OF
ANTONIO AND MELLIDA.
ACT I.
SCENE I.
Neighbourhood of Venice.
The cornets sound a battle within.
Enter Antonio, disguised like an Amazon.
Ant. Heart, wilt not break? and thou abhorrèd life,
Wilt thou still breathe in my enragèd blood?
Veins, sinews, arteries, why crack ye not,
Burst and divulst with anguish of my grief?
Can man by no means creep out of himself,
And leave the slough of viperous grief behind?
Antonio, hast thou seen a fight at sea,
As horrid as the hideous day of doom,
Betwixt thy father, Duke of Genoa,
And proud Piero, the Venetian Prince: 10
In which the sea hath swoln with Genoa’s blood,
And made spring-tides with the warm reeking gore,
That gush’d from out our galleys’ scupper-holes?
In which thy father, poor Andrugio,
Lies sunk, or leap’d into the arms of chance,
Choked with the labouring ocean’s brackish foam;
Who, even despite Piero’s canker’d hate,
Would with an armèd hand have seized thy love,
And link’d thee to the beauteous Mellida.
Have I outlived the death of all these hopes? 20
Have I felt anguish pour’d into my heart,
Burning like balsamum in tender wounds!
And yet dost live! Could not the fretting sea
Have roll’d me up in wrinkles of his brow?
Is death grown coy, or grim confusion nice,
That it will not accompany a wretch,
But I must needs be cast on Venice’ shore,
And try new fortunes with this strange disguise
To purchase my adorèd Mellida?