"Dutch. Not a whit:

What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smothered

With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits; and 't is found

They go on such strange geometrical hinges,

You may open them both ways: any way, for heaven sake,
So I were out of your whispering. Tell my brothers,
That I perceive death, now I am well awake,

Best gift is they can give, or I can take.

I would fain put off my last woman's fault,
I 'd not be tedious to you.

"Execut. We are ready.

"Dutch. Dispose my breath how please you, but my body

Bestow upon my women, will you?

"Execut. Yes.

"Dutch. Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength,

Must pull down heaven upon me:

Yet stay, heaven-gates are not so highly arch'd

As princes' palaces; they that enter there,

Must go upon their knees, Come, violent death,

"Dutch. Antonio!

"Bos. Yes, madam, he is living;

The dead bodies you saw, were but feign'd statues;
He 's reconciled to your brothers; the pope hath wrought

"Bos. O, she's gone again! there the cords of life broke.

O, sacred innocence, that sweetly sleeps

On turtles' feathers, whilst a guilty conscience

Is a black register, wherein is writ

All our good deeds and bad, a perspective
That shows us hell! That we cannot be suffer'd

To do good when we have a mind to it!

This is manly sorrow;

These tears, I am very certain, never grew
In my mother's milk: my estate is sunk
Below the degree of fear: where were
These penitent fountains, while she was living?
O, they were frozen up! here is a sight
As direful to my soul, as is the sword
Unto a wretch hath slain his father. Come,
I'll bear thee hence,

And execute thy last will; that's deliver
Thy body to the reverend dispose

Of some good women: that the cruel tyrant
Shall not deny me. Then I'll post to Milan,
Where somewhat I will speedily enact

1

But

The scene now changes to Milan, where Antonio resides. Ferdinand is there, raving mad; and his brother the Cardinal fears lest, in his paroxysms, he betray their common guilt. The church dignitary has a mistress, who discovers it; her he poisons; and Bosola, who knows too much, he is resolved to remove. Bosola has vengeance to exercise, and he is resolved to anticipate the cardinal. The very night on which the new tragedy is to be acted, Antonio resolves to visit the cardinal and supplicate for mercy: he is tired of confinement; he is weary of danger; and would rather fail in his suit, than live miserably. The scene in which, accompanied by his friend Delio, he gropes his way, by night, to the Cardinal's cloisters, is well described: it is graphic, melancholy, ominous :

"Delio. Yond 's the cardinal's window. This fortification Grew from the ruins of an ancient abbey; And to yond side o' th' river, lies a wall,

Piece of a cloister. which in my opinion

Thou art a dead thing.

"Ant. My dutchess is asleep now,

And her little ones, I hope sweetly: O heaven,
Shall I never see her more?

"Echo. Never see her more.

"Ant. I mark'd not one repetition of the echo

But that; and on the sudden a clear light
Presented me a face folded in sorrow.

"Delio. Your fancy merely.
"Ant. Come, I'll be out of this ague,
For to live thus, is not indeed to live;
It is a mockery and abuse of life;
I will not henceforth save myself by halves;
Lose all, or nothing."

How the grave of the Duchess came to be in Milan, and how the Cardinal and Ferdinand came there, might puzzle one that had the least notion of unity of place; but it was necessary to bring all the surviving actors together, in order to hasten the catastrophe. Antonio proceeds in the dark; he is killed by Bosola, who supposes him to be the Cardinal: the Cardinal himself is next found and stabbed; Ferdinand hastens to the same place, distracted, and fights with Bosola, who kills him, but not until he has received a mortal wound.

This tragedy, it will be seen, has improbabilities enough; and is deformed by a catastrophe no less bloody than that of The White Devil. Still it has merit. The attachment of Antonio and the Duchess is delicately and pleasingly described: "it is the wedded friendship of middle life transplanted to cheer the cold and glittering solitude of a court." There is something pathetic in the parting words she utters when, on their way to Loretto, she forces him to flee to Milan :

"The birds that live i' th' field

On the wild benefit of nature, live
Happier than we; for they may chuse their mates,
And carol their sweet pleasures to the spring.".

But the fondness of Webster for the awful, the fearful, the supernatural, is one of his chief characteristics. The drama of Vittoria was of this class : the silent sepulchre. the sculptured monument

the