QUEEN. Where virtue, chastity, and innocence remain,
There is Matilda.
KING. How comes she, pray, to be so chaste, so fair:
So virtuous in your eye?
QUEEN. She freed me from my foes, and never urg'd
My great abuse when she was prisoner.
KING. What did you to her!
QUEEN. Rail'd upon her first,
Then tare her hair, and rent her tender cheeks.
KING. O heaven! was not the day dark at that foul deed?
Could the sun see without a red eclipse
The purple tears fall from those tyrant wounds?
Out, Ethiop, gipsy, thick-lipped blackamoor!
Wolf, tigress! worse than either of them both!
SAL. Are you advis'd, my lord?
KING. Out, doting earl!
Couldst thou endure to see such violence?
SAL. I tell you plain, my lord, I brook'd it not.
But stay'd the tempest.
KING. Rend my love's cheeks! that matchless effigy
Of wonder-working nature's chiefest work:
Tear her rich hair! to which gold wires,
Sun's rays, and best of best compares
(In their most pride) have no comparison.
Abuse her name! Matilda's sacred name!
O barbarous outrage, rudeness merciless!