The Friar dissuades the Husband of Tamyra from revenge.
Your wife’s offence serves not, were it the worst
You can imagine, without greater proofs,
To sever your eternal bonds and hearts;
Much less to touch her with a bloody hand:
Nor is it manly, much less husbandly,
To expiate any frailty in your wife
With churlish strokes or beastly odds of strength.—
The stony birth of clouds[248] will touch no laurel,
Nor any sleeper. Your wife is your laurel,
And sweetest sleeper; do not touch her then:
Be not more rude than the wild seed of vapour
To her that is more gentle than it rude.
C. L.
[245] D’Ambois: with whom she has an appointment.
[246] He wants to know the fate of Tamyra, whose intrigue with him has been discovered by her Husband.
[247] This calling upon Light and Darkness for information, but, above all, the description of the Spirit—“Threw his chang’d countenance headlong into clouds”—is tremendous, to the curdling of the blood.—I know nothing in Poetry like it.
[248] The thunderbolt.