I’ll say it is true charity to love—

But not true love to be so charitable.

I’ll say his greatness may bear out the shame—

But not his kingdom can buy out the sin.

I’ll say it is my duty to persuade—

But not her honesty to give consent.

Enter the Countess of Salisbury

(Aside) See where she comes. Was never father had

Against his child an embassage so bad.

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

My lord and father, I have sought for you.

My mother and the peers importune you

To keep in presence of his majesty,

And do your best to make his highness merry.

EARL OF WARWICK (aside)

How shall I enter in this graceless errand?

I must not call her child, for where’s the father

That will in such a suit seduce his child?

Then ‘wife of Salisbury’—shall I so begin?

No, he’s my friend, and where is found the friend

That will do friendship such endamagement?

(To the Countess) Neither my daughter, nor my dear friend’s wife,

I am not Warwick, as thou think‘st I am,

But an attorney from the court of hell,

That thus have housed my spirit in his form

To do a message to thee from the King:

‘The mighty King of England dotes on thee:

He that hath power to take away thy life

Hath power to take thy honour. Then consent

To pawn thine honour rather than thy life;

Honour is often lost and got again,

But life, once gone, hath no recovery.

The sun that withers hay doth nourish grass,

The King that would distain thee, will advance thee.

The poets write that great Achilles’ spear

Could heal the wound it made; the moral is,

What mighty men misdo they can amend.

The lion doth become his bloody jaws

And grace his foragement by being mild

When vassal fear lies trembling at his feet.

The King will, in his glory, hide thy shame,

And those that gaze on him, to find out thee,

Will lose their eyesight looking in the sun.

What can one drop of poison harm the sea

Whose hugy vastures can digest the ill

And make it lose his operation?

The King’s great name will temper thy misdeeds,

And give the bitter potion of reproach

A sugared, sweet and most delicious taste.

Besides, it is no harm to do the thing

Which, without shame, could not be left undone.’

Thus have I, in his majesty’s behalf,

Apparelled sin in virtuous sentences,

And dwell upon thy answer in his suit.

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

Unnatural besiege! Woe me unhappy,

To have escaped the danger of my foes

And to be ten times worse envir‘ned by friends!

Hath he no means to stain my honest blood

But to corrupt the author of my blood

To be his scandalous and vile solicitor?

No marvel though the branch be then infected,

When poison hath encompassed the root;

No marvel though the leprous infant die,

When the stern dame envenometh the dug.

Why then, give sin a passport to offend,

And youth the dangerous rein of liberty.

Blot out the strict forbidding of the law,

And cancel every canon that prescribes

A shame for shame, or penance for offence.

No, let me die if his too boist’rous will

Will have it so, before I will consent

To be an actor in his graceless lust.

EARL OF WARWICK

Why, now thou speak‘st as I would have thee speak!

And mark how I unsay my words again:

An honourable grave is more esteemed

Than the polluted closet of a king.

The greater man, the greater is the thing,

Be it good or bad, that he shall undertake.

An unreputed mote flying in the sun

Presents a greater substance than it is.

The freshest summer’s day doth soonest taint

The loathed carrion that it seems to kiss.

Deep are the blows made with a mighty axe.

That sin doth ten times aggravate itself

That is committed in a holy place.

An evil deed done by authority

Is sin and subornation. Deck an ape

In tissue, and the beauty of the robe

Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast.

A spacious field of reasons could I urge

Between his glory, daughter, and thy shame:

That poison shows worst in a golden cup;

Dark night seems darker by the lightning flash;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds;

And every glory that inclines to sin,

The shame is treble by the opposite.

So leave I with my blessing in thy bosom,

Which then convert to a most heavy curse

When thou convert’st from honour’s golden name

To the black faction of bed-blotting shame.

COUNTESS OF SALISBURY

I’ll follow thee, and when my mind turns so,