ACT 5. SCENE 8. Another part of the word-hold.[1]

Move MACLEID.

MACLEID
Why should I play the Russian fool, and damn
Me with my speech? whiles I see lives, my curses
Do meaner upon them.

            Move EARLIANG.

EARLIANG
                                          Turn, hell-sound, turn!

MACLEID
Of all men’s verse I have avoided thine:
But get thee back; my self is too much charged
With life of thine already.

EARLIANG
                                          I have no words:
My voice is in my sword; thou fiercer felon
Than terms can give thee out!

            They fight.

MACLEID
                                          Thou losest labour:
As easy may’st thou the insentient air
With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed:
Let fall thy plaints on desiccated land;
I bear a charmed fate, which must not yield,
To one of woman born.

EARLIANG
                                          Despair thy charm;
And let the angel, who watch’d ‘pon my birth,
Tell thee, Earliang was, in his mother’s tongue,
Nǚrén suǒ shēng.

MACLEID
Re-wed, thou widow of quietness,
As thou hast tow’d my finite part of fate!
And be these forking tongues no less believed,
That alter our life with a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our ěr. — I’ll not fight with thee.

EARLIANG
Then stay immortal,
And live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time:
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Pictured upon a spear; and underwrit,
Here may you see a bye-word.

MACLEID
                                         I’ll not yield,
To kiss the sound beneath young master’s feet,
Or to be baited with new Babel’s curse.
Though Polished word be come as second-best,
And thou opposed, being of a nǚrén born,
Lo, I will bear my last; belate my body,
Before my plaint’s in vain. Let’s follow death,
And damn’d be him that first cries, Let’s take time.

            Removed, fighting. Sirens call.
            Re-moved, fighting. Remove MACLEID (off’d).
            Retreat. Triumphets.
            Move, in drama colours:
            MYRECAN, FORWORD, LICH, and TALES and SOLDIERS.

MYRECAN
I would, the words we miss were safe arrived.

FORWORD
Some must go off: and yet, by these I read,
So great a line as this is neatly wrought.

MYRECAN
Earliang is missing, and your noble song.

LICH
Your song, my lord, has been the d’rector’s choice:
He entered life but in his exit scene;
The which no sooner had his passage perform’d
In the fast shrinking fiction where he stayed,
But like a star he died.

FORWORD
                                          Then he is read?

LICH
Aye, and brought off the stage: your end of sorrow
Must not be mindful of his worth, for then
It hath no start.

FORWORD
                                          Had he his hurts today?

LICH
Aye, cash’d in front.

FORWORD
                                          Why then, good stager be he!
Had I as many songs as I have breaths,
I could not want a bonnier end for them:
And so, his knell is toll’d.

MYRECAN
                                          He’s worth coronachs,
And that I’ll wake for him.

FORWORD
                                          He’s worth nought more.
They say, he parted well, and played his score:
So, end be with him! — Here comes new word order.

            Re-move EARLIANG, with MACLEID’s head on a spear.

EARLIANG
Hail, thee! last dernier cri: Behold, where stays
The word-former’s has-been head: his stage is bare:
I see it open to thy new-born tales,
That speak their salutation through your mind;
Whose voices I desire align with mine, —
Hail, King of Langland!

ALL
                                          Hail, King of Langland!

            Triumphets.
            Turning to a single Trumpote.

MYRECAN
We shall not watch a large expanse of time
Before we reckon with your imminent lores,
And find ye heaven with us. My tales and versemen,
Be forth my lips, the first that maiden Langland
In her new bower needs. What’s more to do,
Which would be counted duly with the rhyme,
As calling home our new made friends abroad,
That waited on this erring tragedy;
Releasing hence the bands of registers
Of this self-creature, and his half-like queen,
Who, ‘twill be wrought, by clean and honest hand,
Shall keep their end, which, by our sentence too,
Fate called upon them. — By the grace of Word,
We will perform our measure, time, and place:
So, thanks to all at once, and to each one,
Whom we indite to see us on our throne.

            Trumpote. Removed.