Thomas Kyd (1558 – 1594)
Influential dramatist, poet and translator.
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In time the savage bull sustains the yoke,
In time all haggard hawks will stoop to lure,
In time small wedges cleave the hardest oak,
In time the flint is pierced with softest shower.
Thus must we toil in other men's extremes,
That know not how to remedy our own.
For what's a play without a woman in it?
My son – and what's a son? A thing begot
Within a pair of minutes, thereabout:
A lump bred up in darkness.
Evil news fly faster still than good.
What outcries pluck me from my naked bed
And chill my throbbing heart with trembling fear.
Oh eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears;
Oh life, no life, but lively form of death;
Oh world, no world, but mass of public wrongs,
Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds.
Dost thou think to live till his old doublet will make thee a new truss?
Duly twice a morning
Would I be sprinkling it with fountain-water.
At last it grew, and grew, and bore, and bore,
Till at the length
It grew a gallows, and did bear our son,
It bore thy fruit and mine: O wicked, wicked plant.
As I am never better than when I am mad; then methinks I am a brave fellow; then I do wonders: but reason abuseth me, and there's the torment, there's the hell.
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