Ser. What means my lord to be pleas'd with this
Sad news? How can this stranger have offended him?
I'll follow, learn the issue, and the cause. [Aside. Exit.
Enter the Moor on her bed, Hermione, Phillida, and Irene. The bed thrust out.
Moor. O, O, O gods! If I have merited your hate,
You might have laid it on, until my name
Had been a word to express full misery,
And I had thank'd you, if you had forborne
To make his innocence the instrument
Of your dire wrath. Hermione, Irene,
I have conjur'd my servants not to tell you,
When I am dead, who I was: but if
Their weakness shall discover't, let it be hid
From the best Lysicles: I burn, I burn,
And death dares not seize me, frighted
With the furies that torment me.
Her. Mysterious powers! Instruct us in the way
You would be serv'd, for we are ignorant;
Your thunder else would not be aim'd at those,
That follow virtue, as it is prescrib'd,
Whilst thousand others 'scape unpunished,
That violate the laws we are taught to keep.
Enter Lysicles.
Lys. What mean these sad expressions of sorrow?
Her. O my lord, nature had not made our hearts
Capable of pity if we forbear it here:
The virtuous Acanthe has been tormented
With pains nothing is able to express
But her own groans: she fears she's poison'd;
Talks of you, of tombs, and of Milesia,
And in the midst of all her torture says
Her distrust and jealousy deserve a greater punishment.
Lys. And I believe't, nor should you pity her:
Those that do trace forbidden paths of knowledge
The gods reserve unto themselves, do never do't,
But with intent to ruin the believers,
And venturers on their art. Something I know
O' th' curs'd effects of her commanding magic,
And she (no doubt) is conscious to herself
Of infinite more mischiefs than are yet reveal'd.
I am confident she is fled her country
For the ills she has done there, and now
The punishment has overta'en her here.
And, for her shows of virtue, they are masks
To hide the rottenness that lies within,
And gain her credit with some dissembled acts
Of piety, which levels her a passage
To those important mischiefs hell
Has employ'd her here to execute.
Moor. O gods! deny me not a death, since you
Have given me the tortures that advance it:
If I deserve this, your inflicting hands
Do reach unto the shades, lay it on there.
Hermione, Irene, is Lysicles yet come?
Lys. Yes, to counsel you to pacify the gods
You have offended by your cursed arts:
The blessed ghost you sent me to has told me
Some sad effects on it, and in her name and cause
Have the gods hurl'd this punishment on thy
Foul soul, and made my grief, enrag'd to madness,
The blessed instrument of thy destruction,
Which does but here begin.