Brecht Collected Plays: 7: Visions of Simone Machard; Schweyk in the Second World War; Caucasian Chalk Circle; Duchess of Malfi (World Classics)
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DUCHESS
You are deceived, dear love.
She shows him the dagger.
ANTONIO
Ha, what means this?
DUCHESS
He left this with me and it seems did wish
I’d use it on myself.
ANTONIO
Give it to me.
The Duchess does not answer but lays the poignard down and goes on dressing.
Methinks some strange enchantment, sprung
From ties of blood hath bewitched thee. You seem
Altered and can hear your husband’s voice no more.
DUCHESS
Nay, Antonio, here is no time for pride.
It is your welfare that concerns me
And our children’s safety.
ANTONIO
Where are the children now?
CARIOLA
I have conveyed them to another wing of the palace.
The little boy hath asked for his father.
Knocking within.
DUCHESS
How now? Who knocks? More earthquakes? I stand
As if a mine beneath my feet were ready
To be blown up.
CARIOLA
’Tis Bosola.
DUCHESS
Away!
Oh misery! Methinks unjust actions
Should wear these masks and curtains and not we.
She embraces Antonio.
Now leave me. I have fashioned it already.
ANTONIO
Sadly.
I would you had given me leave to defend you
As any fishmonger would strike a blow
To shield his dear ones. But do not spare me.
Great adversaries now do menace you,
Let’s put an end to strife between us two.
Exit Antonio. Enter Bosola.
BOSOLA
The Duke, your brother, is ta’en up in a whirlwind,
Hath took horse an’s rid post to Rome.
DUCHESS
So late?
BOSOLA
He told me, as he mounted into the saddle,
You were undone.
DUCHESS
Indeed I am very near it.
BOSOLA
What’s the matter?
DUCHESS
Antonio, master of our household,
Hath dealt so falsely with me in’s accounts:
My brother stood engaged with me for money
Ta’en up of certain Milanese money-lenders
And Antonio let the bonds be forfeit.
BOSOLA
Strange! This is cunning.
DUCHESS
And hereupon
My brother’s bills at Naples are protested
Against. Call up our officers.
BOSOLA
I shall.
He exits. Antonio enters.
DUCHESS
The place that you must fly is to Ancona.
’Tis the diocese of my brother, the Lord
Cardinal. Surely he will be merciful
And give us shelter, and even sanctify
Our marriage for we may bribe him,
He is covetous. I’ll feign a pilgrimage
To our Lady of Loretto. We shall meet there.
Hire a house and I’ll send after you
My treasure and my jewels. Our weak safety
Runs upon ingenious wheels. Short syllables
Must stand for periods. I must now accuse you
Of such a feigned crime as is a noble lie
Cause it must shield our honours. I’ll give out
You have dealt falsely with me in your accounts.
ANTONIO
’Tis a good stratagem. Yet I do fear
Lest you yourself may learn to scorn me
When I am gone for you’ll have many teachers.
Say what you will but stop your ears with wax.
DUCHESS
Dear friend, I’ll love no one that hates thee.
Lacking your sweet presence, I’ll gaze upon
Your portrait oftener than my looking glass.
Hark, they are coming.
Enter Bosola and gentlemen.
ANTONIO
Will your grace hear me?
DUCHESS
I have got well by you, you have yielded me
A million of loss. I am like to inherit
The people’s curses for your stewardship.
You had the trick in audit time to be sick
Till I had signed your quietus and that cured you
Without the help of a doctor. Gentlemen,
I would have this man be an example to you all
So you shall hold my favour. Pray observe him
For he has done that, alas, you would not think of
And, because I intend to be rid of him,
I mean not to publish. Use your fortune elsewhere.
ANTONIO
I am strongly armed to brook my overthrow
As commonly men bear with a hard year.
I will not blame the cause on it but do think
The necessity of my malevolent star
Procures this, not her humour. O the inconstant
And rotten ground of service! You may see
’Tis even like him that in a winter night
Takes a long slumber o’er a dying fire,
As loath to part from it, yet parts thence as cold
As when he first sat down.
DUCHESS
We do confiscate,
Towards the satisfying of your accounts,
All that you have.
ANTONIO
I am all yours and ’tis very fit
All mine should be so.
DUCHESS
So, sir, you have your pass.
ANTONIO
You may see, gentlemen, what it is to serve
A prince with body and soul.
Exit.
BOSOLA
Here’s an example for extortion; what moisture is drawn out of the sea, when foul weather comes, pours down and runs into the sea again.
DUCHESS
I would know what are your opinions of this Antonio.
2nd OFFICER
He could not abide to see a pig’s head gaping. I thought your grace would find him a Jew.
3rd OFFICER
I would you had been his officer for your own sake.
4th OFFICER
You would have had more money.
1st OFFICER
He stopped his ears with black wool and to those that came to him for money said he was thick of hearing.
2nd OFFICER
Some said he was a hermaphrodite for he could not abide a woman.
4th OFFICER
And how scurvy proud he would look when the treasury was full! Well, let him go.
1st OFFICER
Yes, and the chippings of the buttery fly after him to scour his golden chain.
DUCHESS
Leave us, Gentlemen.
Exeunt officers. Bosola remains. At first the Duchess pays no attention to him then begins to listen as he speaks.
BOSOLA
Alas, poor gentleman!
DUCHESS
Poor! He has amply filled his coffers.
BOSOLA
Sure he was too honest.
These are rogues that in his prosperity could have wished
His dirty stirrup rivetted through their noses;
Would have prostituted their daughters to his lust,
Made their first born intelligencers; and do these lice
Drop off now?
DUCHESS
I did not know you were his friend.
BOSOLA
Let me show you what a most unvalued jewel
You have in a wanton humour thrown away.
To bless the man shall find him. He was an excellent
Courtier and most faithful; a soldier that thought it
As beastly to know his own value too little
As
devilish to acknowledge it too much.
Both his virtue and his form deserved a far better fortune;
His breast was filled with all perfection,
And yet it seemed a private whispering room,
It made so little noise of it.
DUCHESS
But he was basely descended.
BOSOLA
Will you make yourself a mercenary herald
Rather to examine men’s pedigrees than virtues?
You shall miss him;
For know an honest statesman to a prince
Is like a cedar planted by a spring;
The spring bathes the tree’s root, the grateful tree
Rewards it with his shadow. You have not done so.
I would sooner swim to the Bermudas on two politicians’
Rotten bladders, tied together with an intelligencer’s heartstring
Than depend upon so changeable a prince’s favour.
Fare thee well, Antonio! Since the malice of the world
Would needs down with thee, it can not be said yet
That any ill thing happened to thee, considering thy fall
Was accompanied with virtue.
DUCHESS
Oh you render me excellent music!
BOSOLA
Say you?
DUCHESS
This good one that you speak of is my husband.
BOSOLA
Do I not dream? Can this ambitious age
Have so much goodness in it as to prefer
A man merely for worth, without these shadows
Of wealth and painted honours? Possible?
DUCHESS
I have had three children by him.
BOSOLA
Fortunate lady!
For you have made your private nuptial bed
The humble and fair seminary of peace.
And the neglected poets of your time
In honour of this trophy of a man
Raised by that curious engine your white hand
Shall thank you in your grave for it; and make that
More reverend than all the cabinets
Of living princes. For Antonio,
His fame shall likewise flow from many a pen
When heralds shall want coats to sell to men.
DUCHESS
As I taste comfort in this friendly speech.
So I would find concealment.
You shall take charge of all my coin and jewels
And follow him for he retires himself to Ancona,
Whither within a few days I mean to follow thee.
Duchess exits.
BOSOLA
What rests but I reveal all to my lord?
Now for this act I am certain to be raised
And men that paint weeds to the life are praised.
Scene 4
A Room in the Cardinal’s Palace.
On stage Cardinal and Ferdinand with a letter.
FERDINAND
She’s loose in the hilts;
Grown a notorious strumpet.
CARDINAL
Speak lower.
FERDINAND
Lower?
Read here what’s written by my intelligencer.
A servant, her own steward!
CARDINAL
Reads letter.
Can this be certain?
FERDINAND
Rhubarb, oh for rhubarb
To purge this choler! Here’s the cursed day
To prompt my memory and here it shall stick
Till of her bleeding heart I make a sponge
To wipe it out.
CARDINAL
Why do you make yourself
So wild a tempest?
FERDINAND
Would I could be one
That I might toss her palace ’bout her ears,
Root up her goodly forests, blast her
And lay her general territory as waste
As she hath done her honor.
CARDINAL
Shall our blood,
The royal blood of Aragon and Castile
Be thus attainted?
FERDINAND
Apply desperate physic,
We must not now use balsamum but fire,
The smarting cupping glass for that’s the means
To purge infected blood, such blood as hers.
There is a kind of pity in mine eye—
I’ll give it to my handkerchief and now ’tis here.
I’ll bequeath this to her bastards.
CARDINAL
What to do?
FERDINAND
Why to make soft lint for their mother’s wounds
When I have hewed her to pieces.
CARDINAL
Cursed creature.
FERDINAND
Foolish men,
That ere will trust their honour in a bark
Made of so slight, weak bullrush as is woman,
Apt every minute to sink it.
CARDINAL
This ignorance, when it hath purchased honour,
It can not wield it.
FERDINAND
Methinks I see her laughing,
Excellent hyena! Talk to me somewhat quickly,
Or my imagination will carry me
To see her in the shameful act of sin.
CARDINAL
With Antonio?
FERDINAND
As soon do it with some strong-thighed bargeman
Or one o’ the woodyard that can quoit the sledge
Or toss the bar, or else some lovely squire
That carries coal up to her private lodging.
CARDINAL
You fly beyond your reason.
FERDINAND
Go to, mistress!
’Tis not your whore’s milk that shall quench my wildfire,
But your whore’s blood.
CARDINAL
How idly shows this rage, which carries you
As men conveyed by witches through the air
On violent whirlwinds! This intemperate noise
Fitly resembles deaf men’s shrill discourse,
Who talk aloud, thinking all other men
To have their imperfection.
FERDINAND
Have you not
My palsy?
CARDINAL
Yes, I can be angry
Without this rupture.
Looks at letter.
She will visit Ancona.
FERDINAND
You shall not receive her!
CARDINAL
I will think upon it.
FERDINAND
I could kill her now,
In you or in myself, for I do think
It is some sin in us heaven doth revenge
By her.
CARDINAL
Are you stark mad?
FERDINAND
I would have their bodies
Burnt in a coal pit with the ventage stopped
That their cursed smoke might not ascend to heaven;
Or dip the sheets they lie in in pitch or sulphur,
Wrap them in it and then light them like a match;
Or else boil their bastards to a cullice
And give it to their lecherous father to renew
The sin of his back.
CARDINAL
Coldly.
I’ll leave you.
FERDINAND
Nay, I have done.
I am confident that had I been damned in hell
And should have heard of this, it would have put me
Into a cold sweat. In, in! I’ll go sleep.
Now that I know who leaps my sister
I’ll find scorpions to string my whips
And fix her in a general eclipse.
Ferdinand exits.
CARDINAL
Calls.
Julia, come forth.
JULIA
Comes out of hiding, perhaps from behind a screen.
I will not be served thus. I will not be hidden
Like a common strumpet. I’ll home to my husband.
CARDINAL
What trick didst thou invent to come to Rome
Without him?
JULIA
Why, my lord, I told him
I came to visit an old hermit here
For my devotions. But I will not stay.
CARDINAL
When thou art with thy husband
Thou hast only kisses from him and high feeding.
But what delight is that? ’Tis just like one
That hath a little fingering on the lute
But cannot tune it.
JULIA
You told me of a piteous wound in the heart
And a sick liver when you wooed me first.
CARDINAL
Come, I’ll love you wisely. That’s jealously
Since I am very certain you cannot make me cold.
JULIA
You have prevailed with me beyond my strongest thoughts.
I would not now find you inconstant.
CARDINAL
You fear
My constancy because you have approved
Those giddy and wild turnings in yourself.
JULIA
Shamelessly.
Had you been i’ the street’ under my chamber window Even there I would have courted you.
CARDINAL
I pray thee, come kiss me. I have news for thee.
JULIA
What is it?
CARDINAL
The Spanish jennet you have begged for
You shall have.
JULIA
You told me that you lacked for money.
CARDINAL
I will have some shortly.
JULIA
How?
CARDINAL
Do not ask.
JULIA
Fingering the gold chain he wears.
This is gold.
CARDINAL
Hath it not a fine colour?
JULIA
I have a bird more beautiful.
CARDINAL
It hath
A pretty sound.
JULIA
A lute string far exceeds it.
It hath no smell like lavender or civet.
CARDINAL
Yet ’tis able to set husband against wife,
Brother against sister and turn saint into sinner.
It is a very valorous mineral,
Who hath it needs no arms to rule the world.
Scene 5
The Shrine of our Lady of Loretto in Ancona. Enter two pilgrims.
1st PILGRIM
We are fortunate our pilgrimage brings us
Here today. The cardinal himself conducts
The service for his sister, the duchess
Who hath arrived from Malfi to pay her vow
At the shrine of Our Lady of Loretto.
2nd PILGRIM
She hath much need to pray. ’Tis whispered
Through all Ancona that she came seeking shelter
For her steward lover and her bastards.
1st PILGRIM
Is not this a grievous sin in the eyes of the church?
2nd PILGRIM
Not if it be performed in the bedchamber
Of a palace.
1st PILGRIM
Who would have thought