The Spanish Tragedie
Perseda griefe be not releast. BEL. [acting]  Tyrant, desist soliciting vaine sutes; Relentles are mine eares to thy laments As thy butcher is pittilesse and base Which seazd on my Erasto, harmelesse knight. Yet by thy power thou thinkest to commaund, And to thy power Perseda doth obey; But, were she able, thus she would reuenge Thy treacheries on thee, ignoble prince; Stab him. And on herselfe she would be thus reuengd. Stab herselfe. KING. Well said, old marshall! this was brauely done! HIERO. But Bel-imperia plauies Perseda well. VICE. Were this in earnest, Bel-imperia, You would be better to my sonne then so. KING. But now what followes for Hieronimo? HIERO. Marrie, this followes for Hieronimo! Heere breake we off our sundrie languages, And thus conclude I in our vulgare tung:     Happely you think—but bootles are your thoughts—     That this is fabulously counterfeit, And that we doo as all trageians doo,—     To die to-day, for fashioning our scene, The death of Aiax, or some Romaine peer, And, in a minute starting vp againe, Reuiue to please tomorrows audience. No, princes; know I am Hieronimo, The hopeles father of a haples sonne, Whose tung is tun'd to tell his latest tale, Not to excuse grosse errors in the play. I see your lookes vrge instance of these words:     Beholde the reason vrging me to this! Showes his dead sonne. See heere my shew; look on this spectacle! Heere lay my hope, and heere my hope hath end; Heere lay my hart, and heere my hart was slaine; Heere lay my treasure, heere my treasure lost; Heere lay my blisse, and heere my blisse bereft. But hope, hart, treasure, ioy and blisse,—     All fled, faild, died, yea, all decaide with this. From froth these wounds came breath that gaue me life; They murdred me that made these fatall markes. The cause was loue whence grew this mortall hate:     The hate, Lorenzo and yong Balthazar; The loue, my sonne to Bel-imperia. But night, the couerer of accursed crimes, With pitchie silence husht these traitors harmes, And lent them leaue—for they had sorted leasure—     To take aduantage in my garden plot Vpon my sonne, my deere Horatio. There mercilesse they butcherd vp my boy, In black, darke night, to pale, dim, cruell death! He shrikes; I heard—and yet, me thinks, I heare—     His dismall out-cry eccho in the aire; With soonest speed I hasted to the noise, Where, hanging on a tree, I found my sonne Through-girt with wounds and slaughtred, as you see. And greeued I, think you, at this spectacle? Speak, Portuguise, whose losse resembles mine! If 
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