ACT THE FIFTH.
SCENE I.—Before Priuli's house.
Enter Priuli.
Priu. Why, cruel Heaven, have my unhappy days
Been lengthened to this sad one? Oh! dishonour
And deathless infamy is fallen upon me.
Was it my fault? Am I a traitor? No.
But then, my only child, my daughter wedded;
There my best blood runs foul, and a disease
Incurable has seized upon my memory,
To make it rot and stink to after ages.
Cursed be the fatal minute when I got her!
Or would that I'd been anything but man,
And raised an issue which would ne'er have wronged me!
The miserablest creatures (man excepted)
Are not the less esteemed, though their posterity
Degenerate from the virtues of their fathers;
The vilest beasts are happy in their offsprings;
While only man gets traitors, whores, and villains.
Cursed be the names, and some swift blow from fate
Lay his head deep, where mine may be forgotten!
Enter Belvidera in a long mourning veil.
Belv. [Aside.] He's there, my father, my inhuman father,
That, for three years, has left an only child
Exposed to all the outrages of fate
And cruel ruin—Oh!
Priu. What child of sorrow
Art thou, that comest thus wrapped in weeds of sadness,
And movest as if thy steps were towards a grave?