Scene IV - A room in the Lodging House

Jack: Has Cheese left yet? Are not
Those in commision yet returned

Boots: They are not yet come back. But I have spoke
With Race, who did report, that Cheese has left.

Jack: There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face:
He was a newsie on whom I built
And absolute trust.

Enter David, Blink, Bumlets, and Skittery

Jack: O worthiest cousin!
The sin of my ingratitude even now
Was heavy on me: thou art so far before,
That swiftest wing of recompense is low
To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserved
That the proportion both of thanks and payment
Might have been mine! Only I have left to say,
More is they due than more than all can pay.

David: The service and the loyalty I owe,
In doing it, pays itself.

Jack: Welcome hither:
I have begun to plant thee, and will labor
To make thee full of growing. - Noble Blink,
That hast no less deserved, nor must be known
No less to have done so, let me infold thee,
And hold thee to my heart.

Blink: There if I grow, the harvest is your own.

Jack: Newsies, we will establish our estate upon
Boots, whom we name hereafter
The Prince Of Manhattan: which honor must
Not unaccompanied invest him only,
But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On all deservers.

David: [aside] The Prince of Manhattan! - That is a step,
On which I must fall down, or else o'er leap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires!
Let not light see my black and eep desires:
The eye wink at the hand! yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
- Humbly I must take my leave.

David exit

Scene V - Sarah reading a letter in her room
Sarah: They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from Jack, who all-hailed me, the Walking Brain; by which title, before, these weird newsies saluted me, and referred me to the coming of time, with Hail, leader that shalt be! This have I thought to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness; that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.
Walking Mouth thou art, and Brain, and shalt be
What thou art promised: yet do I fear they nature
It is too full of the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition; but without
The illness whould attend it. What thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily, wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win; thou'dst have, great Mouth,
That which cries, Thus thou must do, if thou have it:
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone.
Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
And chastise with the valor of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have the crowned withal.

Enter Newsie

Sarah: What are your tidings?

Newsie: Jack comes here to-night.

Sarah: Is not David with him?

Newsie: So please you, it is true: - the Mouth is coming:
One of my fellows had the speed of him;
Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more
Than would make up his message.

Sarah: Give him tending, he brings great news.

Exit Newsie

Sarah: The raven himslef is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Jack
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, topfull
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remose,
That no compunctious visiting of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, think night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold, hold!

Enter David

Sarah: Great Mouth! Worthy Brain!
Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!
Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ifnorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.

David: My dearest sister,
Jack comes here tonight!

Sarah: And when goes hence?

David: Tomorrow - as he purposes.

Sarah: O, never shall sun that morrow see!
Your face, my brother, is as a bok where men
May read strange matters: - to beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under it. He that's coming
Must be provided for: and you shall put
This night's great businss into my despatch;
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

David: We will speak further.

Sarah: Only look up clear;
To alter favor ever is to fear:
Leave all the rest to me.

Scene VI - Entrance to David's home

Jack: This place hath a pleasant seat: the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.

Blink: This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting marlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, butress,
Nor coigne of vantage, but this bird hath made
His pendant bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed
The air is delicate.

Enter Sarah

Jack: See, see, our honor'd hostess!
The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,
Which still we thanks as love. Herein I teach you
How you shall bid God ild us for your pains,
And thank us for your trouble.

Sarah: All our service
In every point twice done, and then done double,
Were poor and single business to contend
Against those honors deep and broad wherewith
You load our house: for those of old,
And the late dignities heaped up to them,
We rest your hermits.

Jack: Where's the Walking Brain?
We coursed him at the heels, and had a purpose
To be his purveyor: but he rides well;
And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him
To his home before us. Fair and noble hostess,
We are your guest tonight.Give me your hand,
Conduct me to mine host: we love him highly,
And shall continue our graces towards him.
By your leave, hostess.

Scene VII - David's house

David: If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly. If the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, -
We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust:
First, as I am his knisman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed: then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Jack
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off:
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubing, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. _ I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other.

Enter Sarah

David: How now! What news?

Sarah: He has almost supped: why have you left the chamber?

David: Hath he asked for me?

Sarah: Know you not he has?

David: We will proceed no futher in this business:
He hat honored me of late; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.

Sarah: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account they love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valor
As thou art in desire? Woulds thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem;
Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
Like the poor cat in the adage?

David: Pr'ythee, peace:
I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.

Sarah: What beast was't, then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

David: If we should fail?

Sarah: We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail. When Jack is asleep, -
Where to the rather shall his day's hard journey
Soundly invite him, his two chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassail so convince
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbec only: when iswinish sleep
Their drenched natures lie as in a death,
What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Jack? what not put upon
His spongy officers; who shall bear the guilt
Of our great quell?

David: Bring forth men-children only;
For they undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males. Will it not be received,
When we have marked with blood those sleepy tow
Of his own chamber, and used their very daggers,
That they have done 't?

Sarah: Who dares receive it other,
As we shall make our griefs and clamor roar
Upon his death?

David: I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the thime with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.