The Duchess of Malfi

Of simple virtue, which was never made

To seem the thing it is not. Go, go brag

You have left me heartless; mine is in your bosom:

I hope 'twill multiply love there. You do tremble:

Make not your heart so dead a piece of flesh,

To fear more than to love me. Sir, be confident:

What is 't distracts you? This is flesh and blood, sir;

'Tis not the figure cut in alabaster

Kneels at my husband's tomb. Awake, awake, man!

I do here put off all vain ceremony,

And only do appear to you a young widow

That claims you for her husband, and, like a widow,

I use but half a blush in 't.

Now she pays it.

The misery of us that are born great!

We are forc'd to woo, because none dare woo us;

And as a tyrant doubles with his words,

And fearfully equivocates, so we

Are forc'd to express our violent passions

In riddles and in dreams, and leave the path

wink'd and chose a husband.—Cariola,

To thy known secrecy I have given up

More than my life,—my fame.

Shall this move me? If all my royal kindred

Lay in my way unto this marriage,

I 'd make them my low footsteps. And even now,

Even in this hate, as men in some great battles,

By apprehending danger, have achiev'd

Almost impossible actions (I have heard soldiers say so),

So I through frights and threatenings will assay

This dangerous venture. Let old wives report

I

You play the wire-drawer with her commendations

Let all sweet ladies break their flatt'ring glasses,

And dress themselves in her

Her days are practis'd in such noble virtue

but in that look

There speaketh so divine a continence

As cuts off all lascivious and vain hope

She throws upon a man so sweet a look

That it were able to raise one to a galliard