Isabella. Why, did I not give you gowns and goodly things?
Bought you a whistle and a whipstalk[65] too,
To be revenged on their villanies?
Maid. Madam, these humours do torment my soul.
Isabella. My soul, poor soul; thou talk'st of things—
Thou know'st not what: my soul hath silver wings,
That mount me up unto the highest heavens:
To heaven! ay, there sits my Horatio,
Back'd with a troop of fiery cherubims,
Dancing about his newly-healed wounds,
Singing sweet hymns, and chanting heavenly notes,
Rare harmony to greet his innocence,
That died, ay, died a mirror in our days.
But say, where shall I find the men, the murderers,
That slew Horatio? Whither shall I run
To find them out that murdered my son? [Exeunt.
(2)
[Hieronimo, recovering his mental balance, perceives that Bazulto is not his son.]
Ay, now I know thee, now thou nam'st thy son:
Thou art the lively image of my grief;
Within thy face my sorrows I may see:
Thy eyes are gumm'd with tears, thy cheeks are wan,
Thy forehead troubled, and thy muttering lips
Murmur sad words abruptly broken off;
By force of windy sighs thy spirit breathes;
And all this sorrow riseth for thy son.
And selfsame sorrow feel I for my son.
Come in, old man, thou shalt to Isabel;
Lean on my arm; I thee, thou me, shalt stay;
And thou and I, and she, will sing a song,
Three parts in one, but all of discords fram'd.—
Talk not of chords, but let us now be gone,
For with a cord Horatio was slain.
Soliman and Perseda invites little further attention than that which one scene and one character alone demand. Its sharp descent from the tremendous force of The Spanish Tragedy is, however, slightly redeemed by the poetic warmth of its love passages. Love is the motive of the plot. Apart from that it sins unforgivably against probability, good taste, reason, and justice. Its reckless distribution of death is such that every one of the fourteen named characters come to a violent end, besides numerous nameless wretches referred to generically as witnesses or executioners. Nor is any attempt made to show just cause for their destruction. We could almost deny that the author of the previous tragedy had any hand in this play, did we not know, on the authority of his own signature, that the same author thought it worth his labour to translate Cornélie for the English stage. The fact was that dramatists had not yet the courage always to place their own artistic inclinations above the need of gratifying an unformed public taste, so that the same man may be found composing plays of widely differing natures for, presumably, different audiences.
The single character deserving mention is the boastful knight, Basilisco, whose incredible vaunts and invariable preference for the very freest of blank verse, in a play almost entirely exempt from either, read like an intentional burlesque of Tamburlaine. If so, and the suggestion is not ill-founded or improbable, it may be interpreted as an emphatic rejection of the influence of Marlowe and as a claim, on Kyd's part, to sole credit for his own form of tragedy and blank verse.
The only scene of conspicuous merit is that in which the Turkish Emperor, Soliman, attempts to kill his fair captive, Perseda, for rejecting his love, but is overcome by her beauty. It is quite short, but is handled with power and embellished with touches of delicate poetry. The best of it may be quoted here, together with a specimen of the Basilisco burlesque.
(1)