Ford. Excerpt from "The Lover's Melancholy"

John Ford

from

" PERKIN WARBECK "

Act V, Scene 3.

[Warbeck's speech to Katherine]

WARBECK Spite of tyranny,                                   120
We reign in our affections, blessed woman!
Read in my destiny the wreck of honour;°
Point out, in my contempt of death, to memory
Some miserable happiness; since herein
Even when I fell, I stood enthroned a monarch           125
Of one chaste wife's troth, pure and uncorrupted.
Fair angel of perfection, immortality
Shall raise thy name up to an adoration;
Court every rich opinion of true merit;
And saint it in the calendar of virtue,                          130
When I am turned into the selfsame dust
Of which I was first formed.

Source:

John Ford.
The Lover's Melancholy ; the Broken Heart ;
'tis Pity She's a Whore ; Perkin Warbeck.
Marion Lomax, Ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 320.