LACY (to MARMADUKE)
                                                My Captain,
              We come by order of the Band.  Belike
              You have not heard that Henry has at last
              Dissolved the Barons’ League, and sent abroad
              His Sheriffs with fit force to reinstate
              The genuine owners of such Lands and Baronies
              As, in these long commotions, have been seized. 
              His Power is this way tending.  It befits us
              To stand upon our guard, and with our swords
              Defend the innocent.

MARMADUKE Lacy! we look
              But at the surfaces of things; we hear
              Of towns in flames, fields ravaged, young and old
              Driven out in troops to want and nakedness;
              Then grasp our swords and rush upon a cure
              That flatters us, because it asks not thought: 
              The deeper malady is better hid;
              The world is poisoned at the heart.

LACY What mean you?

WALLACE (whose eye has been fixed suspiciously upon OSWALD)
              Ay, what is it you mean?

MARMADUKE Hark’ee, my Friends;—­
    [Appearing gay.]
              Were there a Man who, being weak and helpless
              And most forlorn, should bribe a Mother, pressed
              By penury, to yield him up her Daughter,
              A little Infant, and instruct the Babe,
              Prattling upon his knee, to call him Father—­

LACY Why, if his heart be tender, that offence
              I could forgive him.

MARMADUKE (going on)
                                   And should he make the Child
              An instrument of falsehood, should he teach her
              To stretch her arms, and dim the gladsome light
              Of infant playfulness with piteous looks
              Of misery that was not—­

LACY
                                       Troth, ’tis hard—­
              But in a world like ours—­

MARMADUKE (changing his tone)
                                         This self-same Man—­
              Even while he printed kisses on the cheek
              Of this poor Babe, and taught its innocent tongue
              To lisp the name of Father—­could he look
              To the unnatural harvest of that time
              When he should give her up, a Woman grown,
              To him who bid the highest in the market
              Of foul pollution—­

LACY The whole visible world
              Contains not such a Monster!