The Spanish Tragedie — Thomas Kyd

GHOAST. When this eternall substance of my soule Did liue imprisond in my wanton flesh, Ech in their function seruing others need, I was a courtier in the Spanish court: My name was Don Andrea; my discent, Though not ignoble, yet inferiour far To gratious fortunes of my tender youth, For there, in prime and pride of all my yeeres, By duteous seruice and deseruing loue, In secret I possest a worthy dame, Which hight sweet Bel-imperia by name. But in the haruest of my sommer ioyes Deaths winter nipt the blossomes of my blisse, Forcing diuorce betwixt my loue and me; For in the late conflict with Portingale My valour drew me into dangers mouth Till life to death made passage through my wounds. When I was slaine, my soule descended straight To passe the flowing streame of Archeron; But churlish Charon, only boatman there, Said that, my rites of buriall not performde, I might not sit amongst his passengers. Ere Sol had slept three nights in Thetis lap, And slakte his smoaking charriot in her floud, By Don Horatio, our knight-marshals sonne, My funerals and obsequies were done. Then was the fariman of hell content To passe me ouer to the slimie strond That leades to fell Auernus ougly waues. There, pleasing Cerberus with honied speech, I past the perils of the formost porch. Not farre from hence, amidst ten thousand soules, Sate Minos, Eacus and Rhadamant; To whome no sooner gan I make approach, To craue a pasport for my wandring ghost, But Minos in grauen leaues of lotterie Drew forth the manner of my life and death. "This knight," quoth he, "both liu'd and died in loue;