The plays of Christopher Marlowe

Front matter

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Introduction

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, a Canterbury shoemaker’s son, was born in the same year as Shakespeare, 1564, ten years after John Lyly, seven after Kyd, six after Peele, four after Greene, and three before Nash. He was at King’s School, Canterbury, and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; but we know nothing of him at either place, except that he became Bachelor of Arts in 1583. In the ten years left to him of life he wrote the two parts of Tamburlaine the Great, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward the Second, The Massacre at Parts, Dido, Queen of Carthage, and may have handled and partly or largely written many other plays, including The True Tragedy, printed in this volume, also the first two cantos of ‘‘ Hero and Leander,” a lyric, and another lyric of which only a fragment survives. Probably at Cambridge, or during that period, he translated parts of Ovid and of Lucan, and immediately after leaving Cambridge he may have gone to the wars in the Low Countries where Sidney died in 1586. Certain it is that by 1587 the play of Tamburlaine had been written and performed. Of his contemporaries Lyly had already written Alexander and Campaspe, Sapho, Gallathea, Endimion. FPeele’s Arraignment of Parts had appeared about 1581, when he was of the same age as the Marlowe who wrote Tamburlaine. Greene’s Friav Bacon has been also attributed to the year 1587, but 1591 is a more probable date. The first English tragedy in blank verse and of something like the type afterwards to be established, the Gorbuduc of Norton and Sackville, had been performed as early as 1561. It lacked the new life of the Renaissance which had kindled it as much as it did the old life of the past age and the miracle plays. It was written in blank verse of a lifeless regularity and monotony that has a slight charm only occasionally, as in:— ~ Are they exiled out of our stony breasts Never to make return?

By no exaggeration can it be called a dramatic poem at all. vii

Viil Marlowe's Plays

The Arraignment of Parts can be so called, but rather because it is a drama and is full of poetry than because it is a poem in dramatic form. The writer was bent chiefly upon his beautiful verses, many of them lyrical, with the result that a series of extracts from the play give a higher opinion of it than the whole can ever do. The blank verse is silver sweet, but it has little variety, and would be more perfect in its own kind had it received the grace of rhyme, as, for example, in this characteristic passage from a speech by Paris before the Council of the Gods:—

And for the one, contentment is my wealth;

A shell of salt will serve a shepherd swain,

A slender banquet in a homely scrip,

And water running from the silver spring.

For arms, they dread no foes that sit so low;

A thorn can keep the wind from off my back,

A sheep-cote thatched a shepherd’s palace hight.

Of tragic Muses shepherds con no skill:

Enough is them, if Cupid be displeased,

To sing his praise on slender oaten pipe. The plays of Lyly that preceded Tamburlaine were all in prose: it was not until he wrote The Woman tn the Moone that he used blank verse, and that was not before 1591.

Tamburlaine was, in fact, the first notable English poem

in blank verse that was also essentially a play. The Arraignment could never have been a popular entertainment; it could be imitated, it could be excelled, but it did now show the way to any development of the drama; it contained no seeds of growth; in action alone it was naught. But Tamburlatine was all action; it could only reach its highest form of life with the aid of actors and a stage; and, moreover, it was written in blank verse, and for the first time proved that verse to be well suited to natural dialogue; it was pleasant to the ear and capable at once of great beauty and of as direct an appeal even to the untutored ear as prose. It was in the very year of its appearance abused as the work of one of the “idiot art masters who intrude themselves to our ears as the alchymists of eloquence, who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think to outbrave better pens by the swelling bombast of braggart blank verse.’”’ As the persons of the play included an emperor and empress, a soldan and five kings, besides Tamburlaine himself, who drove a coach and kings, a ‘“‘ereat and thundering speech” and “high astounding terms ’’ were in place. But it was out of no sense of its

Introduction 1X dramatic fitness that Marlowe put this tremendous English music into the mouths of kings, nor is it for any such reason that, despite the ridicule of Nash and Jonson and Lamb, we read it still. We read it, I think, because it has a richness and a speed which are the admirable expression of something swift and aspiring in the spirit of the writer himself, of Marlowe in his first youth. We think, not of the bloody conqueror, but of the youthful poet, when we read :—

Zenocrate, lovelier than the love of Jove,

Brighter than is the silver Rhodope,

Fairer than whitest snow on Scythian hills,— and the whole of that speech. It was Marlowe who could not speak of a burden but as—

Of such a burthen as outweighs the sands

And all the craggy rocks of Caspia. It was certainly Marlowe and not Tamburlaine who spoke the words:—

Nature that framed us of four elements,

Warring within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds. .

though it was Tamburlaine that added— The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

So delighted is Marlowe in this new-found means ot expressing his burning thought—a means of expression as direct and worshipful as the smile of love, the dance, the nakedness of beauty, the running of athletes—that itisa matter for amazement that he should drop into prose as he does in the fourth scene of the fourth act, and the second scene of the fifth. As an exhibition of human energy, beautiful and swift, Tamburlaine can never cease to please.

The two parts of Tamburlaine proved that Marlowe was a great poet, a great master of the music and magic of words. He had, we can well believe, done no violence to his poetry in composing this prodigious spectacle; it expressed the melody and the hundred images that were in his mind, and at the same time he had presented a whole which was easily understood. His example, continued until his death in 1593, could not but compel the English drama into a new and permanent course. His verse could not remain without imitators of its sound and form. The abundant luxuriance of imagery was equally x -Marlowe’s Plays effective. Had Spenser and Sidney been more nearly contemporary with Marlowe, it is hardly credible but that even they would have written plays as the author of Venus and Adonts afterwards did, for it was now clear that a man might be an exuberant poet and a playwright at once ;— not merely a lofty poet as was Sophocles; for there was no kind of poetry which need be excluded from drama of this kind. It was Marlowe, in short, who made it certain that the English drama was to be of that gorgeous texture which we now see it to be. With this great good went some harm, and chiefly the awful example of putting any matter whatsoever into verse, his prose being, so far as can be seen, introduced not as appropriate but as necessary to break the monotony; and of making dialogue falsely poetical by putting, for example, into the mouth of Tamburlaine such a comparison as—

Like to an almond tree y-mounted high. .. .

Marlowe chose Tamburlaine and the kings as he chose words and images and cadences, because they were magnificent, and because their violent passions and prodigious acts satisfied his need of magnificence. But the life and death of Tamburlaine was far from being an adequate theme. The two plays were a freak of the infinite crude ambition of this young man of Kent in the marvellous company of young countrymen, wild, poor, laborious, who loved so well the small comprehensible England of this day. The plays were a tour de force. Marlowe cared nothing for emperors except for their clothes and cavalcades and for the pinnacle from which they would fall. We see him pouring out his poetry almost regardless of his characters. That the author of ‘Come live with me and be my love ”’ was a great lyric poet there can be no doubt, but his lyric gift was so well satisfied with its opportunities in the plays that this poem is the only complete and separate lyric of his which we possess. The poetry was the thing. It would out; and with all respect for Tamburlaine, no one can read it without wishing that Marlowe had been able to give up one of the two parts for a narrative.

In a life so brief and full and fiery as Marlowe’s there are certain to be many losses which it is only mortal to imagine and then regret, and the greatest regret is not that he did not complete The Jew of Malia as he began it, but that he

Introduction xi attempted only one narrative poem and left that half untold. Our literature is not poor in narrative poetry on a large scale. In the first rank we have Chaucer, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and the author of Tristvam of Lyonesse,; in the second, Dryden, Byron, Crabbe, Scott, and Morris—to mention a few. But “ Hero and Leander ”’ is the half of a poem that would have been unsurpassed, and equalled by “‘ Lamia’’—and by how few others! The versification is superb in its massiveness, delicacy, and diversity. For a peer in pictorial effect it had to wait over two hundred years, and it passes from picture to action and dialogue with perfect fitness and ease. It combines a classic clearness with the rapture of romance, as if a Grecian statue had breathed to speak its welcome to the Renaissance, or were about to do so; but Marlowe died and Chapman knew not the incantation.

In the legend of Doctor Fausius the poet had a perfect subject—the student “born of parents base of stock,”’ who hoped by magic to encompass

A world of profit and delight, Of power, of honour and omnipotence— to gain pearls and gold and “pleasant fruits and princely delicates,” ‘‘strange philosophy,” and the secrets and armies of kings. Into this subject Marlowe could without hesitation or obstacle put the whole of himself, his intellectual subtlety and experience, his love of beauty, of power, and of luxury. He used the legend with only just so much of the paraphernalia of the supernatural as was easily and almost universally credible in his day; and he made Faustus a human, individual student of that age, with a shade of rusticity—one can imagine him with an accent as probably Marlowe had the accent of Kent—which adds to the intense reality of the whole, to the beauty and dalliance of the central part, the kissing of Helen, the snatching of the pope’s dish, and to the terrible splendour of the end. His mighty line—mighty in its movement as in its content—was at its proper task in expressing those ‘“‘ brave translunary things.’’ Excluding the prose buffoonery which is unlikely to have been his, the play has the simplicity of a lyric. It is small wonder that Goethe should say how greatly it was all planned, and that Mr. Swinburne should call its author the first great English

Xil Marlowe’s Plays poet, seeing with what fitness the exquisite parts are subordinate to a noble whole.

If in Tamburlaine the young Marlowe expressed his nature, so ardent, so luxurious, so volatile, against odds, and in Faustus with a perfect harmony between the subject and what we may surmise of himself, in Edward the Second the same nature found an outlet while at the same time creating a world outside itself. Edward the Second is not Marlowe as Tamburlaine was and as Faustus was, yet we have in his speeches not solely the tragic pleasure of watching him enjoying, struggling, sinking, to the end, but also that’ other pleasure of feeling that the maker of this vivid world is Marlowe himself, and that it is, therefore, what it is and not another world. Here as in Faustus, the soaring vein of the poet plunges with equal speed to agony. That a king spoke Marlowe’s words in Tamburlaine was no advantage; but in Edward the Second the king adds a precious colour to the canvas—a king in whom he shows that the woe of the Renaissance equalled its joy. In the character of Edward he anticipates all Shakespeare’s sense of the tragedy of princes, a sense which must have been quickened in Shakespeare if he really collaborated with Marlowe in The True Tragedy. Here Marlowe’s almost hectic love of loveliness—his characteristic word is “lovely,” I think— is most finely expressed; here, too, his love of luxury, as in—

Music and poetry are his delight;

Therefore I’ll have Italian masks by night,

Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows;

And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,

Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad;

My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,

Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay.

Sometimes a lovely boy in Dian’s shape,

With hair that gilds the water as it glides. ... Here his fancy is put to its apt dramatic use as in that speech of the mournful Edward—

My heart is as an anvil unto sorrow,

Which beats upon it like the Cyclops’ hammers, And with the noise turns up my giddy brain, . And makes me frantic for my Gaveston.

Here his tenderness and sense of fate are most powerful, whether in the great passages or in the lesser, as when the Queen says at a touch of courage in her child—

Ah, boy! this towardness makes thy mother fear Thou art not marked to many days on earth,

Introduction X1ll

Here is his sumptuous diction at its height as when he puts into young Mortimer’s mouth the simple statement—

This tottered ensign of my ancestors

Which swept the desert shore by that dead sea Whereof we got the name of Mortimer

Will I advance upon this castle’s walls.

Here his blank verse, though almost uncontrollably sweet and swift, has gained in force and variety and, always delightful in itself, is yet equal to all the occasions of a tragedy.

In none of the other plays have all of Marlowe’s powers combined so happily to one great end. He was hurried, as in the later part of The Jew of Malia; he was handling only a contemporary subject, and that more or less in the manner of a chronicle play, as in The Massacre at Paris ; or he had an intractable subject, as in Dido, Queen of Carthage. But in all he brought an intense poetic nature to bear upon human action and character, and, especially in Dido, enjoyed to the full the many opportunities of expressing luxury and barbaric simplicity of love and hate. No other poet would have made AEneas say, when he fears the farewell to his queen—

Her silver arms will coil me round about And tears of pearl cry: ‘‘ Stay, Aineas, stay.”

No other would have made the queen say, when she suspects the Trojans of stealing away—

I would have given Achates store of gold

And Ilioneus gum and Libyan spice;

The common soldiers rich embroidered coats,

And silver whistles to control the winds, Which Circe sent Sichzwus when he lived— or have made her beg her sister to mount A‘neas on her jennet that he might ride as her husband through the streets while she goes up into a turret from which to gaze on him.

Of the many plays doubtfully or in part attributed to Marlowe The True Tragedy is printed here. It is thought by some that Shakespeare, Greene, and Peele had also a hand in it, and that Shakespeare used only his own share in the third part of King Henry VI., into which it developed. Miss Elizabeth Lee, on the other hand, thinks that Marlowe and Greene, aided perhaps by Peele, wrote

XIV _ Marlowe’s Plays this play and its companion, Contention, and that it was with Marlowe’s help that Shakespeare converted them into the second and third parts of King Henry VI. To Marlowe she attributes, and very naturally, the characters of King Henry, of York, of Richard of Gloucester, and of Margaret of Anjou. The True Tragedy was not published until 1595, but it must have preceded Henry VJ., and there is some evidence that that play was written before 1592. It was presumably because Shakespeare incorporated something from Greene’s contribution when he developed The True Tragedy into the third part of Henry VI., that Greene called him an ‘‘ upstart crow,’ in A Groatsworth of Wit. The versification convinces many that a large part of The True Tragedy was by Marlowe, though it cannot be too carefully considered how easy it would have been for other men, especially Greene and Peele and Shakespeare, who were familiar—as who were not?—with Marlowe’s style, to write like him, and still more so if he were collaborating with them; and it is therefore unsafe to argue for Marlowe’s or against Shakespeare’s authorship on the ground of the absence—that is to say, the scarcity— of rhymes. Neither The True Tragedy nor the third part of Henry VI. could, if entirely by Marlowe, add to his reputation except for productivity, though passages like the following, whether by Shakespeare or by him, are in the vein of Edward the Second—

How couldst thou draine the life bloode of the childe, To bid the father wipe his eyes withal,

And yet be seene to bear a woman’s face?

Women are mild, pitiful, and flexible,

Thou indurate, sterne, rough, remorseless.

Bidst thou me rage? why now thou hast thy will. Wouldst have me weep? why so, thou hast thy wish. For raging words blowe up a storm of tears,

And when the rage allays the rain begins.

Those tears are my sweet Rutland’s obsequies,

And every drop begs vengeance as it falls,

On thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman .. . Keep thou the napkin and go boast of that,

And if thou tell the heavy story well,

Upon my soul the heavens shall shed tears,

I, even my foes will shed fast falling tears,

And say, alas, it was a piteous deed.

It should be noticed in this play how the division into lines has been corrupted, first, by the printer’s necessity, and second, by his stupidity. For example, when a line is over-

Introduction - xv long the excessive word is carried on as if it belonged to the next: thus “‘ bootie ”’ is carried on in—

So triumphs theeves upon their conquered Bootie: so true men yield by robbers overmatcht.

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In that way many of the eccentric ‘“‘ verses”’ in Blake’s prophetic books were created. Of the second kind of corruption the following speech by the Queen is an example :—

Had I been there, the soldiers would have tost

Me on their lances’ points | before I would have

Granted to their wills. | The Duke is made

Protector of the land: | sterne Fawconbridge:

Commands the narrow seas. | And thinkest thou then

To sleep secure? | I heer divorce me Henry

From thy bed, | untill that Act of Parliament

Be recalde, | wherein thou yieldest to the house of Yorke.

An amended division of the verses has been suggested by the perpendicular lines added in this quotation. In speaking the hundreds of other misprinted lines the sound will easily guide the reader to something like the arrangement which the printer has corrupted.

1909. EDWARD THOMAS.

The following is a list of his published works :—

Tamburlaine. In two parts, 1587; first published, 1590; The Tragicat History of Doctor Faustus, probably written soon after the above play; entered on the Stationers’ Books, 1600-1; earliest known edition, 1604; The Jew of Malta, exact date of composition uncertain; acted, 1591-2; Edward I1., entered on the Stationers’ Books, 1593; The Massacre at Paris, acted 1592-3; The Tragedy of Dido (in collaboration with Thomas Nash), published 1594; Hero and Leander, 1598 (the poem was completed by George Chapman); Translation of Ovid’s Elegies, earliest editions undated; First book of Lucan’s Pharsalia, extant early edition, 1600; Lyric, ‘“‘ Come live with me and be my love,”’ printed (imperfectly) in The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599; complete in England’s Helicon, 1600; Another poem is given in England’s Parnassus, 1600. Plays in which Marlowe’s collaboration is a matter of discussion are: Taming of a Shrew (1594); Titus Andronicus, the old King John, and the three parts of Henry VI.

Works.—With Life by G. Robinson, 1826; with some account of life and writings, by A. Dyce, 1850, 1858; by Lt.-Col. F. Cunningham, with preface, 1870, 1871; by A. H. Bullen, with introductory account of life and works, 1885; Plays and Poems (Newnes), 1905; New Universal Library, 1906. -

SELECTIONS.—Poems, ed. by R. Bell, 1856; Bohn, 1876; Five plays by Havelock Ellis, with introduction on the Drama by J. A. Symonds (Mermaid Series), 1887, 1903; Canterbury Poets, 1885. Several editions of separate plays. .

Lire.—F. G. Lewis: Christopher Marlowe, His Life and Works, Lecture, 1890; J. H. Ingram: Christopher Marlowe and his Associates, 1904; see also introductions to above editions, and Dr. A. W. Ward’s introduction to his edition of Faustus.

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~ CONTENTS

Tuer First Part or TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT .

TRE SECOND PART oF TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT .

THe TrRAGICAL History or Doctor Faustus: QUARTO OF 1604 . : : ‘ - :

THE JEw or MALTA . : : si ‘ F

EDWARD THE SECOND . : : : é 2

Tuer MASSACRE AT Paris F i , 5 ;

THE TRAGEDY OF DiDOo, QUEEN oF CARTHAGE :

FRrRoM

THE

HERO AND LEANDER. By CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE AND GEORGE

CHAPMAN : - ; Y ° : A

Tur PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE

FRAGMENT, FIRST PRINTED IN “ ENGLAND’S PARNASSUS,”’ 1600

DIALOGUE IN VERSE . ‘ : : : r

Tue True TRAGEDIE OF RICHARD DUKE OF YORKE xvii

PAGE reve Oe:

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PAGAT RA

A RY

THE FIRST PART OF TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT

DRAMATIS PERSON

MycetEs, King of Persta.

Cosrok, hts brother.

MEANDER, THERIDAMAS, OrRTYGIUS, CENEUS, MENAPHON, TAMBURLAINE, @ Scythtan shepherd.

TECHELLES, : USUMCASANE, his followers.

BayazxeTu, Emperor of the Turks.

KING oF Fez.

KinG or Morocco.

KING OF ARGIER.

Perstan lords.

KING OF ARABIA.

SOLDAN OF EGyprt.

GOVERNOR OF DAMASCUS.

AGYDAS ;

M AGNETES, Medtan lords.

CaPOLiIN, an Egyptian.

PHILEMUS, Bassogs, Lorps, Citt- ZENS, Moors, SOLDIERS, and ATTENDANTS.

ZENOCRATE, daughter to the Soldan of Egypt.

ANIPPE, her matd.

ZABINA, wife to BAJAZETH.

EBEA, her matd.

VIRGINS OF DAMASCUS.

THE PROLOGUE

FRomM jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,

And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,

We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,

Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine Threatening the world with high astounding terms, And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword. View but his picture in this tragic glass,

And then applaud his fortunes as you please.

ACT.

Enter MYCETES, CoSROE, MEANDER, THERIDAMAS, Ortycius, CENEUS, MENAPHON, with others.

Myc. Brother Cosroe, I find myself agriev’d; Yet insufficient to express the same, For it requires a great and thundering speech: Good brother, tell the cause unto my lords; I know you have a better wit than I. Cos. Unhappy Persia,—that in former age Hast been the seat of mighty conquerors, That, in their prowess and their policies, Have triumph’d over Afric, and the bounds Of Europe where the sun dares scarce appear For freezing meteors and congealed cold,— Now to be rul’d and govern’d by a man At whose birthday Cynthia with Saturn join’d, And Jove, the Sun, and Mercury denied To shed their influence in his fickle brain! Now Turks and Tartars shake their swords at thee, Meaning to mangle all thy provinces. Myc. Brother, I see your meaning well enough, And through your planets I perceive you think I am not wise enough to be a king: But I refer me to my noblemen, That know my wit, and can be witnesses. I might command you to be slain for this,— Meander, might I not?

Mean. Not for so small a fault, my sovereign lord. Myc. I mean it not, but yet I know I might— Yet live; yea, live; Mycetes wills it so.— Meander, thou, my faithful counsellor, Declare the cause of my conceived grief, Which is, God knows, about that Tamburlaine, That, like a fox in midst of harvest-time, Doth prey upon my flocks of passengers ; And, as I hear, doth mean to pull my plumes: Therefore ’tis good and meet for to be wise. Mean. Oft have I heard your majesty complain Of Tamburlaine, that sturdy Scythian thief,

That robs your merchants of Persepolis Trading by land unto the Western Isles, And in your confines with his lawless train Daily commits incivil outrages, Hoping (misled by dreaming prophecies) To reign in Asia, and with barbarous arms To make himself the monarch of the East: But, ere he march in Asia, or display His vagrant ensign in the Persian fields, Your grace hath taken order by Theridamas. Charg’d with a thousand horse, to apprehend And bring him captive to your highness’ throne. . Myc. Full true thou speak’st, and like thyself, my lord, Whom I may term a Damon for thy love: Therefore ’tis best, if so it like you all, To send my thousand horse incontinent To apprehend that paltry Scythian. How like you this, my honourable lords? Is it not a kingly resolution?

Cos. It cannot choose, because it comes from you, Myc. Then hear thy charge, valiant Theridamas, The chiefest captain of Mycetes’ host, The hope of Persia, and the very legs Whereon our state doth lean as on a staff, That holds us up and foils our neighbour foes: Thou shalt be leader of this thousand horse, Whose foaming gall with rage and high disdain Have sworn the death of wicked Tamburlaine. Go frowning forth; but come thou smiling home, As did Sir Paris with the Grecian dame: Return with speed; time passeth swift away; Our life is frail, and we may die to-day. _ Ther. Before the moon renew her borrow’d light, Doubt not, my lord and gracious sovereign, But Tamburlaine and that Tartarian rout Shall either perish by our warlike hands, Or plead for mercy at your highness’ feet. Myc. Go, stout Theridamas; thy words are swords, And with thy looks thou conquerest all thy foes. I long to see thee back return from hence, That I may view these milk-white steeds of mine All loaden with the heads of killed men, | And, from their knees even to their hoofs below,

Bestnear’d with blood that makes a dainty show, Ther. Then now, my lord, I humbly take my leave. Myc. Theridamas, farewell ten thousand times.

[Extt Theridamas.

Ah, Menaphon, why stay’st thou thus behind,

When other men press forward for renown?

Go, Menaphon, go into Scythia,

And foot by foot follow Theridamas.

Cos. Nay, pray you, let him stay; a greater [task]

Fits Menaphon than warring with a thief:

Create him pro-rex of all Africa,

That he may win the Babylonians’ hearts,

Which will revolt from Persian government,

Unless they have a wiser king than you.

Myc. Unless they have a wiser king than you!

These are his words; Meander, set them down. Cos. And add this to them,—that all Asia

Lament to see the folly of their king.

Myc. Well, here I swear by this my royal seat— Cos. You may do well to kiss it, then. Myc. Emboss’d with silk as best beseems my state,

To be reveng’d for these contemptuous words!

O where is duty and allegiance now?

Fled to the Caspian or the Ocean main?

What shall I call thee? brother? no, a foe;

Monster of nature, shame unto thy stock,

That dar’st presume thy sovereign for to mock !—

Meander, come: I am abus’d, Meander.

[Exeunt all except Cosroe.and Menaphon. Men. How now, my lord! what, mated and amaz’d

To hear the king thus threaten like himself!

Cos. Ah, Menaphon, I pass not for his threats!

The plot is laid by Persian noblemen

And captains of the Median garrisons

To crown me emperor of Asia:

But this it is that doth excruciate

The very substance of my vexed soul,

To see our neighbours, that were wont to quake

And tremble at the Persian monarch’s name,

Now sit and laugh our regiment to scorn;

And that which might resolve me into tears,

Men from the farthest equinoctial line

Have swarm’d in troops into the Eastern India,