Act 3

Scene III

An apartment in the Cardinal’s palace at Rome.

	Enter Cardinal, Ferdinand, Malatesti, Pescara, Delio, and Silvio.
Cardinal	Must we turn soldier, then?
Malatesti	The emperor, Hearing your worth that way, ere you attain’d This reverend garment, joins you in commission With the right fortunate soldier the Marquis of Pescara, And the famous Lannoy.
Cardinal	He that had the honour Of taking the French king prisoner?
Malatesti	The same. Here’s a plot drawn for a new fortification At Naples.
Ferdinand	This great Count Malatesti, I perceive, Hath got employment?
Delio	No employment, my lord; A marginal note in the muster-book, that he is A voluntary lord.
Ferdinand	He’s no soldier.
Delio	He has worn gunpowder in’s hollow tooth for the toothache.
Silvio	He comes to the leaguer with a full intent To eat fresh beef and garlic, means to stay Till the scent be gone, and straight return to court.
Delio	He hath read all the late service As the City-Chronicle relates it; And keeps two pewterers going, only to express Battles in model.
Silvio	Then he’ll fight by the book.
Delio	By the almanac, I think, To choose good days and shun the critical; That’s his mistress’ scarf.
Silvio	Yes, he protests He would do much for that taffeta.
Delio	I think he would run away from a battle, To save it from taking prisoner.
Silvio	He is horribly afraid Gunpowder will spoil the perfume on’t.
Delio	I saw a Dutchman break his pate once For calling him pot-gun; he made his head Have a bore in’t like a musket.
Silvio	I would he had made a touch-hole to’t. He is indeed a guarded sumpter-cloth,83 Only for the remove of the court.
	Enter Bosala.
Pescara	Bosola arriv’d! What should be the business? Some falling-out amongst the cardinals. These factions amongst great men, they are like Foxes, when their heads are divided, They carry fire in their tails, and all the country About them goes to wrack for’t.
Silvio	What’s that Bosola?
Delio	I knew him in Padua⁠—a fantastical scholar, like such who study to know how many knots was in Hercules’ club, of what colour Achilles’ beard was, or whether Hector were not troubled with the toothache. He hath studied himself half blear-eyed to know the true symmetry of Caesar’s nose by a shoeing-horn; and this he did to gain the name of a speculative man.
Pescara	Mark Prince Ferdinand: A very salamander lives in’s eye, To mock the eager violence of fire.
Silvio	That cardinal hath made more bad faces with his oppression than ever Michelangelo made good ones. He lifts up’s nose, like a foul porpoise before a storm.
Pescara	The Lord Ferdinand laughs.
Delio	Like a deadly cannon That lightens ere it smokes.
Pescara	These are your true pangs of death, The pangs of life, that struggle with great statesmen.
Delio	In such a deformed silence witches whisper their charms.
Cardinal	Doth she make religion her riding-hood To keep her from the sun and tempest?
Ferdinand	That, that damns her. Methinks her fault and beauty, Blended together, show like leprosy, The whiter, the fouler. I make it a question Whether her beggarly brats were ever christ’ned.
Cardinal	I will instantly solicit the state of Ancona To have them banish’d.
Ferdinand	You are for Loretto: I shall not be at your ceremony; fare you well.⁠— Write to the Duke of Malfi, my young nephew She had by her first husband, and acquaint him With’s mother’s honesty.
Bosola	I will.
Ferdinand	Antonio! A slave that only smell’d of ink and counters, And never in’s life look’d like a gentleman, But in the audit-time.⁠—Go, go presently, Draw me out an hundred and fifty of our horse, And meet me at the footbridge.
	Exeunt.