2 Rom.  Is this the thankes, then, thou dost pay our love? 
Die basely as such a life deserv’d;
Reserve thy selfe to punishment, and scorne
Of Rome and of thy laughing enemies.

[Exeunt.

Manet Nero.

Nero.  They hate me cause I would but live.  What was’t You lov’d, kind friends, and came to see my death?  Let me endure all torture and reproach That earth or Galbaes anger can inflict; Yet hell and Rodamanth are more pittilesse.

The first Romane to him.

Rom.  Though not deserv’d, yet once agen I come To warne thee to take pitie on thy selfe.  The troopes by the Senate sent descend the hill And come.

Nero.  To take me and to whip me unto death!  O whither shall I flye?

Rom.  Thou hast no choice.

Nero.  O hither must I flye:  hard is his happe
Who from death onely must by death escape. 
Where are they yet?  O may not I a little
Bethinke my selfe?

Rom.  They are at hand; harke, thou maist heare the noise.

Nero.  O Rome, farewell! farewell, you Theaters
Where I so oft with popular applause
In song and action—­O they come, I die.
                         (He falls on his sword.)

Rom.  So base an end all iust commiseration Doth take away:  yet what we doe now spurne The morning Sunne saw fearefull to the world.

Enter some of Galbaes friends, Antoneus and others,
with Nimphidius bound.

Gal.  You both shall die together, Traitors both
He to the common wealth and thou to him
And worse to a good Prince.—­What? is he dead? 
Hath feare encourag’d him and made him thus
Prevent our punishment?  Then die with him: 
Fall thy aspiring at thy Master’s feete.
                                 (He kils Nimph).

Anton.  Who, though he iustly perisht, yet by thee Deserv’d it not; nor ended there thy treason, But even thought oth’ Empire thou conceiv’st. Galbaes disgrace[d] in receiving that Which the sonne of Nimphidia could hope.

Rom.  Thus great bad men above them find a rod:  People, depart and say there is a God.

[Exeunt.

FINIS.

INTRODUCTION TO THE MAYDES METAMORPHOSIS.

The anonymous comedy of the Maydes Metamorphosis (1600), usually attributed to Lilly, shews few traces of the mannerisms of the graceful but insipid Euphuist.  It is just such a play as George Wither or William Browne might have written in very early youth.  The writer was evidently an admirer of Spenser, and has succeeded in reproducing on his Pan-pipe some thin, but not unpleasing, echoes of his master’s music.  Mr. Edmund W. Gosse has suggested that