B. Do you know me?
F. Oh, my lord, methodically: As in this world there are degrees of evils, So in this world there are degrees of devils. You're a great duke, I your poor secretary.
When the Duke dies and his prey escapes him, the rage of disappointment breaks into this fierce apostrophe:
I cannot conjure; but if prayers or oaths. Will get the speech of him, though forty devils Wait on him in his livery of flames, I'll speak to him and shake him by the hand, Though I be blasted.
As crimes thicken round him, and he still despairs of the reward for which he sold himself, conscience awakes:
I have lived
Riotously ill, like some that live in court,
And sometimes when my face was full of smiles Have felt the
maze of conscience in my breast.
The scholar's scepticism, which lies at the root of his perversity, finds utterance in this meditation upon death:
Whither shall I go now? O Lucian, thy ridiculous purgatory! to find Alexander the Great cobbling shoes, Pompey tagging points, and Julius Cæsar making hair-buttons!
Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, or all the elements by scruples, I know not, nor greatly care.
At the last moment he yet can say: