in a style as curt and condensed as that of Tacitus or Dante:
Sophonisba. What unjust grief afflicts my worthy lord?
Massinissa. Thank me, ye gods, with much beholdingness;
For, mark, I do not curse you.
Sophonisba.Tell me, sweet,
The cause of thy much anguish.
Massinissa.Ha, the cause?
Let's see; wreathe back thine arms, bend down thy neck,
Practise base prayers, make fit thyself for bondage.
Sophonisba. Bondage!
Massinissa.Bondage: Roman bondage.
Sophonisba.No, no![1]
Massinissa. How then have I vowed well to Scipio?
Sophonisba. How then to Sophonisba?
Massinissa.Right: which way
Run mad? impossible distraction![2]
Sophonisba. Dear lord, thy patience; let it maze all power,
And list to her in whose sole heart it rests
To keep thy faith upright.
- ↑ This verse, unmusical to an English ear, is good Italian metre; possibly an intentional and deliberate example of the poet's Italian predilections, and if so certainly a less irrational and inexplicable one than the intrusion of some villainously bad Italian lines and phrases into the text of 'Antonio and Mellida.'
- ↑ In other words—intolerable or unimaginable division or divulsion of mind and spirit between two contending calls of honour, two irreconcilable claims of duty. Modern editors of this great scene have broken up the line into pieces, marked or divided by superfluous dashes and points of exclamation. Campbell, who had the good taste to confute his own depreciatory criticism of Marston by including the passage among his 'Selections,' was the first, as far as I know, to adopt this erroneous and rather spasmodic punctuation.
