Antinous:
You are my Father,
Yet not to you.
Cassilanes:
Ambitious Boy,
how dar’st thou
To tell me, that
thou wilt contend?
Antinous:
Had I
Been slothful,
and not follow’d you in all
The streights
of death, you might have justly then
Reputed me a Bastard:
’tis a cruelty
More than to murther
Innocents, to take
The life of my
yet infant-honour from me.
Cassilanes:
Antinous,
look upon this badge of age,
Thy Father’s
grey-hair’d beard: full fifty years,
(And more than
half of this, ere thou wert born)
I have been known
a Souldier, in which time
I found no difference
’twixt War and Peace,
For War was Peace
to me, and Peace was War.
Antinous,
mark me well; there hath not liv’d
These fifty years
a man whom Crete prefer’d
Before thy Father;
let me boldly boast,
Thy Father, both
for Discipline a[n]d Action
242] Hath so long been the first of all his Nation;
Now, canst thou
think it honest, charitable,
Nay humane, being
so young, my Son, my Child,
Begot, bred, taught
by me, by me thy Father,
For one days service,
and that on thy first,
To rob me of a
glory which I fought for
A half of hundred
years?
Antinous:
My case observes
Both equity and
presidents; for Sir,
That very day
whereon you got your Fame,
You took it from
some other, who was then
Chief in repute,
as you are now, and has been
Perhaps as many
years deserving that
Which you gain’d
in a day, as I have mine.
Cassilanes:
But he was not
my Father then, Antinous;
Thou leav’st
out that.
Antinous:
Sir, had he been
your Father,
He had been then
immortal; for a Father
Heightens his
reputation where his Son
Inherits it, as
when you give us life,
Your life is not
diminish’d but renew’d
In us when you
are dead, and we are still
Your living Images.
Cassilanes:
So be thou curs’d
In thy posterity,
as I in thee,
Dishonourable
Boy; O shall that Sun,
Which not a year
yet since beheld me mounted
Upon a fiery Steed,
waving my Sword,
And teaching this
young Man to manage Arms,
That was a raw,
fresh Novice in the feats
Of Chivalrie,
shall that same Sun be witness
Against this Brat
of his Ingratitude?
Who, to eclipse
the light of my renown,
Can no way hope
to get a noble Name,
But by the treading
on his Father’s Greatness;
Thou wilt not
yield?
[Enter Arcanes]