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Death’s Jest-Book

In memory also of your glorious deeds,

To present masque and dance to you. Is’t granted?

DUKE Surely; and they are welcome, for we need Some merriment amid these sad events.

WOLFRAM You in the wall there then, my thin light archers, Come forth and dance a little: ’tis the season 290 When you may celebrate Death’s Harvest-Home. [A dance of Deaths. In the middle of it enter AMALA, followed by a bier,

on which the corpse of ADALMAR is borne. The dance goes out. DUKE What’s this? Another mummery? WOLFRAM The antimasque, I think they call it; ’tis satirical.

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AMALA My lord, you see the bridal bed that waits me. Your son, my bridegroom, both no more, lies here, 295 Cold, pale, abandoned in his youthful blood: And I his bride have now no duty further, But to kneel down, wretched, beside his corpse, Crying for justice on his murderers.

DUKE Could my son die, and I not know it sooner?

Why, he is cold and stiff. O! now my crown Is sunk down to the dust, my life is desolate. Who did this deed?

WOLFRAM

Enter ATHULF

Athulf, answer the call.

AMALA O no! Suspect not him. He was last night Gentle, and full of love, to both of us,

And could imagine ne’er so foul a deed. Suspect not him; for so thou mak’st me feel How terrible it is that he is dead, Since his next friend’s accused of such a murder: And torture not his ghost, which must be here,

Striving in vain to utter one soul-sound, To speak the guiltless free. Tempt not cruelly The helplessness of him who is no more, Nor make him discontented with the state, Which lets him not assert his brother’s innocence.

DUKE (To ATHULF) Answer! Thou look’st like one, unto whose

A secret voice, all day and night, doth whisper, ‘Thou art a murderer’. Is it so? Then rather Speak not. Thou wear’st a dagger at thy side;

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