Giovanni.  Yes, uncle, I was taught to imitate you In virtue, and you [? now] must imitate me In colors of your garments.  My sweet mother Is—­

   Francisco.  How! where?

   Giovanni.  Is there; no, yonder:  indeed, sir, I’ll not tell you,
   For I shall make you weep.

   Francisco.  Is dead?

   Giovanni.  Do not blame me now,
   I did not tell you so.

   Lodovico.  She’s dead, my lord.

   Francisco.  Dead!

   Monticelso.  Blest lady, thou art now above thy woes!

* * * * *

   Giovanni.  What do the dead do, uncle? do they eat,
   Hear music, go a-hunting, and be merry,
   As we that live?

   Francisco.  No, coz; they sleep.

   Giovanni.  Lord, Lord, that I were dead! 
   I have not slept these six nights.—­When do they wake?

   Francisco.  When God shall please.

Giovanni.  Good God, let her sleep ever!  For I have known her wake an hundred nights When all the pillow where she laid her head Was brine-wet with her tears.  I am to complain to you, sir; I’ll tell you how they have used her now she’s dead:  They wrapped her in a cruel fold of lead, And would not let me kiss her.

   Francisco.  Thou didst love her.

   Giovanni.  I have often heard her say she gave me suck,
   And it should seem by that she dearly loved me,
   Since princes seldom do it.

   Francisco.  O, all of my poor sister that remains!—­
   Take him away, for God’s sake!

I must admit that I do not see how Shakespeare could have improved upon that.  It seems to me that in any one of even his greatest tragedies this scene would have been remarkable among its most beautiful and perfect passages; nor, upon the whole, do I remember a third English poet who could be imagined capable of having written it.  And it affords, I think, very clear and sufficient evidence that Webster could not have handled so pathetic and suggestive a subject as the execution of Lady Jane Grey and her young husband in a style so thin and feeble, so shallow in expression of pathos and so empty of suggestion or of passion, as that in which it is presented at the close of “Sir Thomas Wyatt.”

There is a perfect harmony of contrast between this and the death scene of the boy’s father:  the agony of the murdered murderer is as superb in effect of terror as the sorrow of his son is exquisite in effect of pathos.  Again we are reminded of Shakespeare, by no touch of imitation but simply by a note of kinship in genius and in style, at the cry of Brachiano under the first sharp workings of the poison: 

   O thou strong heart! 
   There’s such a covenant ’tween the world and it,
   They’re loath to break.