"Good comfortable fellow,
Persuade a wretch that's broke upon the wheel
To have all his bones new set; entreat him live
To be executed again. Who must despatch me?...
Bosola. Come, be of comfort, I will save your life.
Duchess. Indeed, I have not leisure to tend
So small a business.
B. Now, by my life, I pity you.
D. Thou art a fool, then,
To waste thy pity on a thing so wretched
As cannot pity itself. I am full of daggers."[473]
Slow words, spoken in a whisper, as in a dream, or as if she were speaking of a third person. Her brother sends to her a company of madmen, who leap and howl and rave around her in mournful wise; a pitiful sight, calculated to unseat the reason; a kind of foretaste of hell. She says nothing, looking upon them; her heart is dead, her eyes fixed, with vacant stare:
"Cariola. What think you of, madam?
Duchess. Of nothing:
When I muse thus, I sleep.
C. Like a madman, with your eyes open?
D. Dost thou think we shall know one another
In the other world?
C. Yes, out of question.
D. O that it were possible we might
But hold some two days' conference with the dead!
From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,
I never shall know here. I'll teach thee a miracle;
I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow:
The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass,
The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.
I am acquainted with sad misery
As the tann'd galley-slave is with his oar...."[474]
In this state, the limbs, like those of one who has been newly executed, still quiver, but the sensibility is worn out; the miserable body only stirs mechanically; it has suffered too much. At last the gravedigger comes with executioners, a coffin, and they sing before her a funeral dirge:
"Duchess. Farewell, Cariola...
I pray thee, look thou giv'st my little boy
Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl
Say her prayers ere she sleep.—Now, what you please:
What death?
Bosola. Strangling; here are your executioners.
D. I forgive them:
The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o' the lungs
Would do as much as they do.... My body
Bestow upon my women, will you?...
Go, tell my brothers, when I am laid out,
They then may feed in quiet."[475]
After the mistress the maid; the latter cries and struggles:
"Cariola. I will not die; I must not; I am contracted
To a young gentleman.
1st Executioner. Here's your wedding-ring.
C. If you kill me now,
I am damn'd. I have not been at confession
This two years.
B. When?[476]
C. I am quick with child."[477]
They strangle her also, and the two children of the duchess. Antonio is assassinated; the cardinal and his mistress, the duke and his confidant, are poisoned or butchered; and the solemn words of the dying, in the midst of this butchery, utter, as from funereal trumpets, a general curse upon existence:
"We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves,
That, ruin'd yield no echo. Fare you well....
O this gloomy world!
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!"[478]
"In all our quest of greatness,
Like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care,
We follow after bubbles blown in the air.
Pleasure of life, what is't? only the good hours
Of an ague; merely a preparative to rest,
To endure vexation....
Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust."[479]
You will find nothing sadder or greater from the Edda to Lord Byron.