O. ART.  Fain would I speak, if grief would suffer me.

O. LUS.  As Master Arthur says, so say I;
If grief would let me, I would weeping die. 
To be thus hapless in my aged years! 
O, I would speak; but my words melt to tears.

Y. ART.  Go in, go in, and view the sweetest corpse
That e’er was laid upon a mournful room;
You cannot speak for weeping sorrow’s doom: 
Bad news are rife, good tidings seldom come.

[Exeunt.

ACT IV., SCENE I.

A Street.

Enter ANSELM.

ANS.  What frantic humour doth thus haunt my sense,
Striving to breed destruction in my spirit? 
When I would sleep, the ghost of my sweet love
Appears unto me in an angel’s shape: 
When I’m awake, my fantasy presents,
As in a glass, the shadow of my love: 
When I would speak, her name intrudes itself
Into the perfect echoes of my speech: 
And though my thought beget some other word,
Yet will my tongue speak nothing but her name. 
If I do meditate, it is on her;
If dream of her, or if discourse of her,
I think her ghost doth haunt me, as in times
Of former darkness old wives’ tales report.

    Enter FULLER.

Here comes my better genius, whose advice
Directs me still in all my actions. 
How now, from whence come you?

FUL.  Faith, from the street, in which, as I pass’d by,
I met the modest Mistress Arthur’s corpse,
And after her as mourners, first her husband,
Next Justice Reason, then old Master Arthur,
Old Master Lusam, and young Lusam too,
With many other kinsfolks, neighbours, friends,
And others, that lament her funeral: 
Her body is by this laid in the vault.

ANS.  And in that vault my body I will lay! 
I prythee, leave me:  thither is my way.

FUL.  I am sure you jest, you mean not as you say.

ANS.  No, no, I’ll but go to the church, and pray.

FUL.  Nay, then we shall be troubled with your humour.

ANS.  As ever thou didst love me, or as ever
Thou didst delight in my society,
By all the rights of friendship and of love,
Let me entreat thy absence but one hour,
And at the hour’s end I will come to thee.

FUL.  Nay, if you will be foolish, and past reason,
I’ll wash my hands, like Pilate, from thy folly,
And suffer thee in these extremities. [Exit.

ANS.  Now it is night, and the bright lamps of heaven
Are half-burn’d out:  now bright Adelbora
Welcomes the cheerful day-star to the east,
And harmless stillness hath possess’d the world: 
This is the church,—­this hollow is the vault,
Where the dead body of my saint remains,
And this the coffin that enshrines her body,
For her bright soul is now in paradise. 
My coming is with no intent of sin,