Toolbox



Textual Analysis

[ Go ]

Shakespeare on Stage
American Shakespeare Center, The Duchess of Malfi. To Jun. 15, 2013.
American Shakespeare Center, Twelfth Night. To Jun. 16, 2013.
Folger Shakespeare Library, Twelfth Night. To Jun. 9, 2013.
American Shakespeare Center, Return to the Forbidden Planet. To Dec. 1, 2013.
American Shakespeare Center, Love's Labour's Lost. To Jun. 15, 2013.
More Performances…
‌

The Tragedy of Locrine (Third Folio, 1664)

Author: Anonymous
Not Peer Reviewed
Enter Humber.
Hum. Where may I find some desart wildernesse,
Where I may breathe out curses as I would,
And scare the earth with my condemning voyce,
1275 Where every ecchoes repercussion
May help me to bewaile mine overthrow,
And aid me in my sorrowfull laments?
Where may I find some hollow uncoth rock,
Where I may damn, condemn, and ban my fill?
1280The heavens, the hell, the earth, the aire, the fire,
And utter curses to the concave skie,
Which may infect the aiery regions,
And light upon the Britain Locrine's head.
You ugly sprites that in Cocitus mourn,
1285And gnash your teeth with dolorous laments,
You fearfull dogs that in black Læthe howle,
And scare the Ghosts with your wide open throats,
You ugly Ghosts that flying from these dogs,
Do plunge your selves in Puryflegiton,
1290Come all of you, and with your shrieking notes
Accompany the Britains conquering hoast.
Come fierce Erinnis, horrible with Snakes,
Come ugly Furies, armed with your whips,
You threefold judges of black Tartarus,
1295And all the army of you hellish fiends,
With new found torments rack proud Locrine's bones.
O gods and starres, damn'd be the gods and starres,
That did not drown me in fair Thetis plains.
Curst be the sea that with outragious waves,
1300 With surging billowes did not rive my ships
Against the rocks of high Cerannia,
Or swallowed me into her watry gulf.
Would God he had arriv'd upon the shore
Where Poliphemus and the Cyclops dwell,
1305Or where the bloody Anthropomphagie
With greedy jawes devoures the wandring wights,
Enter the Ghost of Albanact.
But why comes Albanact's bloody Ghost,
To bring a corsive to our miseries!
1310Is't not enough to suffer shamefull flight,
But we must be tormented now with Ghosts?
With apparitions fearfull to behold?
Ghost. Revenge, revenge for blood.
Hum. So nought will satisfie your wandring Ghost,
1315But dire revenge, nothing but Humber's fall,
Because he conquered you in Albany.
Now by my soule, Humber would be condemn'd
To Tantals hunger, or Ixions Wheele,
Or to the vulture of Promotheus,
1320Rather then that this murther were undone.
When as I I die I'le drag thy cursed Ghost
Through all the Rivers of foule Erebus,
Through burning sulphur of the Limbo-lake,
To allay the burning fury of that heat,
1325That rageth in mine everlasting soule.
Exeunt.
Alba. Ghost. Vindicta, vindicta.