[305] “Bear coals” = put up with injuries.
[306] Not marked in ed. 1602.
[307] “Marry muffe”—a common expression of contempt.—Middleton, i. 42, 71, &c.]
SCENE II.
Enter Antonio solus, in fool’s habit.
Ant. Ay, heaven, thou may’st, thou may’st, omnipotence.
What vermin bred of putrefacted slime
Shall dare to expostulate with thy decrees!
O heaven, thou may’st indeed: she was all thine,
All heavenly: I did but humbly beg
To borrow her of thee a little time.
Thou gavest her me, as some weak-breasted dame
Giveth her infant, puts it out to nurse;
And when it once goes high-lone,[308] takes it back.
She was my vital blood, and yet, and yet, 10
I’ll not blaspheme. Look here! behold!
[Antonio puts off his cap and lieth just upon his back.
I turn my prostrate breast upon thy face,
And vent a heaving sigh. O hear but this!
I am a poor, poor orphant—a weak, weak child,—
The wrack of splitted fortune, the very ooze,
The quicksand that devours all misery.
Behold the valiant’st creature that doth breathe!
For all this I dare live, and I will live,
Only to numb some other’s cursèd blood
With the dead palsy of like misery. 20
Then, death, like to a stifling incubus,[309]
Lie on my bosom. Lo, see,[310] I am sped.
My breast is Golgotha, grave for the dead.
Enter Pandulpho, Alberto, and a Page, carrying Feliche’s trunk in a winding sheet, and lay it thwart Antonio’s breast.