Doct. Here, my lord. [Brings hour-glass.
Duke. Ah, ’tis near spent!
But, Doctor Benedict, does your art speak truth?
Art sure the soporiferous stream will ebb,
And leave the crystal banks of her white body
Pure as they were at first, just at the hour?
Doct. Just at the hour, my lord.
Duke. Uncurtain her:
[A curtain is drawn back and Infelice discovered lying on a couch.
Softly!—See, doctor, what a coldish heat
Spreads over all her body!
Doct. Now it works:
The vital spirits that by a sleepy charm
Were bound up fast, and threw an icy rust
On her exterior parts, now ’gin to break;
Trouble her not, my lord.
Duke. Some stools! [Servants set stools.] You called
For music, did you not? Oh ho, it speaks, [Music.
It speaks! Watch, sirs, her waking, note those sands.
Doctor, sit down: A dukedom that should weigh
Mine own down twice, being put into one scale,
And that fond[134] desperate boy, Hippolito,
Making the weight up, should not at my hands
Buy her i’th’other, were her state more light
Than her’s, who makes a dowry up with alms.
Doctor, I’ll starve her on the Apennine
Ere he shall marry her. I must confess,
Hippolito is nobly born; a man—
Did not mine enemies’ blood boil in his veins—
Whom I would court to be my son-in-law;
But princes, whose high spleens for empery swell,
Are not with easy art made parallel.
Servants. She wakes, my lord.
Duke. Look, Doctor Benedict—
I charge you on your lives, maintain for truth,
What e’er the doctor or myself aver,
For you shall bear her hence to Bergamo.