Venice Preserved A Tragedy

Excerpt

VENICE PRESERVED.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I. A STREET IN VENICE.

Enter Priuli and Jaffier.Pri.No more! I'll hear no more! Be gone and leave me.Jaf.Not hear me! By my suffering, but you shall!My lord, my lord! I'm not that abject wretchYou think me. Patience! where's the distance throwsMe back so far, but I may boldly speakIn right, though proud oppression will not hear me?Pri.Have you not wrong'd me?Jaf.Could my nature e'erHave brook'd injustice, or the doing wrongs,I need not now thus low have bent myselfTo gain a hearing from a cruel father.Wrong'd you?Pri.Yes, wrong'd me! In the nicest point,The honour of my house, you've done me wrong.You may remember (for I now will speak,And urge its baseness) when you first came homeFrom travel, with such hopes as made you look'd on,By all men's eyes, a youth of expectation,Pleas'd with your growing virtue, I receiv'd you;Courted, and sought to raise you to your merits:My house, my table, nay, my fortune too,My very self, was yours; you might have us'd meTo your best service; like an open friendI treated, trusted you, and thought you mine:When, in requital of my best endeavours,You treacherously practis'd to undo me.Jaf.Yes, all, and then adieu for ever.There's not a wretch, that lives on common charity,But's happier than me: for I have knownThe luscious sweets of plenty; every nightHave slept with soft content about my head,And never wak'd, but to a joyful morning;Yet now must fall, like a full ear of corn,Whose blossom 'scap'd, yet's wither'd in the ripening.Pri.Home, and be humble; study to retrench;Discharge the lazy vermin of thy hall,Those pageants of thy folly:Reduce the glitt'ring trappings of thy wifeTo humble weeds, fit for thy little state:Then, to some suburb cottage both retire;Drudge to feed loathsome life; get brats and starve—Home, home, I say.[exit.Jaf.Yes, if my heart would let me—This proud, this swelling heart: home I would go,But that my doors are baleful to my eyes,Fill'd and dam'd up with gaping creditors,Watchful as fowlers when their game will spring.I've now not fifty ducats in the world,Yet still I am in love, and pleas'd with ruin.Oh! Belvidera! Oh! she is my wife—And we will bear our wayward fate together,But ne'er know comfort more.Enter Pierre.Pier.My friend, good morrow;How fares the honest partner of my heart?What, melancholy! not a word to spare me?Jaf.I'm thinking, Pierre, how that damn'd starving quality,Call'd honesty, got footing in the world.Pier.Why, powerful villany first set it up,For its own ease and safety. Honest menAre the soft easy cushions on which knavesRepose and fatten. Were all mankind villains,They'd starve each other; lawyers would want practice,Cut-throats rewards: each man would kill his brotherHimself; none would be paid or hang'd for murder.Honesty! 'twas a cheat invented firstTo bind the hands of bold deserving rogues,That fools and cowards might sit safe in power,And lord it uncontrol'd above their betters....