ut-throat slave from
Thrace, are together._]

_Bell._ Now, gentle Ithamore, lie in my lap.--
Where are my maids? provide a cunning banquet;
Send to the merchant, bid him bring me silks;
Shall Ithamore, my love, go in such rags?

_Ithamore._ And bid the jeweller come hither too.

_Bell._ I have no husband; sweet, I'll marry thee.

_Ithamore._ Content: but we will leave this paltry land,
And sail from hence to Greece, to lovely Greece;--
I'll be thy Jason, thou my golden fleece;--
Where painted carpets o'er the meads are hurled,
And Bacchus' vineyards overspread the world;
Where woods and forests go in goodly green;--
I'll be Adonis, thou shalt be Love's Queen;--
The meads, the orchards, and the primrose-lanes,
Instead of sedge and reed, bear sugar-canes:
Thou in those groves, by Dis above,
Shalt live with me and be my love.

_Bell._ Whither will I not go with gentle Ithamore?

_The Massacre at Paris_ is a poor play and therefore need not detain us
long. Its only interest is in its attempt to represent quite recent
events (1572-89). As a history play it manages to reproduce the French
atmosphere of distrust, rivalry, intrigue and indiscriminate massacre,
but at the expense of unity. The hurried succession of scenes leads us
blindly to an unexpected conclusion: from first almost to last no
indication is given that the consummation aimed at is the ascent of
Navarre to the throne of France. Rarely has the merely chronological
principle been adhered to with so little meaning. Navarre, whose
marriage opens the play and whose triumph closes it, might be expected
to figure largely as the upholder of Protestantism in opposition to
Guise; instead he is relegated to quite a subordinate part. Anjou,
again, the later opponent of Guise, makes a very belated bid for our
favour after displaying a brutality equal to his rival's in the
massacre. The author is careful to paint Catherine in truly inky
blackness. But the only character which we are likely to remember is the
Duke of Guise. Yet his portrait is of inferior workmanship. The murders
by which he tries to reach the throne are too treacherous to be ranked
in the grander scale of crime. Even the vastness of his organized
massacre is belittled for us by the stage presentment of individual
assassination in which Guise himself plays a butcher's part. Greatness
is more often attributed to out