Act V

SCENE I.—Before the Palace.

Enter MARDONIUS and LYGONES.

Mar. Sir, the king has seen your commission, and believes it; and freely by this warrant gives you power to visit prince Tigranes, your noble master.

Lyg. I think his grace, and kiss his hand.

Mar. But is the main of all your business ended in this?

Lyg. I have another, but a worse; I am ashamed! It is a business—

Mar. You serve a worthy person; and a stranger, I am sure you are: You may employ me, if you please, without your purse; such offices should ever be their own rewards.

Lyg. I am bound to your nobleness.

Mar. I may have need of you, and then this courtesy,
If it be any, is not ill bestow’d.
But may I civilly desire the rest?
I shall not be a hurter, if no helper.

Lyg. Sir, you shall know: I have lost a foolish daughter,
And with her all my patience: pilfer’d away
By a mean captain of your king’s.

Mar. Stay there, sir:
If he have reach’d the noble worth of captain,
He may well claim a worthy gentlewoman,
Though she were yours, and noble.

Lyg. I grant all that too: But this wretched fellow
Reaches no further than the empty name,
That serves to feed him. Were he valiant,
Or had but in him any noble nature,
That might hereafter promise him a good man,
My cares were so much lighter, and my grave
A span yet from me.

Mar. I confess, such fellows
Be in all royal camps, and have and must be,
To make the sin of coward more detested
In the mean soldier, that with such a foil
Sets off much valour. By description,
I should now guess him to you; it was Bessus,
I dare almost with confidence pronounce it.

Lyg. ’Tis such a scurvy name as Bessus;
And, now I think, ’tis he.

Mar. Captain do you call him?
Believe me, sir, you have a misery
Too mighty for your age: A pox upon him!
For that must be an end of all his service.
Your daughter was not mad, sir?

Lyg. No; ’would she had been!
The fault had had more credit. I would do something.

Mar. I would fain counsel you; but to what I know not.
He’s so below a beating, that the women
Find him not worthy of their distaves, and
To hang him were to cast away a rope.
He’s such an airy, thin, unbodied coward,
That no revenge can catch him.
I’ll tell you, sir, and tell you truth; this rascal
Fears neither God nor man; has been so beaten,
Sufferance has made him wainscot; he has had,
Since he was first a slave,
At least three hundred daggers set in’s head,
As little boys do new knives in hot meat.
There’s not a rib in’s body, o’ my conscience,
That has not been thrice broken with dry beating!
And now his sides look like two wicker targets,
Every way bended;
Children will shortly take him for a wall,
And set their stone-bows in his forehead.
He is of so base a sense,
I cannot in a week imagine what
Shall be done to him.

Lyg. Sure, I have committed some great sin,
That this base fellow should be made my rod.
I would see him; but I shall have no patience.

Mar. ’Tis no great matter, if you have not: If a laming of him, or such a toy, may do you pleasure, sir, he has it for you; and I’ll help you to him. ’Tis no news to him to have a leg broken, or a shoulder out,