THE OLD LAW.

ACT I. SCENE I.

A Room in Creon’s House.
Enter Simonides and two Lawyers.
Sim. Is the law firm, sir?
First Law. The law! what more firm, sir,
More powerful, forcible, or more permanent?
Sim. By my troth, sir,
I partly do believe it; conceive, sir,
You have indirectly answered my question.
I did not doubt the fundamental grounds
Of law in general, for the most solid;
But this particular law that me concerns,
Now, at the present, if that be firm and strong,
And powerful, and forcible, and permanent?
I am a young man that has an old father.
Second Law. Nothing more strong, sir.

It is—Secundum statutum principis, confirmatum cum voce senatus,[57] et voce reipublicæ; nay, consummatum et exemplificatum.

Is it not in force,
When divers have already tasted it,
And paid their lives for penalty?
Sim. ’Tis true.
My father must be next; this day completes
Full fourscore years upon him.
Second Law. He is[58] here, then,
Sub pœna statuti: hence I can tell him,
Truer than all the physicians in the world,
He cannot live out to-morrow; this
Is the most certain climacterical year—
’Tis past all danger, for there is[59] no ’scaping it.
What age is your mother, sir?
Sim. Faith, near her days too;
Wants some two of threescore.[60]
First Law. So! she’ll drop away
One of these days too: here’s a good age now
For those that have old parents and rich inheritance!
Sim. And, sir, ’tis profitable for others too:
Are there not fellows that lie bedrid in their offices,
That younger men would walk lustily in?
Churchmen, that even the second infancy
Hath silenc’d, yet have[61] spun out their lives so long,
That many pregnant and ingenious spirits
Have languish’d in their hop’d reversions,
And died upon the thought? and, by your leave, sir,
Have you not places fill’d up in the law
By some grave senators, that you imagine
Have held them long enough, and such spirits as you,
Were they remov’d, would leap into their dignities?
First Law. Die quibus in terris, et eris mihi magnus Apollo.[62]
Sim. But tell me, faith, your fair opinion:
Is’t not a sound and necessary law,
This, by the duke enacted?
First Law. Never did Greece,
Our ancient seat of brave philosophers,
’Mongst all her nomothetæ[63] and lawgivers,
Not when she flourish’d in her sevenfold sages,
Whose living memory can never die,
Produce a law more grave and necessary.
Sim. I’m of that mind too.
Second Law. I will maintain, sir,
Draco’s oligarchy, that the government
Of community reduced into few,
Fram’d a fair state; Solon’s chreokopia,[64]
That cut off poor men’s debts to their rich creditors,
Was good and charitable, but not full allow’d;[65]
His seisactheia[66] did reform that error,
His honourable senate of Areopagitæ.
Lycurgus was more loose, and gave too free
And licentious reins unto his discipline;
As that a young woman, in her husband’s weakness,
Might choose her able friend to propagate;
That so the commonwealth might be supplied
With hope of lusty spirits. Plato did err,
And so did Aristotle, [in] allowing
Lewd and luxurious limits to their laws:
But now our Epire, our Epire’s Evander,
Our noble and wise prince, has hit the law
That all our predecessive students
Have miss’d, unto their shame.
Enter Cleanthes.
Sim. Forbear the praise, sir,
’Tis in itself most pleasing.—Cleanthes!
O lad, here’s a spring for young plants to flourish!
The old trees must down kept the sun from us;
We shall rise now, boy.
Clean. Whither, sir, I pray?
To the bleak air of storms, among those trees
Which we had shelter from?
Sim. Yes, from our growth,
Our sap and livelihood, and from our fruit.
What! ’tis not jubilee with thee yet, I think,
Thou look’st so sad on’t. How old is[67] thy father?
Clean. Jubilee! no, indeed; ’tis a bad year with me.
Sim. Prithee, how old’s thy father? then I can tell thee.
Clean. I know not how to answer you, Simonides;
He is[68] too old, being now exposed
Unto the rigour of a cruel edict;
And yet not old enough by many years,
’Cause I’d not see him go an hour before me.
Sim. These very passions[69] I speak to my father.
Come, come, here’s none but friends here, we may speak
Our insides freely; these are lawyers, man,
And shall be counsellors shortly.
Clean. They shall be now, sir,
And shall have large fees if they’ll undertake
To help a good cause, for it wants assistance;
Bad ones, I know, they can insist upon.
First Law. O sir, we must undertake of both parts;
But the good we have most good in.
Clean. Pray you, say,
How do you allow[70] of this strange edict?
First Law. Secundum justitiam; by my faith, sir,
The happiest edict that ever was in Epire.
Clean. What, to kill innocents, sir? it cannot be,
It is no rule in justice there to punish.
First Law. O sir,
You understand a conscience, but not law.
Clean. Why, sir, is there so main a difference?
First Law. You’ll never be good lawyer if you understand not that.
Clean. I think, then, ’tis the best to be a bad one.

First Law. Why, sir, the very letter and the sense both do[71] overthrow you in this statute, which[72] speaks, that every man living to fourscore years, and women to threescore, shall then be cut off, as fruitless to the republic, and law shall finish what nature linger’d at.

Clean. And this suit shall soon be despatch’d in law?
First Law. It is so plain it can have no demur;
The church-book overthrows it.
Clean. And so it does;[73]
The church-book overthrows it, if you read it well.
First Law. Still, you run from the law into error:
You say it takes the lives of innocents;
I say no, and so says common reason;
What man lives to fourscore, and woman[74] to three,
That can die innocent?
Clean. A fine law[75] evasion!
Good sir, rehearse the full statute to me.
Sim. Fie! that’s too tedious; you have already
The full sum in the brief relation.
Clean. Sir,
’Mongst many words may be found contradictions;
And these men dare sue and wrangle with a statute,
If they can pick a quarrel with some error.
Second Law. Listen, sir, I’ll gather it as brief as I can for you:

Anno primo Evandri, Be it for the care and good of the commonwealth, (for divers necessary reasons that we shall urge,) thus peremptorily enacted,—

Clean. A fair pretence, if the reasons foul it not!

Second Law. That all men living in our dominions of Epire, in their decayed nature, to the age of fourscore, or women to the age of threescore, shall on the same day be instantly put to death, by those means and instruments that a former proclamation, had to this purpose, through our said territories dispersed.

Clean. There was no woman in this senate, certain.

First Law. That these men, being past their bearing arms to aid and defend their country; past their manhood and likelihood[76] to propagate any further issue to their posterity; and as well past their councils (whose[77] overgrown gravity is now run into dotage) to assist their country; to whom, in common reason, nothing should be so wearisome as their own lives, as they may be supposed tedious[78] to their successive heirs, whose times are spent in the good of their country, yet wanting the means to maintain it; and are like to grow old before their inheritance (born to them) come to their necessary use, [be condemned to die]: for the women,[79] for that they never were defence to their country; never by counsel admitted to the assist[ance] of [the] government of their country; only necessary to the propagation of posterity, and now, at the age of threescore, past[80] that good, and all their goodness: it is thought fit, then, (a quarter abated from the more worthy member) they[81] be put to death, as is before recited: provided that, for the just and impartial execution of this our statute, the example shall first begin in and about our court, which ourself will see carefully performed; and not, for a full month[82] following, extend any further into our dominions. Dated the sixth of the second month, at our Palace Royal in Epire.[83]

Clean. A fine edict, and very fairly gilded!
And is there no scruple in all these words
To demur the law upon occasion?
Sim. Pox! ’tis an unnecessary inquisition;
Prithee, set him not about it.
Second Law. Troth, none, sir:
It is so evident and plain a case,
There is no succour for the defendant.
Clean. Possible! can nothing help in a good case?
First Law. Faith, sir, I do think there may be a hole,
Which would protract—delay, if not remedy.
Clean. Why, there’s some comfort in that: good sir, speak it.
First Law. Nay, you must pardon me for that, sir.
Sim. Prithee, do not;
It may ope a wound to many sons and heirs,
That may die after it.
Clean. Come, sir, I know
How to make you speak:—will this do it?[84]
[Gives him his purse.
First Law. I will afford you my opinion, sir.
Clean. Pray you, repeat the literal words expressly,
The time of death.
Sim. ’Tis an unnecessary question; prithee, let it alone.
Second Law. Hear his opinion; ’twill be fruitless, sir.

That man at the age of fourscore, and woman[85] at threescore, shall the same day be put to death.

First Law. Thus I help the man to twenty-one years more.
Clean. That were a fair addition.
First Law. Mark it, sir; we say, man is not at age
Till he be one-and-twenty; before, ’tis[86] infancy,
And adolescency; now,[87] by that addition,
Fourscore he cannot be till a hundred and one.
Sim. O poor evasion!
He’s fourscore years old, sir.
First Law. That helps more, sir;
He begins to be old at fifty, so, at fourscore
He’s but thirty years old; so, believe it, sir,
He may be twenty years in declination;
And so long may a man linger and live by’t.
Sim. The worst hope of safety that e’er I heard!
Give him his fee again, ’tis not worth two deniers.
First Law. There’s no law for restitution of fees, sir.
Clean. No, no, sir; I meant it lost when ’twas given.
Enter Creon and Antigona.
Sim. No more, good sir!
Here are ears unnecessary for your doctrine.
First Law. I have spoke out my fee, and I have done, sir.
Sim. O my dear father!
Creon. Tush! meet me not in exclaims;
I understand the worst, and hope no better.
A fine law! if this hold, white heads will be cheap,
And many watchmen’s places will be vacant;[88]
Forty of ’em I know my seniors,
That did due deeds of darkness too:—their country
Has watch’d ’em a good turn for’t,
And ta’en ’em napping now:
The fewer hospitals will serve too, many
May be us’d for stews and brothels; and those people
Will never trouble ’em to fourscore.
Ant. Can you play and sport with sorrow, sir?
Creon. Sorrow! for what, Antigona? for my life?
My sorrow[89] is I have kept it so long well,
With bringing it up unto so ill an end:
I might have gently lost it in my cradle,
Before my nerves and ligaments grew strong,
To bind it faster to me.
Sim. For mine own sake,
I should have been sorry for that.
Creon. In my youth
I was a soldier, no coward in my age;
I never turn’d my back upon my foe;
I have felt nature’s winters, sicknesses,
Yet ever kept a lively sap in me
To greet the cheerful spring of health again.
Dangers on horse,[90] on foot, [by land,] by water,
I have ’scap’d to this day; and yet this day,
Without all help of casual accidents,
Is only deadly to me, ’cause it numbers
Fourscore years to me. Where is[91] the fault now?
I cannot blame time, nature, nor my stars,
Nor aught but tyranny. Even kings themselves
Have sometimes tasted an even fate with me.
He that has been a soldier all his days,
And stood in personal opposition
’Gainst darts and arrows, the extremes of heat
And pinching cold, has treacherously at home,
In ’s secure quiet,[92] by a villain’s hand
Been basely lost, in his stars’ ignorance:—
And so must I die by a tyrant’s sword.
First Law. O say not so, sir; it is by the law.
Creon. And what’s that, sir, but the sword of tyranny,
When it is brandish’d against innocent lives?
I’m now upon my deathbed, sir; and ’tis fit
I should unbosom my free conscience,
And shew the faith I die in:—I do believe
’Tis tyranny that takes my life.
  Sim. Would it were gone,
By one means or other! what a long day
Will this be ere night! [Aside.
Creon. Simonides.
Sim. Here, sir,[93]—weeping.[94]
Creon. Wherefore dost thou weep?
Clean. ’Cause you make no more haste to your end.
[Aside.
Sim. How can you question nature so unjustly?
I had a grandfather, and then had not you
True filial tears for him?
Clean. Hypocrite!
A disease of drought dry up all pity from him,
That can dissemble pity with wet eyes! [Aside.
Creon. Be good unto your mother, Simonides;
She must be now your care.
Ant. To what end, sir?
The bell of this sharp edict tolls for me,
As it rings out for you.—I’ll be as ready,
With one hour’s stay, to go along with you.
Creon. Thou must not, woman; there are years behind,
Before thou canst set forward in this voyage;
And nature, sure, will now be kind to all:
She has a quarrel in’t, a cruel law
Seeks to prevent[95] her, she will[96] therefore fight in’t,
And draw out life even to her longest thread:
Thou art scarce fifty-five.
Ant. So many morrows!
Those five remaining years I’ll turn to days,
To hours, or minutes, for thy company.
’Tis fit that you and I, being man and wife,
Should walk together arm in arm.
Sim. I hope
They’ll go together; I would they would, i’faith—
Then would her thirds be sav’d too.— [Aside.
The day goes away, sir.
Creon. Why, wouldst thou have me gone, Simonides?
Sim. O my heart! Would you have me gone before you, sir,
You give me such a deadly wound?
Clean. Fine rascal! [Aside.
Sim. Blemish my duty so with such a question?
Sir, I would haste me to the duke for mercy:
He that’s above the law may mitigate
The rigour of the law. How a good meaning
May be corrupted by [a] misconstruction!
Creon. Thou corrupt’st mine; I did not think thou mean’st so.
Clean. You were in the more error. [Aside.
Sim. The words wounded me.
Clean. ’Twas pity thou died’st not on’t. [Aside.
Sim. I have been ransacking the helps of law,
Conferring with these learned advocates:
If any scruple, cause, or wrested sense
Could have been found out to preserve your life,
It had been bought, though with your full estate,
Your life’s so precious to me;—but there’s[97] none.
First Law. Sir, we have canvass’d her[98] from top to toe,
Turn’d her[99] upside down, thrown[100] her on her side,
Nay, open’d and dissected all her entrails,
Yet can find none: there’s nothing to be hop’d,
But the duke’s mercy.
Sim. I know the hope of that;
He did not make the law for that purpose.
Creon. Then to his hopeless mercy last I go;
I have so many precedents before me,
I must call it hopeless: Antigona,
See me deliver’d up unto my deathsman,
And then we’ll part;—five years hence I’ll look for thee.
Sim. I hope she will[101] not stay so long behind you.
[Aside.
Creon. Do not bate him an hour by grief and sorrow,
Since there’s a day prefix’d, haste[n] it not.
Suppose me sick, Antigona, dying now;
Any disease thou wilt may be my end;
Or when death’s slow to come, say tyrants send.
[Exeunt Creon and Antigona.
Sim. Cleanthes, if you want money, to-morrow use me;
I’ll trust you while[102] your father’s dead.
[Exit with the Lawyers.
Clean. Why, here’s a villain,
Able to corrupt a thousand by example!
Does the kind root bleed out his livelihood
In parent distribution to his branches,
Adorning them with all his glorious fruits,
Proud that his pride is seen when he’s unseen;
And must not gratitude descend again,
To comfort his old limbs in fruitless winter?
Improvident, [or] at least partial nature!
(Weak woman in this kind), who, in thy last teeming,
Forgetest still[103] the former, ever making
The burthen of thy last throes the dearest darling!
O yet in noble man reform [reform] it,
And make us better than those vegetives
Whose souls die with[104] ’em. Nature, as thou art old,
If love and justice be not dead in thee,
Make some the pattern of thy piety;
Lest all do turn unnaturally against thee,
And thou be blam’d for our oblivious
Enter Leonides and Hippolita.
And brutish reluctations! Ay, here’s the ground
Whereon my filial faculties must build
An edifice of honour, or of shame,
To all mankind.
Hip. You must avoid it, sir,
If there be any love within yourself:
This is far more than fate of a lost game,
That another venture may restore again;
It is your life, which you should not subject
To any cruelty, if you can preserve it.
Clean. O dearest woman, thou hast doubled now[105]
A thousand times thy nuptial dowry to me!—
Why, she whose love is but deriv’d from me,
Is got before me in my debted duty.
Hip. Are you thinking such a resolution, sir?
Clean. Sweetest Hippolita, what love taught thee
To be so forward in so good a cause?
Hip. Mine own pity, sir, did first instruct me,
And then your love and power did both command me.
Clean. They were all blessed angels to direct thee;
And take their counsel. How do you fare, sir?
Leon. Cleanthes, never better:[106] I have conceiv’d
Such a new joy within this old bosom,
As I did never think would there have enter’d.
Clean. Joy call you it? alas! ’tis sorrow, sir,
The worst of sorrows, sorrow unto death.
Leon. Death! what’s that, Cleanthes? I thought not on’t,
I was in contemplation of this woman:
’Tis all thy comfort, son; thou hast in her
A treasure unvaluable, keep her safe.
When I die, sure ’twill be a gentle death,
For I will die with wonder of her virtues;
Nothing else shall dissolve me.
Clean. ’Twere much better, sir,
Could you prevent their malice.
Leon. I’ll prevent ’em,
And die the way I told thee, in the wonder
Of this good woman. I tell thee there’s few men
Have such a child: I must thank thee for her.
That the strong[107] tie of wedlock should do more
Than nature in her nearest ligaments
Of blood and propagation! I should ne’er
Have begot such a daughter of my own:
A daughter-in-law! law were above nature,
Were there more such children.
Clean. This admiration
Helps nothing to your safety: think of that, sir.
Leon. Had you heard her, Cleanthes, but labour
In the search of means to save my forfeit life,
And knew the wise and [the] sound preservations
That she found out, you would redouble all
My wonder, in your love to her.
Clean. The thought,
The very thought, claims all that [love] from me,
And she is now possest of’t:[108] but, good sir,
If you have aught receiv’d from her advice,
Let’s follow it; or else let’s better think,
And take the surest course.
Leon. I’ll tell thee one;
She counsels me to fly my severe country;
[To] turn all into treasure, and there build up
My decaying fortunes in a safer soil,
Where Epire’s law cannot claim me.
Clean. And, sir,
I apprehend it as a safest course,
And may be easily accomplished;
Let us be all most expeditious.
Every country where we breathe will be our own,
Or better soil; heaven is the roof of all;
And now, as Epire’s situate by this law,
There is ’twixt us and heaven a dark eclipse.
Hip. O then avoid it, sir; these sad events
Follow those black predictions.
Leon. I prithee, peace;
I do allow[109] thy love, Hippolita,
But must not follow it as counsel, child;
I must not shame my country for the law.
This country here hath bred me, brought me up,
And shall I now refuse a grave in her?
I’m in my second infancy, and children
Ne’er sleep so sweetly in their nurse’s cradle
As in their natural mother’s.
Hip. Ay, but, sir,
She is unnatural; then the stepmother’s[110]
To be preferr’d before her.
Leon. Tush! she shall
Allow it me despite of her entráils.
Why, do you think how far from judgment ’tis,
That I should travel forth to seek a grave
That is already digg’d for me at home,
Nay, perhaps find it in my way to seek it?—
How have I then sought a repentant sorrow?
For your dear loves, how have I banish’d you
From your country ever? With my base attempt,
How have I beggar’d you, in wasting that
Which only for your sakes I bred together;
Buried my name in Epire,[111] which I built
Upon this frame, to live for ever in?
What a base coward shall I be, to fly from
That enemy which every minute meets me,
And thousand odds he had not long vanquish’d me
Before this hour of battle! Fly my death!
I will not be so false unto your states,
Not fainting to the man that’s yet in me:
I’ll meet him bravely; I cannot (this knowing) fear
That, when I am gone hence, I shall be there.
Come, I have days of preparation left.
Clean. Good sir, hear me:
I have a genius that has prompted me,
And I have almost form’d it into words—
’Tis done, pray you observe ’em; I can conceal you;
And yet not leave your country.
Leon. Tush! it cannot be,
Without a certain peril on us[112] all.
Clean. Danger must be hazarded, rather than accept
A sure destruction. You have a lodge, sir,
So far remote from way of passengers,
That seldom any mortal eye does greet with’t;[113]
And yet[114] so sweetly situate with thickets,
Built with such cunning labyrinths within,
As if the provident heavens, foreseeing cruelty,
Had bid you frame it to this purpose only.
Leon. Fie, fie! ’tis dangerous—and treason too,
To abuse the law.
Hip. ’Tis holy care, sir,
Of your dear life, which is your own to keep,
But not your own to lose, either in will
Or negligence.
Clean. Call you it treason, sir?
I had been then a traitor unto you,
Had I forgot this; beseech you, accept of it;
It is secure, and a duty to yourself.
Leon. What a coward will you make me!
Clean. You mistake;
’Tis noble courage; now you fight with death,
And yield not to him till you stoop under him.
Leon. This must needs open to discovery,
And then what torture follows!
Clean. By what means, sir?
Why, there is[115] but one body in all this counsel,
Which cannot betray itself: we two are one,
One soul, one body, one heart, that think one[116] thought;
And yet we two are not completely one,
But as [I] have deriv’d myself from you.—
Who shall betray us where there is no second?
Hip. You must not mistrust my faith, though my sex plead
Weak[ness] and frailty for me.
Leon. O I dare not!
But where’s the means that must make answer for me?
I cannot be lost without a full account,
And what must pay that reckoning?
Clean. O sir, we will
Keep solemn obits for your funeral;
We’ll seem to weep, and seem to joy withal,
That death so gently has prevented you
The law’s sharp rigour; and this no mortal ear shall
Participate the knowledge of.
Leon. Ha, ha, ha!
This will be a sportive fine demur,
If the error be not found.
Clean. Pray doubt of none.
Your company and best provision,
Must be no further furnish’d than by us;
And, in the interim, your solitude may
Converse with heaven, and fairly prepare
[For that] which was too violent and raging
Thrown headlong on you.
Leon. Still, there are some doubts
Of the discovery; yet I do allow’t.
Hip. Will you not mention now the cost and charge
Which will be in your keeping!
Leon. That will be somewhat,
Which you might save too.
Clean. With his will against him,
What foe is more to man than man himself?
Are you resolved, sir?
Leon. I am, Cleanthes:
If by this means I do get a reprieve,
And cozen death awhile, when he shall come
Armed in his own power to give the blow,
I’ll smile upon him then, and laughing go.