Bussy D'Ambois
By George Chapman

Tamyra is the Countess of Montsurry. She believes that she is alone in her room, and talking to herself. Her speech informs the audience that she is actually in love with somebody else (the play's title character), and that she is waiting for him to come through a secret passage.

TAMYRA

Farewell, my light and life! but not in him,
In mine own dark love and light bent to another.
Alas! that in the wane of our affections
We should supply it with a full dissembling,
In which each youngest maid is grown a mother.
Frailty is fruitful, one sin gets another:
Our loves like sparkles are that brightest shine
When they go out; most vice shows most divine.
Go, maid, to bed; lend me your book, I pray,
Not, like your self, for form. I'll this night trouble
None of your services: make sure the doors,
And call your other fellows to their rest.

Now all the peaceful regents of the night,
Silently-gliding exhalations,
Languishing winds, and murmuring falls of waters,
Sadness of heart, and ominous secureness,
Enchantments, dead sleepes, all the friends of rest,
That ever wrought upon the life of man,
Extend your utmost strengths, and this charm'd hour
Fix like the Center! make the violent wheels
Of Time and Fortune stand, and great Existence,
The Maker's treasury now not seem to be
To all but my approaching friends and me!
They come, alas, they come! Fear, fear and hope
Of one thing, at one instant, fight in me:
I love what most I loath, and cannot live,
Unless I compass that which holds my death;
For love is hateful without love again,
And he I love will loath me, when he sees
I fly my sex, my virtue, my renown,
To run so madly on a man unknown.

See, see, a vault is opening that will swallow
Me and my fame for ever; I will in,
And cast myself off, as I ne'er had been.

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