A YORK-SHIRE TRAGEDY
Page: 16

That man is nearest shame that is past shame.

[Exit.]


SCENE X. Before Calverly Hall.

[Enter Husband with the officers, The Master and gentlemen,
as going by his house.]


HUSBAND.
I am right against my house, seat of my Ancestors: I hear my
wife's alive; but much endangered. Let me intreat to speak
with her, before the prison gripe me.

[Enter his wife, brought in a chair.]

GENTLEMAN.
See here she comes of her self.

WIFE.
Oh my sweet Husband, my dear distressed husband,
Now in the hands of unrelenting laws!
My greatest sorrow, my extremest bleeding,
Now my soul bleeds.

HUSBAND.
How now? kind to me? did I not wound thee, left thee for dead?

WIFE.
Tut, far greater wounds did my breast feel:
Unkindness strikes a deeper wound than steel;
You have been still unkind to me.

HUSBAND.
Faith, and so I think I have:
I did my murthers roughly, out of hand,
Desperate and sudden, but thou hast deviz'd
A fine way now to kill me, thou hast given mine eyes
Seven wounds a piece; now glides the devil from me,
Departs at every joint, heaves up my nails.
Oh catch him new torments, that were near invented,
Bind him one thousand more, you blessed Angels,
In that pit bottomless; let him not rise
To make men act unnatural tragedies,
To spread into a father, and in fury,
Makes him his childrens executioners:
Murder his wife, his servants, and who not?
For that man's dark, where heaven is quite forgot.

WIFE.
Oh my repentant husband.

HUSBAND.
My dear soul, whom I too much have wrongd,
For death I die, and for this have I longd.

WIFE.
Thou sholdst not (be assurde) for these faults die,
I ft he law could forgive as soon as I.

HUSBAND.
What sight is yonder?

[Children laid out.]

WIFE.
Oh, our two bleeding boys
Laid forth upon the thresholds.

HUSBAND.
Here's weight enough to make a heart-string crack.
Oh, were it lawful that your pretty souls
Might look from heaven into your fathers eyes,
Then should you see the penitent glasses melt,
And both your murthers shoot upon my cheeks;
But you are playing in the Angels laps,
And will not look on me,