Collaborative play writing/Cardenio/Act 5

Act 5. Scene 1. Inside the convent

Enter Rodrigo and Fernando, carrying the bound Luscinda

Rodrigo. Rest certain, maiden, nothing will betide

But fair and noble usage. Pardon us

When hitherto a course of violence snatched

You from that seat of contemplation which

Some yield their life as if in afterlife.

Luscinda. My lord, where am I?

Rodrigo. Still in the nunnery. No blush or fear:

Your honor has as fair a guard as when

You slept in cradles. Know then what is done,

Which I presume you understand not well,

Has this use: to preserve the life of one

Who dies for love of you, my brother and

Your friend, beneath whose emblem we desire

To rest our hearse one night inside your walls,

Where we surprise you.

Enter Violante, hiding behind a pillar

Luscinda. Are you Rodrigo, virtuously seen

As virtue's son amid a court of vice,

And dare you lose this as the advocate

Of such a sinful brother, treacherous

In best of times and brutal at the worst?

Rodrigo. A fearful charge!

Luscinda. Take heed to bear respect for virtue's name

If not her essence. Should you loosen me

From your Fernando, not push me to him,

I will somehow be happy.

Rodrigo. Come, answer, not amazedly, I hope,

For, as I bear one mind, I am ashamed.

Fernando. Luscinda, you are freed. Thus self-condemned,

At your feet I sue for your gentlest ruth.

True, I have erred, which lovers will impute

With modesty to love, and only love,

The tyrant god who bows us to his sway,

Rebellious to all laws of reasoning,

Who will not have his votaries thrown off,

But calls commanding when he most obeys.

He promulgated what your eyes inspired,

Whose jewelled firebrands, piercing through the gloom,

Enrich my mansion from impure desires,

To kindle in our hearts a restful flame.

Luscinda. Arise, my lord. Dissembled passion gains

True hates. Should I drink wine when seeing lees

That, poison's image, murder my desires?

Rodrigo. I am no agent in your story yet,

But see you suffer wrongs which lack redress,

Though patience must be begged as we advance

To yonder lodge above the abbey walls,

Where your distresses will find due respect,

Till which time sorrow governs me as much

As nearness and affection to my kin.

Call my attendants yours, the freer yours,

For, as a man the hardiest Spaniards love,

No might beside your will prevails with us.

Exeunt Fernando and Luscinda, Violante advancing forward

Violante. Your ear an anxious moment! Scorn my youth

This night, yet listen to a tale of grief.

Rodrigo. What ails you? Why thus singling me for help

When I have need of it so hurriedly?

Violante. The due observance of nobility

Vowed to the mourning virgin makes me bold

To give it more employments than before.

Rodrigo. Ha? Who are you?

Violante. You know your brother's Violante, no?

Rodrigo. Indeed, he speaks of you.

Violante. Most guilty looks! I will already help

Your knowledge of a brother hurting all.

Rodrigo. How?

Violante. I am a woman whom your brother loves.

He lies extremely, but me he loves.

Rodrigo. Come, do not whimper, maiden. Must I hear

Day after day throughout each month or year

Of a licentious brother's broken faiths?

How did you enter inside convent walls?

Violante. That, as we trudge away, should it please you,

I will reveal, an open woman still.

This barren place, whom some despise to name,

Gives birth to many wonders of lost love.

Here wanders mad Cardenio, fool of worth,

In love with wrongs more than Luscinda's face.

Rodrigo. Cardenio! Is he here?

Violante. I say, Cardenio. Slumber dulls his eyes,

Oppressed with thinking ill of all the world.

Rodrigo. Thanks to a brother, pits of falsehood I

Can smell in darkness. May the fairest end

Succeed all yet. Should that most loving head,

Laurencia, abbess of religion's den,

But think it best, Cardenio will be served

As fortunately as I hope you may.

Come, you have overjoyed a man who thought

Man's goodness but the hearsay of fool's mouths.

The duke will hear appeals. Until I do

In equal goodness what my brother did

Contrary-wise, I'll swim with you in tears.

Lead me to my Cardenio.

Exeunt Rodrigo and Violante

Act 5. Scene 2. Inside the lodge

Enter the duke of Osuna, Camillo, and Bernardo

Camillo. Yes, your grace would then have had a son, Bernardo a daughter, and I an heir. But let the physician escape with his money when the disease cannot be cured. I'll rub fate cleanly for my grave, and there an end.

Osuna. Sorrows never help us, sirs.

Camillo. Hang me, my lord, if I shed another tear. I weep so long that I am blind, even for my hawks, toys next to my son, should they fly house-high, aiming at the sun.

Osuna. You mourn like April. Bernardo is not so downcast yet.

Bernardo. Let all go.

Osuna. Ha? So woebegone?

Bernardo. I kiss imagined daughters on my knee.

Osuna. Disobedient children dig a father's grave.

Bernardo. And disobedient fathers, too.

Camillo. The young are wanton. The next storm we have because of that, we'll gallop homeward, whining like pigs in the wind.

Bernardo. My daughter in any fashion, any day!

Osuna. Will you kiss her unmarried with bairns?

Bernardo. All ten of them.

Camillo. You might have had that with my son. Find another fool to mend her gap with.

Osuna. Rodrigo charged you to wait here, but

Has overslipped the time, at which his notes

In haste request that I should be. Some bad

Event is ushered in by this delay.-

Giraldo, speedily!

Enter Giraldo

Giraldo. Should comforts please your grace, Fernando comes.

Osuna. Giraldo, I should thank you heartily

For your so timely news. Is he alone?

Giraldo. Attended well, perhaps too well, my lord,

For in his train we see a hearse approach

With all due rites of mourning.

Bernardo. A hearse?

Camillo. Destruction's end: a hearse, a hearse! More woes,

The final one, thank Christ. It is my son's.

Osuna. Bid them all enter ceremoniously.

Giraldo. At once and faster still, your eminence.

Exit Giraldo

Osuna. May my Fernando live, though sinning half

The day and more each night until I die.

Camillo. Cardenio, dead! I was alive but now.

Enter Rodrigo

Osuna. O, welcome, sound Rodrigo! Quickly, news!

Camillo. Do you bring joy or grief, my lord? For me,

Whatever comes, I'll live a month or two,

Curse my physician should my health be good,

And then beneath a stone lies seventy.

Rodrigo. A manly patience!- Noble father, I

Bring ease to sorrows. My endeavors are

Never so barren as a needless fear.

Osuna. In heavy clouds of seeding overspread.

Enter Fernando and Luscinda

Rodrigo. The company I bring bear witness to

The busiest of our times engaged in good.

Bernardo finds a daughter here, and you

A wandering heir seeking pardon most.

Bernardo. A daughter! A daughter! A daughter! In joyful miraculously plentuous floods I weep. (striking her

Luscinda. Ha!

Bernardo. My daughter! My daughter! My daughter! Joyfully my lips tremble in everlasting thankfulness. (kissing her

Luscinda. So do mine.

Rodrigo. How first I met with them, how brought them here

More leisure will retell with circumstance.

Fernando. Confusion! Is this pleasure's only den

You promised lust, my brother? Tricked, undone!

As low as earth, I bow resistlessly

To ask your pardon, honorable lord.

Osuna. You drag a damaged waggon to the barn,

Restoring usefulness in what I was.

One comfort I have most been missing long;

Your whore-manned follies will be left abroad.

Camillo. Joys everywhere except for me. I'm ruined

Without one hope of hope forever, should

My son be dead.

Rodrigo. Time guides my hand to work your happiness

As well as that of others, newest friend.

Enter Violante and Fabian, re-enter Giraldo, the latter two carrying a hearse

Camillo. I thank your lordship for unlikely news.

Rodrigo. Ha? Fabian and unhappy?

Violante. Your ear once more, Rodrigo!

Rodrigo. Ha? Why these serious faces? Are my eyes

Now different or is the coffin so?

Camillo. Should this black hearse forever hold my son,

I'll ask death to make me a grandfather,

And like a lucky fellow disappear.

Though full of pleasing business, it would be

Most wondrous should he not do all the good

He can accomplish when a man has done.

Rodrigo. I'll introduce a woman some should know.

Do you know her, Fernando?

Fernando. I think I do.

Violante. I think he does.

Bernardo. Be known for wisdom. Tears distract our joys.

Violante. I do not weep for my own self tonight.

Rodrigo. What do you mean?

Luscinda. Not Violante?

Violante. Yes, Violante.

Luscinda. I once heard of Fernando's hated love.

Violante. No.

Fernando. No.

Rodrigo. Why is my Fabian sad?

Fabian. I will be so all day most of the year.

Bernardo. My daughter, never heed Fernando's love.

Osuna. Hear a repentant father.

Luscinda. More willingly than fish a fisherman.

Osuna. The voice of parents is the voice of God,

To children heaven's first lieutenants. God

Made fathers not for common usages

Of procreation, or else beasts would be

As noble as we are, but to block up

At custom houses of security

The wanton freight of youth's quick passages,

With which most sail at random, straightening

The moral line they bend so dismally.

For this are we made fathers and for this

We challenge duty on our children's part.

Obedience is the sacrifice of truths,

Too necessary in a lying world,

Whose form we carry, though we sometimes lie

Obligingly for their own sake or ours.

Bernardo. Heed your duke's words, unheeding eighteen.

Luscinda. I wish I had ten ears to gobble them.

Osuna. Your are Fernando's dearest love, I hear.

Violante. No.

Luscinda. My gracious lord, let me unmannerly

Request no further pressing of worn suits,

Persuasions on his subject wheezing out

To grave-sites, reverently holding hands

With patience as a friend to bury them,

Till I shake hands with smiling-grieving mien

In parting from old sorrows veiled for show.

Camillo. That snuff never begot this candle. No,

He was some rarer fellow. Thank with tears

Of joy your mother's whoring, no harm done.

Were I but young again, and had but you,

A good horse under me with a straight sword,

Thus much for money or inheritance.

Osuna. Ha? Are you satisfied with such an answer, son?

Fernando. Enthusiasm wakes my ear at last.

I knew her fainting was pretended, thus

Revealing truths with falseness of her love

To true Cardenio, whom I almost tricked,

Regretting bitterly I could not do.

Camillo. Why look at me? I'll look on coffins still.

Remove the cover, so that I can see

Who died, and whether I should grieve today.

Fernando. Giraldo, lift the cover for the man

Who has most need to see some stranger there.

Giraldo. I do.

(The cover is lifted

Camillo. Is it my son? Ah, no, ah, no, ah, no!

Ten thousand years do not suffice to hold

The passions throttling the old man in me.

Osuna. Ha? Ha? He falls.

Camillo. How did I fail to crush my head? Drown me

With tears, eyes, stifle me in my son's box.

Should I not sleep? A father by a son

Is gladly buried, not as it should be.

Fabian. I should say something to console, but can

Find nothing to this nothing. When he first

Came in the world, we knew he would end so.

Luscinda. Cardenio, I have come to bury you,

Not marry. A farewell to hopeful dreams

Of happiness, at once by Atropos

Unwillingly cut off.

Camillo. More blessings on his ghost, wherever it

May go, if anywhere. His mother will

Perhaps die, too. Why not? More sorrows, more,

Until we gagging die from and for them.

Luscinda. Too many rites must be performed again

Before I woo again. A woman loved

By a corpse now! If some dare doubt

My cheerless testimony, wear your love

Where mine is, here, within the grieving heart,

Deep, deep within, not in an eye or tongue,

For there it wears away, or with two tears

Washed out from old remembrance. Mine's like lead.

No doctor's pill, but time or death cures it.

Bernardo. I'm a bad friend, worse father, but can strive

Henceforth to merit your all-grieving loves.

Exeunt Camillo, Bernardo, Luscinda, and Giraldo carrying the hearse

Osuna. Though marriage in these sorrows seems like wives

Pretending love, I will sift out my son's

Deceits. If not Luscinda, Violante!

Violante. Make your conditions quickly. I seal them

Thus on a traitor's mouth. (kissing Fernando

Fernando. Ha?

Rodrigo. A girl whose equal is not found in haste.

You are the ripe one every inch, I swear.

Fernando. What violent courtship is this?

Rodrigo. Will she become your harlot, brother, one

But lately so already, to her grief?

Fernando. My harlot!

Rodrigo. A flowing maiden strumpeted by you,

But more and worse, you stole her from her friends,

And promised her a dukedom.

Fernando. I? Never.

Rodrigo. On deadly light occasions let her by

High on these hills, where she was nearly starved,

Had not Laurencia found her straying ill.

A rape's not handsome, brother.

Fernando. Sir, you are merry.

Rodrigo. You'll find both death and marriage sober truths.

Osuna. If so, I hate you, son.

Fernando. A fiction all. My brother, you must please

To look at other fools to prick with fears.

Permit the angry woman to say whore,

Whom I refused. If so, know me no more.

Rodrigo. Here is the injured woman. If denied,

I wrong a brother's honor overmuch.

Osuna. A pretty piece of damage, I can swear!

Where were you born?

Violante. On the other side of the mountain.

Osuna. Where are your friends?

Violante. I only know a father, best of lords.

Osuna. How could you leave a worried father thus?

Violante. That noble lord once pleased to like my face,

And, without lying, doting so on me

That with his promises he won my love,

Cohered with duty from a father's choice.

I follow where he goes, my own no more.

Rodrigo. What do you say now, brother?

Osuna. What can he say?

Fernando. As I have breath for truth, a lying trick.

I never saw the woman in a bed.

Violante. Do not take up a witness to a wrong.

It is not noble of you to despise

What you have made, for if I cog for gold,

Let justice use her bloodiest rods on me.

Osuna. Fernando, fie! I am the more ashamed.

These are no tears of cunning on her face.

Rodrigo. Impartial nature meant this woman as

A bride, for otherwise we will abhor

And marvel to see virtue bob and cursed.

Osuna. Once more, why did you leave your father thus?

Violante. Ah, that to me? I see I'm still unknown,

For, by my faith in man, now almost gone,

I'll never live until I use my wits

To capture what I lost in honor's cause.

What youth is able to achieve, I'll do,

With or without a father's approbation.

My will I'll put in act, to please my man.

I cannot steal, therefore to all the world

I am but stolen till I get him back

To where I was, unmounted but for me.

Osuna. As deeply honest as her poverty.

Violante. To my undoing.

Rodrigo. Never say so again. Fernando, swear

You'll marry, otherwise no brother here.

Osuna. This son abuses men and women's hopes

Already. Are there further plots he thinks

Of? We can guess.

Fernando. Unless retrieving witnesses to wrongs,

It is injustice to believe a whore,

I having sworn against it. You will have-

I bind it with my honor- satisfaction

To all your wishes if you prove the rape.

Violante. I wish no more, my lord. I say tonight

I have a thousand noble witnesses

For honesty and trust. Look up above.

Fernando. Huh!

Rodrigo. She speaks the truth.

Fernando. The modern woman takes men to her heels,

To gain advantage of her sex, then to

Snatch up advantages meant for our own.

Rodrigo. I'll be her voucher.

Fernando. A very plain confederacy of fools

To slander a duke's son!

Rodrigo. That she has been the agent of your couch

Appears in your own letter, here produced

To make her credits mine, the writing, yours,

The matter, love, for so it is expressed.

Osuna. Perhaps the forgery of a he-bawd.

Fernando. Mere forgery cannot confound me yet.

Osuna. Read it, Rodrigo.

Rodrigo. (reading

"Prudence should teach what indiscretion commits. I have already stepped towards this show of wisdom by prevailing on myself to bid you forever farewell."

Fernando. This can mean everything or nothing, sir.

Osuna. I think you lie.

Fernando. My gracious father, I confess I whored

With her, but what of that? I coddled her,

The purport all too trivial for your ear,

She wishing to avenge her honor lost,

But why I must be married when we erred

I cannot solve as yet, for, to my mind,

And by the honors of my birth and house,

The minion's face I never wish to see.

Violante. In debt with protestation's false bank-notes.

Rodrigo. Why should a woman do herself such wrong

As to admit she erred in trusting you?

Fernando. Because she lacks my money on her back

And avid cunt.

Rodrigo. Your friendship warrants no abuse of sex.

Fernando. If you provoke me thus, I will forget

What you are to me. These are practices

And mindless villanies to scandal me.

Rodrigo. Where is the witness to prove him untrue?

Fernando. No witness but a hypocrite can come.

Osuna. Hold.

Fernando. Ha?

Osuna. What do I read on her face, sorrowing?

Fernando. By all my sins, a woman wanting more.

Rodrigo. Whose practice breaks off?

Osuna. Is she a mounting whore? Are you too false?

Rodrigo. A woman having done him services,

And she unpaid for it except in rape!

Violante. My lord, I do not come to bruise your honor.

Your pure affection dead, though first betrayed,

My claim may die with it. But let me not

Shrink meekly to the grave with infamy.

Protect my virtue, though it hurts your faith,

And my last breath will speak Fernando true.

Fernando. In what shamed conflicts wounded honor strives

Inside my breast! But honor overcomes.

She looks as beauteous and as innocent

As when I wronged her. Virtuous Violante,

Too good for me! Dare you still love a man,

So faithless as I am? I know your love.

Thus, thus, and thus, I print repentances.

Let every man read it here. Gracious lord

And father, pardon. Make me richer still

With love. This is no wife, yet honor's truth.

No other will I take until I find for her

A worthier match.

Osuna. Here's a new change, Rodrigo looking glum.

Fernando. Together with Luscinda's, in whose arms

I almost wronged Cardenio. Everyone,

Forgive by taking home my holiest oaths.

Let those be fortunate who has deserved.

I must admit the baseness of my wrongs,

And purpose recompense. Lone Violante,

You must again be widowed, for I vow

A ceaseless pilgrimage not to know joy,

Until, a gracious duke before my time,

I give that to Camelio and to you.

Osuna. O, grief! He will improve after I die.

Rodrigo. I'll stop your voyage, father. Violante,

What do you think now of this honest man?

Violante. Alas, my lord, my thoughts are all employed.

He has a face reminding me of love,

Which I thought too well of. What confidence!

He never weeps.- Ha! Stay. It cannot be:

He has his eye, his gestures, shapes, and love.

I wish he could speak. Ecstasy of love!

I thought I saw that, but beheld a dream.

Rodrigo. I'm almost starved for kisses, while this man

Takes all in all.

Fernando. Stand forty feet off, no man troubling me.

Much good may that do to your envying.

Rodrigo. To him again! I will not hinder love,

But this was never she.

Osuna. His falsest righteousness has crossed your love.

Think, Violante, from the tempest blown,

Though sour afflictions combat hope awhile,

When lovers swear true faith, strange listeners

Stand peeping on the golden battlements,

And waft resources to eternal thrones,

Such were my vows, and so are they repaid.

If you can hope, join hands together soon.

A providence above our power rules,

Ask him forgiveness when the villain sins.

Violante. The fault was love's, not his.

Fernando. Brave, generous, and empty Violante!

I know your nobleness of old, a prize

For men who seize. Mere passion made me blind.

Once more, share in a heart that never will

Wrong you again.

Rodrigo. Embraces cut excuses.

Osuna. I must in part repair my son's offense:

At your best leisure, Violante, know

Our court, and know, our worthiest Violante,

I have another smaller debt to pay.

Once, when I chased the boar, your father saved

My life, for whose deed, and for virtue's sake,

Though your descent be low, call me your pot

Of gold. A match drawn out from honesty

Is pedigree enough. Are you all pleased?

Fernando. All.

Rodrigo. All.

Violante. All.

Osuna. And I not least. We'll now return to court,

Where after travels we may yet behold

More loves completed, to restrain at last

Youth's wanderings, and there solemnity

And grace will much improve my joys,

And make those lovers who your story read

Wish lovers' wanderings like mine succeed.

Exeunt Osuna, Rodrigo, Fernando, and Violante