Pier. She’s gone, and yet she’s here: she hath left a print
Of her sweet graces fix’d within my heart,
As fresh as is her face. I’ll marry her.
She’s most fair,—true; most chaste,—false;[258] because
Most fair, ’tis firm I’ll marry her.
Enter Strotzo.
Str. My lord.
Pier. Ha, Strotzo, my other soul, my life!
Dear, hast thou steel’d the point of thy resolve?
Will’t not turn edge in execution?
Str. No. 180
Pier. Do it with rare passion, and present thy guilt
As if ’twere wrung out with thy conscience’ gripe.
Swear that my daughter’s innocent of lust,
And that Antonio bribed thee to defame
Her maiden honour, on inveterate hate
Unto my blood; and that thy hand was feed
By his large bounty for his father’s death.
Swear plainly that thou choked’st Andrugio,
By his son’s only egging. Rush me in
Whilst Mellida prepares herself to die, 190
Halter about thy neck, and with such sighs,
Laments, and applications lifen it,
As if impulsive power of remorse——
Str. I’ll weep.
Pier. Ay, ay, fall on thy face and cry “why suffer you
So lewd a slave as Strotzo is to breathe?”
Str. I’ll beg a strangling, grow importunate——