The action takes place at Naples
Enter Ercole and Contarino.
Contarino:
You'll not forgo your interest in my mistress?
Ercole:
My sword shall answer that: come, are you ready?
Contarino:
Before you fight sir, think upon your cause
It is a wondrous foul one, and I wish
That all your exercise these four days past
Had been employ'd in a most fervent prayer,
And the foul sin for which your are to fight
Chiefly remembered in't.
Ercole:
I'd as soon take
Your counsel in divinity at this present,
As I would take a kind direction from you
For the managing my weapon: and indeed,
Both would show much alike.
Come, are you ready?
Contarino:
Bethink yourself,
How fair the object is that we conted for.
Ercole:
O, I cannot forget it.
They fight. Ercole is wounded.
Contarino:
You are hurt.
Ercole:
Did you come hither only to tell me so,
Or to do it? I mean well, but 'twill not thrive.
Contarino:
Your cause, your cause, sir:
Will you yet be a man of conscience, and make
Restitution for your rage upon your d**h-bed?
Ercole:
Never, till the grave father one of us
They fight again
Contarino:
That was fair, and home I think.
Wounds Ercole
Ercole:
You prate as if you were in a fence-school.
Contarino:
Spare your youth, have compa**ion on yourself.
Ercole:
When I am all in pieces; I am now unfit
For any lady's bed; take the rest with you.
Contarino wounded, falls upon Ercole
Contarino:
I am lost in too much daring; yield your sword.
Ercole:
To the pangs of d**h I shall, but not to thee.
Contarino:
You are now at my rapairing, or confusion:
Beg your life.
Ercole:
O, most foolishly demanded,
To bid me beg that which thou canst not give.
Enter Romelio, Prospero, Baptista, Ariosto, and Julio
Prospero:
See both of them are lost: we come too late.
Romelio:
Take up the body, and convey it
To Saint Sebstian's monastery.
Contarino:
I will not part with his sword, I have won't.
Julio:
You shall not: take him up gently; so:
And bow his body, for fear of bleeding inward.
Well, these are perfect lovers.
Prospero:
Why, I pray?
Julio:
It has ever been my opinion,
That there are none love perfectly indeed,
But those that hang or drown themselves for love:
Now these have chose a d**h next to beheading;
They have cut one another's throats,
Brave valiant lads.
Prospero:
Come, you do ill, to set the name of valour
Upon a violent and mad despair.
Hence may all learn, that count such actions well,
The roots of fury shoot themselves to hell.
Exit