Webster and Tourneur Volume 12

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 Excerpt: ... world? Bos. Yet, methinks, The manner of your death should much afflict you: This cord should terrify you. Duch. Not a whit: What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut With diamonds? or to be smothered With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits; and 'tis found They go on such strange geometrical hinges, You may open them both ways; any way, for Heaven sake, So I were out of your whispering. Tell my brothers That I perceive death, now I am well awake, Best gift is they can give or I can take. I would fain put off my last woman's fault, I'd not be tedious to you. ist Execut, We are ready. Duch. Dispose my breath how please you; but my Bestow upon my women, will you? body ist Execut. Yes. Duch. Pull, and pull strongly, for your able Must pull down Heaven upon me:--strength Yet stay; Heaven-gates are not so highly arched As princes' palaces; they that enter there Must go upon their knees Kneels.--Come, violent Serve for mandragora to make me sleep!--death, Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out, They then may feed in quiet. The Executioners strangle the Duchess. 1 i " She has lived among horrors till she is become ' native and endowed unto that element.' She speaks the dialect of despair, her tongue has a smatch of Tartarus and the souls in bale. What are ' Luke's iron crown,' the brazen bull of Perillus, Procrustes' bed, to the waxen images which counterfeit death, to the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bell-man, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees I To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to ...