Do you see this Gent(leman),
You that bring Thunders in your mouths, and Earthquakes,
To shake and totter my designs? Can you imagine
(You men of poor and common apprehensions)
While I admit this man, my Son, this nature
That in one look carries more fire, and fierceness,
Than all your Masters lives[162]; dare I admit him,
Admit him thus, even to my side, my bosom,
When he is fit to rule, when all men cry him,
And all hopes hang about his head; thus place him,
His weapon hatched in bloud; all these attending
When he shall make their fortunes, all as sudden,
In any expedition he shall point 'em,
As arrows from a Tartar's bow, and speeding,
Dare I do this, and fear an enemy?
Fear your great master? yours? or yours?
Here we have blank verse, distinctively Fletcherian with its feminine endings and its end-stopped lines. But, widely as this differs from the earlier rhythm of The Faithfull Shepheardesse and its more lyric precipitancy, the qualities of tone and diction are in the later play as in the earlier. The alliterations may not be so numerous, and are in general more cunningly concealed and interwoven, as in lines 2 to 4; but the cruder kind still appears as a mannerism, the "fire and fierceness," "hopes," "hang," and "head." The iterations of word, phrase, and rhetorical question, and of the resonant "all," the redundant nouns in apposition, the tautological enumeration of categories, proclaim the unaltered Fletcher. The adjectives are in this spot pruned, but they are luxuriant elsewhere in the play. The triplets,—"this man, my son, this nature,"—"admit," "admit," "admit," find compeers on nearly every page:
Shew where to lead, to lodge, to charge with safetie,—[163]
Here's a strange fellow now, and a brave fellow,
If we may say so of a pocky fellow.—[164]
And now, 't is ev'n too true, I feel a pricking,
A pricking, a strange pricking.—[165]
With such a sadness on his face, as sorrow,
Sorrow herself, but poorly imitates.
Sorrow of sorrows on that heart that caus'd it![166]
In the passages cited above there happen to be, also, a few examples of the elocutionary afterthought:
You come with thunders in your mouth and earthquakes,—
As arrows from a Tartar's bow, and speeding.—