Pier. Who gives these ill-befitting attributes
Of chaste, unspotted, bright, to Mellida?
He lies as loud as thunder: she’s unchaste,
Tainted, impure, black as the soul of hell.
[Antonio draws his rapier, offers to run at Piero, but Maria holds his arm and stays him.
Ant. Dog! I will make thee eat thy vomit up,
Which thou hast belkt ’gainst taintless Mellida.
Pier.[224] Ram’t quickly down, that it may not rise up
To imbraid[225] my thoughts. Behold my stomach;
Strike me quite through with the relentless edge 210
Of raging fury. Boy, I’ll kill thy love.
Pandulf Feliche, I have stabb’d thy son:
Look, yet his lifeblood reeks upon this steel.
Albert, yon hangs thy friend. Have none of you
Courage of vengeance? Forget I am your duke;
Think Mellida is not Piero’s blood;
Imagine on slight ground I’ll blast his honour;
Suppose I saw not that incestuous slave,
Clipping the strumpet with luxurious twines![226]
O, numb my sense of anguish, cast my life 220
In a dead sleep, whilst law cuts off yon maim,[227]
Yon putrid ulcer of my royal blood!
For. Keep league with reason, gracious sovereign.
Pier. There glow no sparks of reason in the world;
All are raked up in ashy beastliness.
The bulk of man’s as dark as Erebus,
No branch of reason’s light hangs in his trunk:
There lives no reason to keep league withal.
I ha’ no reason to be reasonable.
Her wedding eve, link’d to the noble blood 230
Of my most firmly-reconcilèd friend,
And found even cling’d in sensuality!
O heaven! O heaven! Were she as near my heart
As is my liver, I would rend her off.
Enter Strotzo.
Str. Whither, O whither shall I hurl vast grief!
Pier. Here, into my breast: ’tis a place built wide
By fate, to give receipt to boundless woes.