Tor. Proclaim my title,

To save the effusion of my subjects' blood, and thou shalt still

Be as my foster-father, near my breast,
And next my Leonora.

Ray. That word stabs me;

You shall be still plain Torrismond with me,
The abettor, partner, (if you like that name)
The husband of a tyrant; but no king,
Till

you deserve that title by your justice. Tor. Then, farewell pity; I will be obeyed. [To the people.] Hear, you mistaken men, whose loyalty

Runs headlong into treason, see your prince;
In me behold your murdered Sancho's son:
Dismiss your arms, and I forgive your crimes.
Ray. Believe him not; he raves: his words
are loose

As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense.
You see he knows not me, his natural father!
But, aiming to possess the usurping queen,
So high he's mounted in his airy hopes,
That now the wind is got into his head,
And turns his brains to frenzy.

Tor. Hear me yet; I am-
Ray. Fall on, and hear him not;
But spare his person for his father's sake.

Ped. Let me come. If he be mad, I have that shall cure him; there's not a surgeon in all Arragon has so much dexterity as I have, at breathing of the temple-vein.

Tor. My right for me!
Ray. Our liberty for us!
Omnes. Liberty, liberty!

[As they are ready to fight,

Enter LORENZO and his party.

Take your own crown from Leonora's gift, And hug your father's murderer in your arms.

Enter Queen, TERESA, and Women, Alph. No more: behold the queen. Ray. Behold the basilisk of Torrismond, That kills him with her eyes. I will speak on. My life is of no further use to me;

I would have chaffered it before for vengeance; Now let it go for failing.

Tor. [Aside.] My heart sinks in me while I hear him speak,

And every

slackened fibre drops its hold, Like nature letting down the springs of life; So much the name of father awes me still. Send off the crowd. For you, now I have conquered,

I can hear with honour your demands.

Lor. [To ALPH.] Now, sir, who proves the traitor?

My conscience is true to me; it always whispers Right when I have my regiment to back it.

[Exeunt all but TOR. RAY. and Queen. Tor. Oh, Leonora! what can love do more? I have opposed your ill fate to the utmost, Combated heaven and earth to keep you mine; And yet, at last, that tyrant, justice-Oh!

Qu. 'Tis past, 'tis past, and love is ours no

arms.

Alph. How, rebel! art thou there?

Lor. Take your rebel back again, father mine. The beaten party are rebels to the conquerors. I have been at hard-head with your butting citizens; I have routed your herd: I have dispersed them; and now they are retreated quietly from their extraordinary vocation of fighting in the streets, to their ordinary vocation of cozening in their shops.

Tor. [To RAY.] You see 'tis vain contending with the truth;

Acknowledge what I am.

Ray, You are my king; would you would be

To lose a crown and lover in a day.
Let pity lend a tear when rigour strikes.

Ray. Then, then you should have thought of tears and pity,

When virtue, majesty, and hoary age
Pleaded for Sancho's life.

Qu. My future days shall be one whole contrition;

A chapel will I build, with large endowment,
Where every day, an hundred aged men
Shall all hold up their withered hands to Heaven,
To pardon Sancho's death.

Tor. See, Raymond, see, she makes a large

amends.

Sancho is dead; no punishment of her
Can raise his cold stiff limbs from the dark grave;
Nor can his blessed soul look down from Hea-

ven,

Or break the eternal sabbath of his rest,
To see, with joy, her miseries on earth.
Ray. Heaven may forgive a crime to peni-
tence;

For Heaven can judge if penitence be true;
But man, who knows not hearts, should make ex-
amples;

Which, like a warning-piece, must be shot off, To fright the rest from crimes.

Qu. Had I but known that Sancho was his father,

I would have pour'd a deluge of my blood
To save one drop of his.

Tor. Mark that, inexorable Raymond, mark, 'Twas fatal ignorance that caused his death. Ray. What if she did not know he was your father?

She knew he was a man, the best of men, Heaven's image double-stamp'd, as man and king.

Qu. He was, he was, even more than you can say;

But yet

Ray. But yet you barbarously murder'd him. Qu. He will not hear me out!

Tor. Was ever criminal forbid to plead ? Curb your ill-manner'd zeal.

Ray. Sing to him, syren;

For I shall stop my ears. Now mince the sin,
And mollify damnation with a phrase:
Say, you consented not to Sancho's death,
But barely not forbade it.

Qu. Hard-hearted man! I yield my guilty

cause;

But all my guilt was caused by too much love.
Had I for jealousy of empire sought
Good Sancho's death, Sancho had died before.
'Twas always in my power to take his life;

But interest never could my conscience blind,
Till love had cast a mist before my eyes,
And made me think his death the only means
Which could secure my throne to Torrismond.
Tor. Never was fatal mischief meant so kind;
For all she gave has taken all away.
Malicious powers! Is this to be restored?
'Tis to be worse deposed than Sancho was.
Ray. Heaven has restored you, you deposed
yourself.

Oh, when young kings begin with scorn of justice,
They make an omen to their after-reign,
And plot their annals in the foremost page!
Tor. No more; lest you be made the first ex-
ample,

To show how I can punish.

Ray. Once again,

Let her be made your father's sacrifice, And after make me her's.

Tor. Condemn a wife!

Tht were t' atone for parricide with murder. Ray. Then let her be divorced: we'll be con

tent

With that poor scanty justice. Let her part. Tor. Divorce! that's worse than death; 'tis, death of love.

Qu. The soul and body part not with such pain,

As I from you; but yet 'tis just, my lord:
I am the accurst of heaven, the hate of earth,
Your subjects' detestation, and your ruin;
And therefore fix this doom upon myself.

Tor. Heaven! can you wish it? to be mine no more?

Qu. Yes, I can wish it, as the dearest proof, And last that I can make you of my love. To leave you blest, I would be more accurst Than death can make me; for death ends our

woes,

And the kind grave shuts up the mournful scene: But I would live without you, to be wretched long,

And hoard up every moment of my life,
To lengthen out the payment of my tears,
Till even fierce Raymond at the last shall say,
Now let her die, for she has grieved enough.

Tor. Hear this, hear this, thou tribune of the people;

Thou zealous, public blood-hound, hear, and melt.

Ray. [Aside.] I could cry now, my eyes grow womanish,

But yet my heart holds out.

Qu. Some solitary cloister will I choose, And there with holy virgins live immured: Coarse my attire, and short shall be my sleep, Broke by the melancholy midnight-bell. Now, Raymond, now be satisfied at last, Fasting and tears, and penitence and prayer, Shall do dead Sancho justice every hour. Ray. [Aside.] By your leave, manhood!

[Wipes his eyes.

Tor. He weeps; now he is vanquished.
Ray. No; 'tis a salt rheum that scalds my

Enter ALPHONSO and PEDRO. Alph. Brother, there's news from Bertran; he desires

Admittance to the king, and cries aloud,
This day shall end our fears of civil war;
For his safe conduct he entreats your presence,
And begs you would be speedy.

Ray. Though I loath

The traitor's sight, I'll go; attend us here. [Exeunt. Enter GOMEZ, ELVIRA, DOMINICK, with Officers, to make the stage as full as possible. Ped. Why, how now, Gomez? what makest thou here with a whole brotherhood of city-bailiff's? Why, thou look'st like Adam in paradise, with his guard of beasts about him.

Gom. Ay, and a man had need of them, Don Pedro; for here are the two old seducers, a wife and a priest, that's Eve and the serpent, at my elbow.

Dom. Take notice how uncharitably he talks of churchmen.

Gom. Indeed you are a charitable belswagger: my wife cried out, fire, fire! and you brought out your church buckets, and called for engines to play against it.

Alph. I am sorry you are come hither to accuse your wife; her education has been virtuous, her nature mild and easy.

Gom. Yes; she's easy with a vengeance, there's a certain colonel has found her so.

Alph. She came a spotless virgin to your bed. Gom. And she's a spotless virgin still for me -she's never the worse for my wearing, I'll take my oath on't: I have lived with her with all the innocence of a man of threescore; like a peaceable bed-fellow as I am.

Elv. Indeed, sir, I have no reason to complain of him for disturbing of my sleep.

Dom. A fine commendation you have given yourself; the church did not marry you for that. Ped. Come, come, your grievances, your grie

vances.

Dom. Why, noble sir, I'll tell you.

Gom. Peace, friar! and let me speak first. I am the plaintiff. Sure you think you are in the pulpit, where you preach by hours.

Dom. And you edify by minutes.

Gom. Where you make doctrines for the people, and uses and applications for yourselves. Ped. Gomez, give way to the old gentleman ⚫ in black.

Gom. No, the t'other old gentleman in black shall take me if I do; I will speak first; nay, I will, friar, for all your verbum sacerdotis, I'll speak truth in few words, and then you may come afterwards, and lie by the clock, as you use to do: for, let me tell you, gentlemen, he shall lie and forswear himself with any friar in all Spain; that's a bold word now.

Dom. Let him alone; let him alone; I shall fetch him back with a circum-bendibus, I warrant him.

Alph. Well, what have you to say against your wife, Gomez ?

Gom. Why, I say, in the first place, that I and all men are married for our sins, and that our wives are a judgment; that a bachelor-cobler is a happier man than a prince in wedlock; and that we are all visited with a household plague, and, Lord have mercy upon us, should be written on all our doors.

Dom. Now he reviles marriage, which is one of the seven blessed sacraments.

Gom. 'Tis liker one of the seven deadly sins: but make your best on't, I care not; 'tis but binding a man neck and heels for all that! But, as for my wife, that crocodile of Nilus, she has wickedly and traitorously conspired the cuckol dom of me, her anointed sovereign lord; and, with the help of the aforesaid friar, whom Hea ven confound, and with the limbs of one Colonel Hernando, cuckold-maker of this city, devilishly contrived to steal herself away, and, under her arm, feloniously to bear one casket of diamonds, pearls, and other jewels, to the value of thirty thousand pistoles. Guilty, or not guilty; how sayest thou, culprit?

Dom. False and scandalous! Give me the

book. I'll take my corporal oath point-blank against every particular of this charge. Elv. And so will I.

Dom. As I was walking in the streets, telling my heads, and praying to myself, according to my usual custom, I heard a foul outcry before Gomez's portal; and his wife, my penitent, making doleful lamentations; thereupon, making what haste my limbs would suffer me, that are crippled with often kneeling, I saw him spurning and fisting her most unmercifully! whereupon, using Christian arguments with him to desist, he fell violently upon me, without respect to my sacerdotal order, pushed me from him, and turned me about with a finger and a thumb, just as a man would set up a top. Mercy, quoth I. Damme, quoth he. And still continued labouring me, 'till a good-minded colonel came by, whom, as Heaven shall save me, I had never seen before!

Gom. Oh Lord! Oh Lord!

Dom. Ay, and, Oh, lady! Oh, lady, too! I redouble my oath, I had never seen him. Well, this noble colonel, like a true gentleman, was for taking the weaker part you may be sure-whereupon this Gomez flew upon him like a dragon, got him down, the devil being strong in him, and gave him bastinado upon bastinado, and buffet upon buffet, which the poor meek colonel, being prostrate, suffered with a most Christian patience.

Gom. Who? he meek? I'm sure I quake at the very thought of him; why, he's as fierce as Rhodomont; he made assault and battery upon my person, beat me into all the colours of the rainbow; and every word this abominable priest has uttered is as false as the Alcoran. But if you want a thorough-paced liar, that will swear through thick and thin, commend me to a friar.

Enter LORENZO, who comes behind the company, and stands at his father's back unseen, over against Gomez.

Lor. [Aside.] How now! what's here to do? My cause a-trying, as I live, and that before my own father: now fourscore take him for an old bawdy magistrate, that stands like the picture of Madam Justice, with a pair of scales in his hands, to weigh lechery by ounces.

Alph. Well-but all this while, who is this Colonel Hernando?

Alph. As true as your wife, Elvira, is my daughter.

Lor. What, have I taken all this pains about a sister?

Gom. No, you have taken some about me: I am sure, if you are her brother, my sides can shew the tokens of our alliance.

Ped. What, backward and forward? Gomez, dost thou hunt counter?

Alph. Had this colonel any former design upon your wife? For, if that be proved, you shall have justice.

Gom. [Aside.] Now I dare speak, let him look as dreadful as he will. I say, sir, and will prove it, that he had a lewd design upon her body, and attempted to corrupt her honesty. [LOR. peeps up, his fist clenched at him.] I confess my wife was as willing-as himself; and, I believe, 'twas she corrupted him; for I have known him formerly, a very civil and modest person.

Elo. You see, sir, he contradicts himself at every word: he's plainly mad.

Alph. Speak boldly, man, and say what thou wilt stand by: Did he strike thee?

Gom. I will speak boldly: he struck me on the face before my own threshold, that the very walls cried shame on him. [LOR. holds up again.] 'Tis true, I gave him provocation, for the man's as peaceable a gentleman as any is in all Spain. Dom. Now the truth comes out in spite of him.

Ped. I believe the friar has bewitched him. Alph. For my part, I see no wrong that has been offered him.

Gon. How! no wrong? Why, he ravished me with the help of two soldiers, carried me away vi et armis, and would have put me into a plot against the government. [LOR. holds up again.] I confess, I never could endure the government, because it was tyrannical; but my sides and shoulders are black and blue, as I can strip and shew the marks of them. [LOR. again.] But that might happen too by a fall that I got yesterday upon the pebbles. [All laugh. Dom. Fresh straw, and a dark chamber: a most manifest judgment; there never comes better of railing against the church.

Gom. Why, what will you have me say? I think you'll make me mad; truth has been at my tongue's end this half hour, and I have not power to bring it out, for fear of this bloody-minded Colonel.

to have taken the habit, which was never my intention; and, consequently, I married her without your knowledge, that it might not be in your power to prevent it.

Elo. You see, brother, I had a natural affection to you.

Lor. What a delicious harlot have I lost! Now, pox upon me for being so near a-kin to thee.

Eiv. However, we are both beholden to friar Dominick: the church is an indulgent mother, she never fails to do her part.

Dom. Heaven! what will become of me?

Gom. Why, you are not like to trouble heaven; those fat guts were never made for mounting.

Lor. I shall make bold to disburthen him of my hundred pistoles, to make him the lighter for his journey; indeed, 'tis partly out of conscience, that I may not be accessary to his breaking his vow of poverty.

Alph. I have no secular power to reward the pains you have taken with my daughter; but I shall do it by proxy, friar: your bishop's my friend, and is too honest to let such as you infect a cloister.

Gom. Ay, do, father-in-law, let him be stripped of his habit, and disordered—I would fain see him walk in querpo, like a cased rabbit, without his holy fur upon his back, that the world may once behold the inside of a friar.

Dom. Farewell, kind gentlemen: I give you all my blessing before I go.-May your sisters, wives, and daughters be so naturally lewd, that they may have no occasion for a devil to tempt, or a friar to pimp for them.

[Exil, with a rabble pushing him. Enter TORRISMOND, LEONORA, Bertran, RAYMOND, TERESA, &c. Tor. He lives! he lives! my royal father lives!

Let every one partake the general joy.
Some angel with a golden trumpet sound,
King Sancho lives! and let the echoing skies
From pole to pole resound, king Sancho lives !
Oh, Bertran, Oh, no more my foe, but brother:
One act like this blots out a thousand crimes.
Bert. Bad men, when 'tis their interest, may
do good;

20

I must confess, I counselled Sancho's murder,
And urged the queen by specious arguments;
But, still suspecting that her love was changed,
I spread abroad the rumour of his death,
To sound the very soul of her designs:
The event, you know, was answering to my fears:
She threw the odium of the fact on me,
And publicly avowed her love to you.

Ray. Heaven guided all to save the innocent.
Bert. I plead no merit, but a bare forgiveness.
Tor. Not only that, but favour: Sancho's life,

Whether by virtue or design preserved,
Claims all within my power.

Qu. My prayers are heard!
And I have nothing farther to desire,
But Sancho's leave to authorize our marriage.
Tor. Oh, fear not him! pity and he are one;
So merciful a king did never live;
Loth to revenge, and easy to forgive:
But let the bold conspirator beware,
For Heaven makes princes its peculiar care.
[Exeunt.

THERE'S none, I'm sure, who is a friend to love,
But will our friar's character approve :
The ablest spark among you sometimes needs
Such pious help, for charitable deeds.
Our church, alas! (as Rome objects) does want
These ghostly comforts for the falling saint:
This gains them their whore-converts, and may

be

One reason of the growth of popery.
So Mahomet's religion came in fashion
By the large leave it gave to fornication.
Fear not the guilt, if you can pay for't well;
There is no Dives in the Roman hell.
Gold opens the strait gate, and lets him in ;
But want of money is a mortal sin.
For all besides you may discount to heaven,
And drop a bead to keep the tallies even.
How are men cozen'd still with shows of good!
The bawd's best mask is the grave friar's hood.
Though vice no more a clergyman displeases,
Than doctors can be thought to hate diseases.
'Tis by your living ill, that they live well;
By your debauches their fat paunches swell.

| 'Tis a mock war between the priest and devil;
When they think fit, they can be very civil.
As some, who did French counsels most advance,
To blind the world, have rail'd in print at France.
Thus do the clergy at your vices bawl,
That with more ease they may engross them all.
By damning yours, they do their own maintain,
A churchman's godliness is always gain.
Hence to their prince they will superior be;
And civil treason grows church loyalty.
They boast the gift of heaven is in their power;
Well may they give the god they can devour.
Still to the sick and dead their claims they lay;
For 'tis on carrion that the vermin prey.
Nor have they less dominion on our life,
They trot the husband, and they pace the wife.
Rouse up, you cuckolds of the northern climes,
And learn from Sweden to prevent such crimes.
Unman the friar, and leave the holy drone
To hum in his forsaken hive alone:

He'll work no honey when his sting is gone.
Your wives and daughters soon will leave the cells,
When they have lost the sound of Aaron's bells.