Bussy. Sweet mistresse, cease! your conscience is too nice,

And bites too hotly of the Puritane spice.

Tamyra. O, my deare servant, in thy close embraces

I have set open all the dores of danger

To my encompast honour, and my life:5

Before I was secure against death and hell;

But now am subject to the heartlesse feare

Of every shadow, and of every breath,

And would change firmnesse with an aspen leafe:

So confident a spotlesse conscience is,10

So weake a guilty. O, the dangerous siege

Sinne layes about us, and the tyrannie

He exercises when he hath expugn'd!

Like to the horror of a winter's thunder,

Mixt with a gushing storme, that suffer nothing15

To stirre abroad on earth but their own rages,

Is sinne, when it hath gathered head above us;

Buss. Sin is a coward, madam, and insults20

But on our weaknesse, in his truest valour:

And so our ignorance tames us, that we let

His shadowes fright us: and like empty clouds

In which our faulty apprehensions forge

The formes of dragons, lions, elephants,25

When they hold no proportion, the slie charmes

Of the witch policy makes him like a monster

Kept onely to shew men for servile money:

That false hagge often paints him in her cloth

Ten times more monstrous than he is in troth.30

In three of us the secret of our meeting

Is onely guarded, and three friends as one

Have ever beene esteem'd, as our three powers

That in our one soule are as one united:

Why should we feare then? for my selfe, I sweare,35

Sooner shall torture be the sire to pleasure,

And health be grievous to one long time sick,

Than the deare jewell of your fame in me

Be made an out-cast to your infamy;

Nor shall my value (sacred to your vertues)40

Onely give free course to it from my selfe,

Tam. It rests as all Kings seales were set in thee.

Now let us call my father, whom I sweare45

I could extreamly chide, but that I feare

To make him so suspicious of my love,

Of which (sweet servant) doe not let him know

For all the world.

Buss. Alas! he will not think it.

Tam. Come then—ho! Father, ope and take your friend.50

Fri. Now, honour'd daughter, is your doubt resolv'd?

Tam. I, father, but you went away too soone.

Fri. Too soone!

Tam. Indeed you did; you should have stayed;

Had not your worthy friend beene of your bringing,

And that containes all lawes to temper me,55

Not all the fearefull danger that besieged us

Had aw'd my throat from exclamation.

Fri. I know your serious disposition well.

Come, sonne, the morne comes on.

Tam. And you this chaine of pearle, and my love onely! Descendit Frier and D'Amb[ois].

It is not I, but urgent destiny

That (as great states-men for their generall end

In politique justice make poore men offend)

Enforceth my offence to make it just.65

What shall weak dames doe, when th' whole work of Nature

Hath a strong finger in each one of us?

Needs must that sweep away the silly cobweb

Of our still-undone labours, that layes still

Our powers to it, as to the line, the stone,70

Not to the stone, the line should be oppos'd.

We cannot keepe our constant course in vertue:

What is alike at all parts? every day

Differs from other, every houre and minute;

I, every thought in our false clock of life75

Oft times inverts the whole circumference:

We must be sometimes one, sometimes another.

Our bodies are but thick clouds to our soules,

Through which they cannot shine when they desire.

When all the starres, and even the sunne himselfe,80

Must stay the vapours times that he exhales

Mont. Good day, my love! what, up and ready too!

Tam. Both (my deare lord): not all this night made I

My selfe unready, or could sleep a wink.

Mont. Alas, what troubled my true love, my peace,90

From being at peace within her better selfe?

Or how could sleepe forbeare to seize thine eyes,

When he might challenge them as his just prise?

Tam. I am in no powre earthly, but in yours.

To what end should I goe to bed, my lord,95

That wholly mist the comfort of my bed?

Or how should sleepe possesse my faculties,

Wanting the proper closer of mine eyes?

Mont. Then will I never more sleepe night from thee:

Tam. Nay, good my lord, esteeme not my desires

Such doters on their humours that my judgement

Cannot subdue them to your worthier pleasure:105

A wives pleas'd husband must her object be

In all her acts, not her sooth'd fantasie.

Mont. Then come, my love, now pay those rites to sleepe

Thy faire eyes owe him: shall we now to bed?

Tam. O no, my lord! your holy frier sayes110

All couplings in the day that touch the bed

Adulterous are, even in the married;

Whose grave and worthy doctrine, well I know,

Your faith in him will liberally allow.

Mont. Hee's a most learned and religious man.115

Come to the Presence then, and see great D'Ambois

(Fortunes proud mushrome shot up in a night)

Stand like an Atlas under our Kings arme;

Which greatnesse with him Monsieur now envies

As bitterly and deadly as the Guise.120

Mont. Even the same.

Each naturall agent works but to this end,

To render that it works on like it selfe;

Which since the Monsieur in his act on D'Ambois125

Cannot to his ambitious end effect,

But that (quite opposite) the King hath power

(In his love borne to D'Ambois) to convert

The point of Monsieurs aime on his owne breast,

He turnes his outward love to inward hate:130

A princes love is like the lightnings fume,

Which no man can embrace, but must consume. Exeunt.