Thou hast no hour to live.[They fight.
What dost thou mean? Thou canst not fight.
The blows thou mak'st at me are quite besides,
And those I offer at thee, thou spread'st thine arms
And tak'st upon thy breast, alas, defenceless!
Aspatia. I have got enough,
And my desire. There is no place so fit
For me to die as here.'
The fight, it will be observed, is akin to that between David Balfour and Alan Breck in Stevenson's 'Kidnapped,' but here the spectators' pity is more keenly worked on by the inexpert challenger being a woman and by the more tragical termination of the combat. As for the artist, no doubt he did his best.
In Beaumont and Fletcher's 'A King and No King,' printed by T. Walkley in 1619, the title-page shows a well-drawn figure of a man, above whose head, half on, half off it, a crown is held by an arm from the sky. In 'Swetnam the Woman-hater, arraigned by women,' printed for Richard Meighen the next year, a fairly good cut, which I regret to have remembered too late to have reproduced, exhibits Swetnam formally tried at bar, before a judge and jury of women.