more unwilling. You’ll come with me,77
My lords, you too, Lord Beltran.
Exeunt King, Beltran, Guzman and Grandees.
A word, with you Lord Conrad.
As many as you will, Roncedas.
My lord, your good friend always.
So you have been.
Cousin, and sweetest sister, I am bound
Homeward upon a task that needs my presence.
Don Mario and his wife will bring you there.
Are you content or shall I stay for you?
With all you do, dear brother, yet would have
Your blessing by me.
May your happiness
Greatly exceed my widest wishes.78
So
It must do, brother or I am unhappy.79
What task will he have now? Some girl-lifting.80
What other task!81 Shall we go, cousin?
Stay.
Let us not press so closely after them.
Good manners? Oh, your pardon. I was blind.
Are you a lover or a fish,82 Antonio?
Speak?
The devil remove you
Where you can never more have sight of her.
Cousin, I know you’re tired
With standing. Sit, and if you tire with that,
As perseverance is a powerful virtue,
For your reward the dumb may speak to you.
What shall I do, dear girl?
Why, speak the first,
Count Conrad’s sister! Be the Mahomet
To your poor mountain. Hang me if I think not
The prophet’s hill more moveable of the two;
An earthquake stirs not this. What ails the man?
He has made a wager with some lamp-post surely.
Brigida, are you mad? Be so immodest?
A stranger and my house’s enemy!
No, never speak to him. It would be indeed
Horribly forward.
Why, you jest, Brigida.
I’m no such light thing that I must be dumb
Lest men mistake my speaking. Let frail men83
Or men suspect to their own purity
Guard every issue of speech and gesture. Wherefore
Should I be hedged so meanly in? To greet
With few words, cold and grave, as is befitting
This gentle youth, why do you call immodest?
You must not.
I say
You must not, child.
I will then, not because
I wish (why should I?), but because you always
Provoke me with your idle prudities.
Good! You’ve been wishing it the last half-hour
And now you are provoked to’t. Charge him, charge him.
Impossible creature!
But no! You shall not turn me.
’Twas not my meaning.
Sir —
Rouse yourself, Antonio. Gather back
Your manhood, or you’re shamed without retrieval.
Help me, Brigida.
Not I, cousin.
Sir,
You spoke divinely well. I say this, Sir,
Not to recall to you that we have met —
Since you will not remember — but because
I would not have you — anyone — think this of me
That since you are Antonio and my enemy
And much have hurt me — to the heart, therefore
When one speaks or does worthily, I can
Admire not, nor love merit, whosoe’er
Be its receptacle. This was my meaning.
I could not bear one should not know this of me.
Speak or be dumb forever.
I see, you have mistook me why I spoke
And scorn me. Sir, you may be right to think
You have so sweet a tongue would snare the birds
From off the branches, ravish an enemy,
— Some such poor wretch there may be — witch her heart out,
If you could care for anything so cheap
And hold it in your hand, lost,— lost,— Oh me!
Confounded. Speak, you sheep, you!
Though this is so,
You do me wrong to think me such an one,
Most flagrant wrong, Antonio. To think that I
Wait one word of your lips to woo you, yearn
To be your loving servant at a word
From you,— one only word and I am yours.
Admirable lady! Saints, can you be dumb
Who hear this?
Still you scorn me. For all this
You shall not make me angry. Do you imagine
Because you know I am Lord Conrad’s sister
And lodge with Donna Clara Santa Cruz
In the street Velasquez, and you have seen it
With marble front and the quaint mullioned windows,
That you need only after vespers, when
The streets are empty, stand there, and I will
Send one to you? Indeed, indeed I merit not
You should think poorly of me. If you’re noble
And do not scorn me, you will carefully
Observe the tenour of my prohibition,
Brigida.
Come away with your few words,
Your cold grave words. You have84 frozen his speech with them.
Heavens! it was she — her words were not a dream,
Yet I was dumb. There was a majesty
Even in her tremulous playfulness, a thrill
When she smiled most, made my heart beat too quickly
For speech. O that I should be dumb and shamefast,
When with one step I might grasp Paradise.
Antonio!
I was not deceived. She blushed,
And the magnificent scarlet to her cheeks
Welled from her heart an ocean inexhaustible.
Rose but outcrimsoned rose. Yes, every word
Royally marred the whiteness of her cheeks
With new impossibilities of beauty.
She blushed, and yet as with an angry shame
Of that delicious weakness, gallantly
Her small imperious head she held erect
And strove in vain to encourage those sweet lids
That fluttered lower and lower. O that but once
My tongue had been as bold as were mine eyes!
But these were fastened to her as with cords,
Courage in them naked necessity.
Ah poor Antonio. You’re bewitched, you’re maimed,
Antonio. You must make her groan who did this.
One sense will always now be absent from him.
Lately he had no tongue. Now that’s returned
His ears are gone on leave. Hark you, Antonio
Why do we stay here?
I am in a dream.
Lead where you will; since there is no place now
In all the world, but only she or silence.
A garden at the town-house of Count Beltran.
I am abashed of85 you. What, make a lady
Woo you, and she a face so excellent,
Of an address so admirably lovely
It shows a goddess in her — at each sentence
Let pause to give you opportunity
Then shame with the dead silence of the hall
For her continual answer. Fie, you’re not
Antonio, you are86 not Beltran’s issue. Seek
Your kindred in the snowdrifts of the Alps
Or call a post your father.
I deserve
Your censure, Basil. Yet were it done again,
I know I should again be dumb. My tongue
Teems in imagination but is barren
In actuality. When I am from her,
I woo her with the accent of a god,
My mind o’erflows with words as the wide Nile
With waters. Let her but appear and I
Am her poor mute. She may do her will with me
And O remember but her words. When she,
Ah she, my white divinity with that kindness
Celestial in the smiling of her eyes
And in her voice the world’s great music, rose
Of blushing frankness, half woman and half angel,
Crowned me unwooed, lavished on me her heart
In her prodigious liberality,
Could I then speak? O to have language then
Had been the index to a shallow love.
Away! You modest lovers are the blot
Of manhood, traitors to our sovereignty.
I’d87 have you banished, all of you, and kept
In desert islands, where no petticoat
Should enter, so the brood88 of you might perish.
You speak against the very sense of love
Which lives by service.
Flat treason! Was not man made
Woman’s superior that he might control her,
In strength to exact obedience and in wisdom
To guide her will, in wit to keep her silent,
Three Herculean labours. O were women
Once loose, they would new-deluge earth with words,
Sapiently base creation on its apex,
Logic would be new-modelled, arithmetic
Grow drunk and reason despairing abdicate.
No thunderbolt could stop a woman’s will
Once it is started.
O you speak at ease,
Loved you, you would recant this without89 small
Torture to quicken you.
I wish, Antonio, I had known your case
Earlier. I would have taught you how to love.
Come, will you woo a woman? Teach me at least
By diagram, upon a blackboard.
Well,
I will so, if it should hearten your weak spirits.
And now I think of it, I am resolved
I’ll publish a new Art of Love, shall be
The only Ovid memorable.
On, on! Let’s hear you.90
First, I would kiss her.
What, without leave asked?
Leave? Ask a woman leave to kiss her! Why
What was she made for else?
If she is angry?
So much the better. Then you by repetition
Convince her of your manly strength, which is
A great point gained at the outset and moreover
Your duty, comfortable to yourself.
Besides she likes it. On the same occasion
When she will scold, I’ll silence her with wit.
Laughter breaks down impregnable battlements.
Let me but make her smile and there is conquest
Won by the triple strength, horse, foot, artillery,
Of eloquence, wit and muscle. Then but remains
Pacification, with or else without
The Church’s help, that’s a mere form and makes
No difference to the principle.
There should be
Inquisitions for such as you. What after?
Nothing unless you wish to assure the conquest,
Not plunder it merely like a Tamerlane.
I’ll teach that also. ’Tis but making her
Realise her inferiority.
Unanswerably and o’erwhelmingly
Show her how fortunate she is to get you
And all her life too short for gratitude;
That you have robbed her merely for her good,
To civilize her or to train her up:
Punish each word that shows want of affection.
Plague her to death and make her thank you for it.
Accustom her to sing hosannas to you
When you beat her. All this is ordinary,
And every wise benevolent conqueror
Has learnt the trick of it. Then she’ll love you for91 ever.
You are a Pagan and would burn for this
If Love still kept his Holy Office.
Am92 safe from him.
And therefore boast securely
Conducting in imagination wars
That others have the burden of. I’ve seen
The critical civilian in his chair
Win famous victories with wordy carnage,
Guide his strategic finger o’er a map,
Cry “Eugene’s fault! here Marlboro’93 was to blame,
And look, a child might see it, Villars’ plain error
That lost him Malplaquet!” I think you are
Just such a pen-and-paper strategist.
Death, I will have pity on you,
Antonio. You shall see my great example
And learn by me.
Good, I’m your pupil. But hear,
A pretty face or I’ll not enter for her,
Wellborn or I shall much discount your prowess.
Agreed. And yet they say experimentum
In corpore vili. But I take your terms
Lest you substract me for advantages.
Look where the enemy comes. You are well off
If you can win her.
A rare face, by Heaven.
Almost too costly a piece of goods for this
Mad trial.
You sound retreat?
Not I an inch.
Hush, she’s here.
Señor, I was bidden to deliver this letter to you.
To me, sweetheart?
I have the inventory of you in my books94, if you be he truly. I will study it. Hair of the ordinary poetic length95, dress indefinable96, a modest address,— I think not you, Señor,— a noble manner,— Pooh, no! — a97 handsome face. I am sure not to you98, Señor.
Humph.
Well, cousin. All silent? Open your batteries, open your batteries!
Wait, wait. Ought a conqueror to be hurried? Caesar himself must study his ground before he attempts it. You will hear my trumpets instanter.
Will you take your letter, Sir?
To me then, maiden? A dainty-looking note, and I marvel much from whom it can be. I do not know the handwriting. A lady’s, seemingly, yet it has a touch of the masculine too — there is rapidity and initiative in its flow. Fair one, from whom comes this?
Why, Sir, I am not her signature; which if you will look within, there I doubt not you99 will find a solution of your difficulty100.
Here’s101 a clever woman, Antonio, to think of that, and she but eighteen or a miracle.
Well, cousin.
This Don Witty-pate eyes me strangely. I fear he will recognize102 me.
You’re ill, sir, you change colour.
Now, by Heaven
Were death within my heart’s door or his blast
Upon my eyelids, this would exile him.
Sir, you pale
Extremely. Is there no poison in that103 letter?
O might I so be poisoned hourly. Let me
No longer dally with my happiness,
Let104 it take wings or turn a dream. Hail, letter,
For thou hast come from that white hand I worship.
Señor, how you may deem of my bold wooing,
How cruelly I suffer in your thoughts,
I dread to think. Take the plain truth, Antonio.
I cannot live without your love. If you
From this misdoubt my nobleness or infer
A wanton haste or instability,—
As men pretend quick love is quickly spent —
Tear up this letter, and with it my heart.
And yet I hope you will not tear it. I love you
And since I saw our family variance
And your too noble fearfulness withhold me
From my heart’s lord I have thrown from me shame
And the admirèd dalliance of women
To bridge it. Come to me, Antonio! Come,
But come in honour. I am not nor can be
So far degenerate from my house’s greatness
Or my pure self to love ignobly. Dear,
I have thrown from me modesty’s coy pretences
But the reality I’ll grapple to me
Close as your image. I am loth to end,
Yet must, and therefore will I end with this
‘Beloved, love me, respect me or forget me’.”
Writing more sweet than any yet that came
From heaven to earth, O thou dear revelation.
Make my lips holy. Ah, could I imagine
Thee the white hand that wrote thee, I were blest
Utterly. Thou hast made me twice myself.
I think I am another than Antonio.
The sky seems nearer to me or the earth
Environed with a sacred light. O come!
I’ll study to imprint this on my heart,
That when death comes he’ll find it there and leave it,
A monument and an immortal writing.
Damsel, you are of the Lady Ismenia’s household?
A poor relative of hers, Señor.
Your face seems strangely familiar to me. Have I not seen you in some place where I constantly resort?
O Sir, I hope you do not think so meanly of me. I am a poor girl but an honest.
How, how?
I know not how. I spoke only as the spirit moved me.
You have a marvellously nimble tongue. Two words with you.
Willingly, Señor, if you exceed not measure.
Fair one —
Oh, Sir, I am glad I listened. I like your two words extremely. God be with you.
Why, I have not begun yet.
The more shame to your arithmetic.
If your teacher had reckoned as loosely with his cane-cuts, he would have made the carefuller scholar.
God’s wounds, will you listen to me?
Well, Sir, I will not insist upon numbers. But pray, for your own sake, swear no more. No eloquence will long stand such draft105 upon it.
If you would listen, I would tell you a piece of news that might please you.
Let it be good news, new news and repeatable news and I will thank you for it.
Sure, maiden, you are wondrous beautiful.
Señor, Queen Anne is dead. Tell me the next.
The next is, I will kiss you.
Oh, Sir, that’s a prophecy. Well, death and kissing come to all of us, and by what disease the one or by whom the other, wise men care not to forecast. It profits little to study calamities beforehand. When it comes, I pray God I may learn to take it with resignation, if I cannot do better.
By my life, I will kiss you and without farther respite.
On what ground?
Have I not told you, you are beautiful.
So has my mirror, not once but a hundred times, and never yet offered to kiss me. When it does, I’ll allow your logic. No, we are already near enough to each other. Pray, keep your distance.
I will establish my argument with my lips.
I will defend mine with my hand. I promise you ’twill prove the abler dialectician of the two.
Well.
I am glad you think so, Señor. My lord, I cannot stay. What shall I tell my lady?
Tell her my heart is at her feet, and I
Am hers, hers only until heaven ceases
And after. Tell her that I am more blest
In her sweet condescension to my humbleness
Than Ilian Anchises when Love’s mother
Stooped from her golden heavens into his lap.
Tell her that as a goddess I revere her
And as a saint adore; that she and life
Are one to me, for I’ve no heart but her,
No atmosphere beyond her pleasure, light
But what her eyes allow me. Tell, O tell her —
Hold, hold, Señor. You may tell her all this yourself. I would not remember the half of it and could not understand the other half. Shall I tell her, you will come surely?
As sure as is the sun to its fixed hour
Or midnight to its duty. I will come.
Good! there are at last three words a poor girl can understand. Mark then, you will wait a while after nightfall, less than half a bowshot from the place you know towards the Square Velasquez, within sight of the Donna’s windows. Then106 I will come to you. Sir, if your sword be half as ready and irresistible as your tongue, I would gladly have you there with him, though Saint Iago grant that neither prove necessary. You look sad, Sir. God save you for a witty and eloquent gentleman.
O cousin, I am bewitched with happiness.
Pardon me that I leave you. Solitude
Demands a god and godlike I am grown
Unto myself. This letter deifies me.
I will be sole with my felicity.
God grant that I am not bewitched also!
Saints and angels!
How is it?
How did it happen?
Is the sun still in heaven?
Is that the song of a bird or a barrel-organ?
I am not drunk either.
I can still distinguish between a tree and the squirrel upon it.
What, am I not Basil? whom men call the witty and eloquent Basil?
Did I not laugh from the womb?
Was not my first cry a jest upon the world I came into?
Did I not invent a conceit upon my mother’s milk ere I had sucked of it?
Death!
And have I been bashed and beaten by the tongue of a girl? silenced by a common purveyor of impertinences?
It is so and yet it cannot be.
I begin to believe in the dogmas of the materialist.
The gastric juice rises in my estimation.
Genius is after all only a form of indigestion, a line of Shakespeare the apotheosis of a leg of mutton and the speculations of Plato an escape of diseased tissue arrested in the permanency of ink.
What did I break my fast with this morning?
Kippered herring?
Bread?
Marmalade?
Tea?
O kippered herring, art thou the material form of stupidity and is marmalade an enemy of wit?
It must be so.
O mighty gastric juice!
Mother and Saviour!
I bow down before thee.
Be propitious, fair goddess, to thy adorer.
Arise, Basil. Today thou shalt retrieve thy tarnished laurels or be expunged for ever from the book of the witty. Arm thyself in full panoply of allusion and irony, gird on raillery like a sword and repartee like a buckler. I will meet this girl tonight. I will tund her with conceits, torture her with ironies, tickle her with jests, prick her all over with epigrams. My wit shall smother her, tear her, burst her sides, press her to death, hang her, draw her, quarter her, and if all this fails, Death! as a last revenge, I’ll marry107 her. Saints!
Ismenia’s chamber.
Brigida lingers. O he has denied me
And therefore she is loth to come, for she
Knows she will bring me death. It is not so.
He has detained her to return an answer.
Yet I asked none. I am full of fear, O heart,
I have staked thee upon a desperate cast,
Which if I win not, I am miserable.
’Tis she. O that my hope could give her wings
Or lift her through the window bodily
To shorten this age of waiting. I could not
Discern her look. Her steps sound hopefully.
Dearest Brigida! at last! What says Antonio? Tell me quickly. Heavens! you look melancholy.
Santa Catarina! How weary I am! My ears too! I think they have listened to more nonsense in these twenty minutes than in all their natural eighteen years before. Sure, child, thou hast committed some unpardonable sin to have such a moonstruck lover as this Antonio.
But, Brigida!
And his shadow too, his Cerberus of wit who guards this poetical treasure. He would have eaten me, I think, if I had not given him the wherewithal to stop the three mouths of him.
Why, Brigida, Brigida.
Saints! to think how men lie! I have heard this Basil reputed loudly for the Caesar of wits, the tongue and laughter of the time; but never credit me, child, if I did not silence him with a few stale pertnesses a market-girl might have devised for her customers. A wit, truly! and not a word in his mouth bullet-head Pedro could not better.
Distraction! What is this to Antonio? Sure, your wits are bewildered, Brigida. What said Antonio? Girl, I am on thorns.
I am coming to that as fast as possible. Jesus! What a burning hurry you are in, Ismenia! You have not your colour, child. I will bring you salvolatile from my chamber. ’Tis in a marvellous cut-bottle with a different hue to each facet! I filched it from Donna Clara’s room when she was at matins yesterday.
Tell me, you magpie, tell me.
What am I doing else? You must know I found Antonio was in his garden. Oh, did I tell you, Ismenia? Donna Clara chooses the seeds for me this season and I think she has as rare a notion of nasturtiums as any woman living. I was speaking to Pedro in the summer house yesterday; for you remember it thundered terrifically before one had time to know light from darkness; and there I stood miles from the garden door —
In the name of pity, Brigida —
Saints! how you hurry me.
Well, when I went to Antonio in his garden — There’s an excellent garden, Ismenia.
I wonder where Don Beltran’s gardener had his bignolias108.
Oh-h-h!
Well, where was I? Oh, giving the letter to Antonio. Why, would you believe it, in thrust Don Wit, Don Cerberus, Don Subtle-three-mouths.
Will you tell me, you ogress, you paragon of Tyrannesses, you she-Nero, you compound of impossible cruelties?
Saints, what have I done to be abused so? I was coming to it faster than a mail-coach and four. You would not be so unconscionable as to ask me for the appendage of a story, all tail and nothing to hang it on? Well, Antonio took the letter.
Yes, yes and what answer gave he?
He looked all over the envelope to see whence it came, dissertated learnedly on this knotty question, abused me your handwriting
foully.
Dear cousin, sweet cousin, excellent Brigida! On my knees, I entreat you, do not tease me longer. Though I know you would not do it, if all were not well, yet consider what a weak tremulous thing is the heart of woman when she loves and have pity on me. On my knees, sweetest.
Why, Ismenia, I never knew you so humble in my life,— save 
indeed to your brother; but him indeed I do not reckon.
He would rule even me, if I let him.
On your knees, too!
This is excellent.
May I be lost, if I am not tempted to try how long I can keep you so.
But I will be merciful.
Well, he scanned your handwriting and reviled it for the script of a virago, an Amazon.
Brigida, if you will not tell me directly, without phrase and plainly, just what I want to know and nothing else, by heaven, I will beat you.
Now, this is foul. Can you not keep your better mood for fifty seconds by the clock? O temper, temper. Ah, well, where was I? Oh, yes, your handwriting. Oh! Oh! Oh! What mean you, cousin? Lord deliver me. Cousin! Cousin! He will come! He will come! He will come!
Does he love me?
Madly! distractedly! like a moonstruck natural! Saints!
Dearest, dearest Brigida! You are an angel. How can I thank you?
Child, you have thanked me out of breath already. If you have not dislocated my shoulder and torn half of my109 hair out —
Hear her, the Pagan! A gentle physical agitation and some rearrangement of tresses, ’twas less punishment than you deserved. But there! that is salve for you. And now be sober, sweet. What said Antonio? Come, tell me. I am greedy to know.
I’ll be hanged if I do. Besides I could not if I would. He talked poetry.
But did he not despise me for my forwardness?
Tut, you are childish. But to speak the bare fact, Ismenia, I think he is most poetically in love with you. He made preparations to swoon when he saw no more than110 your name; but I build nothing on that;111 there are some faint when they smell a pinch of garlic or spy a cockchafer. But he waited112 ten minutes copying your letter into his heart or some such note-book of love affairs; yet that was nothing either; I doubt if he found room for you, unless on the margin. Then he began drawing cheques on Olympus for comparisons, left that presently as antique and out of date, confounded Ovid and his breviary in the same quest; left that too for mediaeval, and diverged into Light and Heat, but came not to the very modernness of electricity. But Lord! cousin, what a career he ran! He had imagined himself blind and breathless when I stopped him. I tremble to think what calamities might have ensued had I not thrown myself under the wheels of his metaphor. The upshot is, he loves you, worships you and will come to you.
Brigida113, Brigida, be you as happy as you have made me.
Truly, the happiness of lovers, children, with a new plaything and mad to handle it.
But when they are tired of the game — ah, well, I will have nothing of it114.
No, I will115 be the type and patroness of spinsters,116 the noble army of old maids shall gather about my tomb to do homage to me.
And he will come tonight?
Yes, if his love lasts so long.
For a thousand years. Come with me, Brigida, and help me to bear my happiness. Till tonight!
This is the place.
’Tis farther.
This, I know it.
Here’s the square Velasquez. There in his saddle
Imperial Charles watches the silent city
His progeny could not keep. Where the one light
Stands beckoning to us, is Don Mario’s dwelling.
O thou celestial lustre, wast thou kindled
To be her light who is my sun? If so,
Thou art most happy. For thou dost inherit
The sanctuary of her dear sleep and art
The confidant of those sweet secrecies.
Though thou live for a night, yet is thy short
And noble ministry, more rich and costly,
Than ages of the sun. For thou hast seen,
O blessed, her unveiled and gleaming shoulder
Make her thick-treasured hair more precious. Thou
Hast watched that face upon her heavenly pillow
Slumbering amid its peaceful curls. O more!
For thou perhaps hast laid one brilliant finger
On her white breast mastered with sacred sleep,
And there known Paradise. Therefore thou’rt famous
Above all lights that human hands have kindled.
Here’s a whole epic on an ounce of oil
A poor, drowned wick bought from the nearest chandler
And a fly sodden in it.
Listen! one comes.
Stand back, abide not question.
They’ll not doubt us.
Am I mad?
Do you think I’ll trust a lover? Why, you could not
Even ask the time but you would say, “Good Sir,
How many minutes to Ismenia?”
Well,
Stand back.
No need. I see it. ’Tis the she-guide,
The feminine Mercury, the tongue, the woman.
You, my lord Antonio?
You are my guide to heaven.
O you have come?
I take this kindly of you, Señor. Tell me,
Were you not hiding when I came up to you?
What was it, Sir? A constable or perhaps
A creditor? For to be dashed by a weak girl
I know you are too bold. What did you say?
I did not hear you. We are there, my lord.
Now quietly, if you love her, your sweet lady.
Can you be silent, Señor? We are lost else.
Ismenia’s antechamber.
Ismenia waiting118
It is too dark. I can see nothing. Hark!
Surely it was the door that fastened then.
My heart, control thyself! Thou beat’st119 too quickly
And wilt break in the arms of happiness.
Here. Enter, my lord, and take her.
Ismenia!
Antonio! Oh120 Antonio!
My heart’s dearest!
Bring your wit this way, Sir.
This is my place, dear, at your feet; and then
Higher than is my right.
I cannot suffer
Blasphemy to touch my heaven, though your lips
Have hallowed it. Highest were low for you.
You are a goddess and adorable.
Alas, Antonio, this is not the way.
I fear you do not love me, you despise me.
The leaf might then
Despise the moonbeam that has come to kiss it.
Then you must take me,
As I have given myself to you, your servant,
Yours wholly, not to be prayed to and hymned
As a divinity but to be commanded
As a dear handmaid. You must rule me, sweet,
Or I shall spoil with liberty and lose you.
Must I? I will then. Yet you are so queenly,
I needs must smile when I attempt it. Come,
Shall I command you?
Do, sweet.
Lay your head
Upon my shoulder so and do not dare
To lift it till I give you leave.
Alas,
I fear you’ll be a tyrant. And I meant
To bear at most a limited monarchy.
No murmuring. Answer my questions.
Well,
That’s easy and I will.
And truly.
Oh,
But that’s almost impossible. I’ll try.
Come, when did you first love me?
Dear, today.
When will you marry me?
Tomorrow, dear.
Here is a mutinous kingdom to my hands.
Truly then, seven days ago,
No more than seven, at the court I saw you,
And with the sight my life was troubled; heard you
And your voice tore my heart out. O Antonio,
I was an empty thing until today.
I saw you daily, but because I feared
What now I know, you were Lord Beltran’s son
I dared not ask your name, nay shut my ears
To knowledge. O my love, I am afraid
Your father seems a hard vindictive man.
What will you do with me, Antonio?
Fasten
My jewel safe from separating hands
Holily on my bosom. My father? He
Shall know not of our love, till we are sure
From rude disunion. Though he will be angry
I am his eldest and beloved son,
And when he feels your sweetness and your charm
He will repent and thank me for a daughter.
When ’tis your voice that tells me, I believe
Impossibilities. Well, let me know —
You’ve made me blush, Antonio, and I wish
I could retaliate — were you not amazed
At my mad forwardness, to woo you first,
A youth unknown?
Yes, even as Adam was
When he first saw the sunrise over Eden.
It was unsunlike to uplift the glory
Of those life-giving rays, unwooed, uncourted.
Alas, you flatter. Did you love me, Antonio?
Three days before I had the bliss to win
The wonder of your eyes.
Three days, Antonio? Three whole days before
I loved you?
Three days, dearest.
Oh,
You’ve made me jealous. I am angry. Three
Whole days! How could it happen?
I will make
You compensation, dear; for in revenge
I’ll love you three whole days, when you have ceased
To love me.
O not even in jest, Antonio,
Speak of such separation. Sooner shall
The sun divorce his light than we two sunder.
But you have given me a spur. I must
Love you too much, I must, Antonio, more
Than you love me, or the account’s not even.
One passes in the street.
We are
Too near the window and too heedless, love.
Come this way; here ’tis safe; I fear your danger.
Exeunt. After a while enter Brigida.
No sound? Señor! Ismenia! Surely they cannot have embraced each other into invisibility. No, Cupid has flown away with them. It cannot have been the devil, for I smell no brimstone. Well, if they are so tedious I will not mortify myself with solitude either. I have set Don Cerberus on the stairs out of respect for the mythology. There he stands with his sword at point like the picture of a sentinel and protects us against a surprise of rats from the cellar; for what other wild beasts there may be to menace us, I know not. Don Mario snores hard and Donna Clara plays the violin to his bassoon. I have heard them three rooms off. These men! these men! and yet they call themselves our masters. I would I could find a man fit to measure tongues with me. I begin to feel lonely in the Alpine elevation of my own wit. The meditations of Matterhorn come home to me and I feel a sister to Monte Rosa. Certainly this woman’s fever is catching, and spreads a121 most calamitous infection. I have overheard myself sighing; it is a symptom incubatory. Heighho! when turtles pair, I never heard that the magpie lives lonely. I have at this moment a kindly thought for all suffering animals. I begin to pity Cerberus even. I will relieve him from guard. Hist! Señor! Don Basil!
Not a mouse stirring!
Put up your sword, pray you; I think there is no danger, and if one comes, you may draw again in time to cut its tail off.
At your service, Señorita.
If it were not treason to my wit, I begin to feel this strip of a girl is making an ass of me.
I am transformed; I feel it.
I shall hear myself bray presently.
But I will defy enchantment, I will handle her.
A plague!
Must I continually be stale-mated by a will-o’-the-wisp, all sparkle and nowhere?
Courage, Basil.
You meditate, Señor? If it be to allay the warmth you have brought from the stairs, with the coolness of reflection, I would not hinder you.
In bare truth, Señorita, I am so chilled that I was even about to beg of you a most sweet and warming cordial.
For a small matter like that, I would be loth to deny you. You shall have it immediately.
With your permission, then.
Ah, Señor, beware. Living coals are dangerous; they burn, Señor.
I am proof.
As the man said when he was bitten by the dog they thought mad; but it was122 the dog that died. Pray, Sir, have a care. You will put the fire out.
Come, I have you. I will take ten kisses for the one you refused me this forenoon.
That is too compound an interest. I do entreat you, Sir, have a care. This usury is punishable by the law.
I have the rich man’s trick for that. With the very coin I have unlawfully gathered, I will stop her mouth.
O Sir, you are as wasteful an accountant of kisses as of words. I foresee you will go bankrupt. No more, Señor, what noise was that on the stair? Good, now you have your distance. I will even123 trouble you to keep it. No nearer, I tell you. You do not observe the laws of the duello. You take advantages.
With me? Pooh, you grow ambitious. Because I knew that to stop your mouth was to stop your life, therefore in pity I have refused your encounter.124
Was it, truly? Alas, I could weep to think of the violence you have done yourself for my sake. Pray, sir, do not torture yourself so. To see how goodness is misunderstood in this world! Out of pity? And made me take you for a fool!
Well.
O no, Señor, it is not well, indeed it is not well.
You shall not do this again.
If I must die, I must die.
You are scatheless.
Pray now, disburden your intellect of all the brilliant things it has so painfully kept to itself.
Plethora is unwholesome and I would not have you perish of an apoplexy of wit.
Pour it out on me, conceit, epigram,
irony, satire, vituperation; flout and invective, tuquoque125 and double-entendre, pun and quibble, rhyme and unreason, catcall and onomatopoeia; all, all, though it be an avalanche.
It will be terrible, but I will stand the charge of it.
St. Iago! I think she has the whole dictionary in her stomach. I grow desperate.
Pray, do not be afraid. I do not indeed press you to throw yourself at my head, but for a small matter like your wit, I will bear up against it.
This girl has a devil.
Why are you silent, Señor? Are you angry with me? I have given you no cause. This is cruel. Don Basil, I have heard you cited everywhere for absolutely the most free and witty speaker of the age. They told me that if none other offer, you will jest with the statues in the Plaza Mayor and so wittily they cannot answer a word to you. What have I done that with me alone you are dumb?
I am bewitched certainly.
Señor, is it still pity? But why on me alone? O Sir, have pity on the whole world and be always silent. Well I see your benevolence is unconquerable. With your leave, we will pass from unprofitable talk; I would be glad to recall the sound of your voice. You may come nearer, since you decline the duello.
I thank you, Señorita. Whose sheep baaed then?
Don Basil, shall we talk soberly?
At your pleasure, Madam.
No Madam, Señor, but a poor companion. You go to Count Beltran’s house tomorrow?
It is so intended.
O the masque, who play it?
Masquers, Señorita.
O Sir, is this your pity? I told you, you would burst if you kept in your wit too long. But who are they by condition? Goddesses are the characters and by rule modern they should be live goddesses who play them.
They are so.
Are they indeed so lovely?
Euphrosyne, Christofir’s daughter, is simply the most exquisite beauty of the kingdom.
You speak very absolutely, Señor. Fairer than Ismenia?
I speak it with unwillingness, but honestly the Lady Ismenia, rarely lovely as she is, could not stand beside this miller’s126 daughter.
I think I have seen her and I do not remember so outshining a beauty.
Then cannot you have seen her, for the wonders she eclipses, themselves speak to their disgrace, even when they are women.
Pardon me if I take you to speak in the pitch of a lover’s eulogy.
Were it so, her beauty and gentleness deserve it; I have seen none worthier.
I wish you joy of her. I pray you for permission to leave you, Señor.
Save one indeed.
Ah! and who was she?
You will pardon me.
I will not press you, Sir, I do not know her, do I?
O ’tis not so much as that either.
’Twas only an orange-girl I saw once at Cadiz.
Oh!
Ha! she is galled, positively. This is as sweet to me as honey.
Well, Señor, your taste is as undeniable as your wit. Flour is the staff of life and oranges are good for a season. What does this paragon play?
Venus; and in the after-scene, Helen.
So? May I know the others? You may find one of them to be a poor cousin of mine.
Catriona, the bailly’s daughter to Count Conrad, and Sofronia, the student Geronimo’s127 sister; she too is of the Count’s household.
It is not then difficult to act in a masque.
A masque demands little, Señorita. A taking figure, a flowing step, a good voice, a quick memory — but for that a speaking memory hard by in a box will do much at an emergency.
True, for such long parts must be a heavy tax on the quickest.
There are but two such, Venus-Helen and Paris.
The rest are only a Zephyr’s dance in, a speech and a song to help the situation and out again with a scurry.
God be with you. You have a learned conversation and a sober, and for such I will always report you. But here comes a colon to it. We will keep the full stop for tomorrow.
I think the dawn moves in the east, Brigida.
Pray you, unlock the door, but noiselessly.
Teach me not. Though the wild torrent of this gentleman’s conversation have swept away half my wit, I have at a desperate peril saved the other half for your service. Come, Sir, I have need of you to frighten the mice away.
Dear, we must part. I would have you my necklace
That I might feel you round my neck for ever,
Or life be night and all men sleep that128 we
Need never part: but we must part, Antonio.
When I cease to feel.
I know you cannot, but I am so happy.
I love to play with my own happiness
And ask it questions. Dear, we shall meet soon.
I’ll make a compact with you, sweet.
You shall
Do all my will and make no question, till
We’re married; then you know, I am your servant.
Till then and after.
Go now,
Love, I must drive you out or you’ll not go.
One kiss.
You’ve had one thousand. Well, one more,
One only or I shall never let you part.
Are you both distracted? Is this, I pray you, a time for lingering and near dawn over the east? Out with you, Señor, or I will set your own Cerberus upon you, and I wager he bites well, though I think poorly of his bark.
O I have given all myself and kept
Nothing to live with when he’s gone from me.
My life’s his moon and I’m all dark and sad
Without him. Yesterday I was Ismenia,
Strong in myself, an individual woman.
Today I’m but the body of another,
No longer separate reality.
Well, if I gain him, let me lose myself,
And I’m still happy. The door shuts. He’s129 gone.
Come, get in, get in. Snatch a little sleep, for I promise you, you shall have none tomorrow.
How do you mean by that? Or is it jest merely?
Leave me alone. I have a whole drama in my head, a play in a play and yet no play. I have only to rearrange the parts a little and tomorrow’s sunlight shall see it staged, scened, enacted and concluded. To bed with you.
A room in Conrad’s house.
Where is Flaminia130?
He’s in waiting, Sir.
Call him.
I never loved before. Fortune,
I ask one day of thee and one great night,
Then do thy will. I shall have reached my summit.
My lord!
(Incomplete)
A sketch by Sri Aurobindo of the plot of three
scenes of Acts II and III (From 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4)
Act II
Scene 1
Conrad and Flaminio arrange to surprise the Alcalde’s house and carry off Euphrosyne; Brigida converses with Conrad.
Scene 2
Jacinto monologuises; Jacinto and his father; Jacinto and Euphrosyne; students, friends of Jacinto. Conrad and Euphrosyne.
Act III
Scene 1
Beltran and his sons. Ismenia, Brigida.
Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo: Set in 37 volumes.- Volumes 3-4.- Collected Plays and Stories.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1998.- 1008 p.
1 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, there are 12 lines before this one:
Conrad
Till when do we wait here?
Roncedas
The Court is dull.
This melancholy gains upon the King.
Conrad
I should be riding homeward. How long it is
To lose the noble hours so emptily.
Roncedas
This is a daily weariness. But look:
The King has left his toying with the tassels
Of the great chair and turns slow eyes to us.
2 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Your Highness?
3 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: What is your masque’s
4 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, there are 3 lines after this one:
For which I still must thank your loyal pains
To cheer our stay in this so famous city?
Shall we hear it?
5 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line and next line there is one line:
Nothing from me, Your Highness.
6 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4 instead of this line and next five lines there are 12 lines:
And hearts that beat to tread of empires, cannot
Keep pace with dances, entertainments, masques.
But here’s my son, a piece of modern colour,
For now our forward children overstep
Their rough begetters — ask him, Sire; I doubt not
His answers shall reveal the grace men lend him
In attribution,— would ’twere used more nobly.
King Philip
Your son, Lord Beltran? Surely you fatigued
The holy saints in heaven and perfect martyrs
In your yet hopeful youth, till they consented
To your best wish. What masque, Antonio?
7 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, there is a line after this one:
One little worthy, yet in a spirit framed
8 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: That may excuse much error; ’tis the Judgment
9 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Guzman
10 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Is that not very old?
11 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Brigida
12 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, there are 13 lines after this one:
King Philip
It has I think
Been staged a little often and though, Antonio,
I doubt not that fine pen and curious staging
Will raise it beyond new things rough conceived,
Yet is fresh subject something.
Antonio
For a play
It were so; this is none. Pardon me, Sir,
I err in boldness, urge too far my answer.
King Philip
Your boldness, youth, is others’ modesty.
Speak freely.
13 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Thus I say then. A masque is heard
14 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Once only and in that once must all be grasped at
15 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: But
16 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: While
17 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: over
18 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: If
19 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4 instead of this line there are two lines:
The mind is like a traveller pressed for time,
And quite engrossed with incident, omits
20 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: From haste to reach a goal.
21 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: old
22 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Leaves it at leisure and it culls at ease
23 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: art
Throws in, to justify genius. These being lost
24 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Then if old
25 In 1998 ed. this line is absent
26 amplifies
27 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line there are two lines:
For what’s creation but to make old things
Admirably new; the other’s mere invention,
28 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: A small gift
29 In 1998 ed. this line and next one are absent
30 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, the all fragment is:
You are blessed, Lord Beltran, in your son. His voice
Performs the promise of his eyes; he is
A taking speaker.
31 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: You have, Lord Beltran, lands of which the fame
32 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, the all line is: Gives much to Nature. I have not yet beheld them.
33 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: But
34 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: merely
35 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: great
36 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: So tell me,
37 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line and next line there is one line:
Have you not many lovely things to live with?
38 In 1998 ed. this line is absent
39 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, there is a line before this one:
I have not time for hatred or revenge.
40 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Sir
41 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: A patient
42 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: For
43 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: when
44 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: we
45 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Not man
46 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Nor angel, too
47 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: for
48 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line there are three lines:
Then vigorously his days endure till age
Sees his grandchildren climbing on his knees,
A happy calm old man; because he lived
49 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: expenditure
50 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line and next three lines (till words Inward a void...) there are these three lines:
Each mortal gift dependent on defect
And truth to one’s own self the only virtue.
The labourer physically is divine,
51 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: and
52 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: strengthening motion
53 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line there are two lines:
Abundant in her veins; her dumb attraction
Is as their mother’s arms, else like the lark
54 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: bound
55 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: towards the sun
56 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line and next line there are these two lines:
Full-tempered. Man Antaeuslike is strong
While he is natural and feels the soil
57 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Let
58 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line and next line there are these three lines:
The city’s many-minded son preserve
And the clear-natured peasant unabridged
Their just, great uses, heighten or refresh
59 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: By
60 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: I’ld
61 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: noble, you,
62 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: close
63 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Your
64 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: red-blooded
65 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: bloom
66 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: And there’s a Farmer’s
67 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: little
68 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: low knock
69 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: anger
70 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: If
71 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Gladly I’ll clasp it, easily forget
72 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: You
73 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: do
74 much
75 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line and next three lines (till words Has no sharp edge) there are six lines:
Mine was the stronger. When I was but a boy
I carved your lands out. So had you won mine
If you had simply grappled fortune to you
And kept her faithful with your sword. ’Tis not
Crooked dexterity that has the secret
To win her. Briefly I hold your lands and satire
76 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: favourites
77 In 1998 ed. this part of this line and all next line are absent
78 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, there ia a line after this one:
Exit Conrad.
79 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, there ia a line after this one:
What task?
80 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, the all line is:
Some girl-lifting. What other task
81 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Will he have now?
82 sheep,
83 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: hidden frailness
84 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: You’ve
85 for
86 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: you’re
87 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: I’ld
88 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: breed
89 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: this and without
90 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line there are two lines:
Well, quickly teach
Your diagram. Suppose your maid and win her.
91 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: love for
92 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, there is a line before this one:
I
93 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Marlborough
94 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: pock
95 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: length — no
96 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: indefinable — no
97 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: no! that fits not in; a
98 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: not you
99 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: I think you
100 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: unforgotten
101 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Here is
102 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: recognise
103 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: the
104 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Lest
105 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: drafts
106 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: There
107 beat
108 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: bignonias
109 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: half my
110 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: no more than saw
111 but there was nothing in that;
112 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: wasted
113 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: O Brigida
114 In 1998 ed. these words are absent
115 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: I’ll
116 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: of all spinsters and
117 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, there is a line after this one: Antonio, Basil.
118 In 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, instead of this line there are two lines:
Ismenia waiting.
Ismenia
119 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: beatst
120 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: O
121 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: a
122 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: ’twas
123 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: ev’n
124 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: encounter, in pure pity.
125 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: tu quoque
126 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: farmer’s
127 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: Jeronimo’s
128 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: then
129 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4: He is
130 1998 ed. CWSA, volumes 3-4, sic passim: Flaminio