Yes, daughter, yes; you will assist the priest;
Yes, you must offer up your vows for Greece,
]
King. Ye stars! 'tis well, Were thy last hour to come,
This moment had been it; [1] yet by thy shroud
I'll pull thee backward, squeeze thee to a bladder,
Till thou dost groan thy nothingness away.
Thou fly'st! 'Tis well. [Ghost retires.
[2] I thought what was the courage of a ghost!
Yet, dare not, on thy life—Why say I that,
Since life thou hast not?—Dare not walk again
Within these walls, on pain of the Red Sea.
For, if henceforth I ever find thee here,
As sure, sure as a gun, I'll have thee laid—
[Footnote 1:
I'll pull thee backwards by thy shroud to light,
Or else I'll squeeze thee, like a bladder, there,
And make thee groan thyself away to air.
—Conquest of Granada.
Snatch me, ye gods, this moment into nothing.
—Cyrus the Great.
]
[Footnote 2:
So, art thou gone? Thou canst no conquest boast.
I thought what was the courage of a ghost.
—Conquest of Granada.
King Arthur seems to be as brave a fellow as Almanzor, who says most heroically,
In spite of ghosts I'll on.
]
Ghost. Were the Red Sea a sea of Hollands gin,
The liquor (when alive) whose very smell
I did detest—did loathe—yet, for the sake
Of Thomas Thumb, I would be laid therein.
King. Ha! said you?
Ghost. Yes, my liege, I said Tom Thumb,
Whose father's ghost I am—once not unknown
To mighty Arthur. But, I see, 'tis true,
The dearest friend, when dead, we all forget.