But it is the next scene that the author seems to have reserved for putting forth his strongest powers of burlesque and broad humour. Isabella and Castaldo are together; the latter feels a little afraid to murder Martinuzzi, but is impelled to the deed by a thousand imaginary torches, which he fears will hurry his “moth-like soul” into their “blinding sun-beams,” till it (the soul) is scorched “into cinders.”
Castaldo appears, in truth, a very bad barber of murders; for, as he is rushing out to
“Strike the tyrant down—in crimson streams
Rend every nerve,”
Isabella has the shrewdness to discover that he is without a weapon. Important omission! The incipient assassin exclaims—
“Oh! that I had my sword!”
but at that moment (clever, dramatic contrivance!)
[Enter CZERINA, with a drawn sword.]
“CZERINA. There’s one! Thine own!”
Far from being grateful for this opportune supply of ways and means for murder. Castaldo calls the bilbo a “fated aspic,” upon the edge of which his “eye-balls crack to look,” and makes a raving exit from the stage, to a roaring laugh from the audience.