PEPE. Boo! bloody-bones! If you're a coward--which I hardly think-- You'll have me flogged, or put into a cell, Or fed to wolves. If you are bold of heart, You'll let me run. Do not; I'll work you harm! I, Beppo Pepe, standing as a man, Without my motley, tell you, in plain terms, I'll work you harm--I'll do you mischief, man!
LANCIOTTO. I, Lanciotto, Count of Rimini, Will hang you, then. Put on your jingling cap; You please my father. But remember, fool, No jests at me!
PEPE. Well, cry quits, cry quits! I'll stretch your heart, and you my neck--quits, quits!
LANCIOTTO. Go, fool! Your weakness bounds your malice.
PEPE. Yes: So you all think, you savage gentlemen, Until you feel my sting. Hang, hang away! It is an airy, wholesome sort of death, Much to my liking. When I hang, my friend, You'll be chief mourner, I can promise you. Hang me! I've quite a notion to be hung: I'll do my utmost to deserve it. Hang! [_Exit._
LANCIOTTO. I am bemocked on all sides. My sad state Has given the licensed and unlicensed fool Charter to challenge me at every turn. The jester's laughing bauble blunts my sword, His gibes cut deeper than its fearful edge; And I, a man, a soldier, and a prince, Before this motley patchwork of a man, Stand all appalled, as if he were a glass Wherein I saw my own deformity. O Heaven! a tear--one little tear--to wash This aching dryness of the heart away!
PAOLO. What ails the fool? He passed me, muttering The strangest garbage in the fiercest tone. "Ha! ha!" cried he, "they made a fool of me-- motley man, a slave; as if I felt No stir in me of manly dignity! Ha! ha! a fool--a painted plaything, toy-- For men to kick about this dirty world!-- My world as well as theirs.--God's world, I trow! I will get even with them yet--ha! ha! In the democracy of death we'll square. I'll crawl and lie beside a king's own son; Kiss a young princess, dead lip to dead lip; Pull the Pope's nose; and kick down Charlemagne, Throne, crown, and all, where the old idiot sprawls, Safe as he thinks, rotting in royal state!" And then he laughed and gibbered, as if drunk With some infernal ecstasy.
LANCIOTTO. Poor fool! That is the groundwork of his malice, then,-- His conscious difference from the rest of men? I, of all men, should pity him the most. Poor Pepe! I'll be kinder. I have wronged A feeling heart. Poor Pepe!