Rothsay. In the market-place
Slaves stand for sale. I will not sit; I’ll stand
In purchasable shame before you all
Who bargain for my manhood; stand and watch
My father sell the birthright of my flesh;
Yea, stand and bear a sacrilege my youth
Must damn itself to credit.
King. David, peace!
. . . . .
Rothsay. Nothing glorious
Is marketable—;fame, nor love, nor deeds
Of any virtue, youth nor happiness;
Nothing, oh nothing, but the meanest things,
Of which I am the meanest. On my soul,
You drag me in the dirt, and there I’ll lie
And dash it in your faces....
Albany. Wherefore all this noise
And rampant passion? We would understand
The tossing cause thereof.
Rothsay. Speak it! Oh no!
’Twould want an old and worldly merchant, one
Who has a counting-house. I’m still a prince
About the lips, nor know your tricks with coin,
Your sales of man for woman, your low truck
And miserable frauds. You’ve ruined me,
And thrown my youth down to the bottom step
Of Pride’s high stairs. I’ll never climb again.
. . . . .
Oh, write your contract, for it joins my life
To snaky-headed Sin, in whose hot breast
I’ll know what pleasure is. Call forth your priest—;
He’s but a pander in the guise of Heaven.
Let Hymen’s torches flare—;they smell of pitch
And sulph’rous fever of contemn’d desire;
Ring from your steeples—;’tis the curfew-bell;
Prepare your bridal-veil—;’tis hiding night;
Present your hateful bride to pulseless arms—;
And Lust receives the harlot in its clasp.
Act I, Scene 3
Rothsay. Oh, all the shame
You’ve struck into my being will be there,
When it is opened to its secret depth
Before the Judgment seat, and lo! old men
Will answer for the sins that they have done
Across the years to those in backward Time’s
Most lovely season.
Act II, Scene 2
The scenes in Act IV, when Rothsay is starving to death in Falkland Castle, are vividly imagined: