And kept both them and all the land in awe: 
And, had I liv’d, the Danes had never boasted
Their then beginning conquest of this land. 
Yet some accuse me for a conjuror,
By reason of those many miracles
Which heaven for holy life endowed me with;
But whoso looks into the “Golden Legend"[424]
(That sacred register of holy saints)
Shall find me by the pope canonised,
And happily the cause of this report
Might rise by reason of a vision
Which I beheld in great King Edgar’s days,
Being that time Abbot of Glastonbury,
Which (for it was a matter of some worth)
I did make known to few until this day: 
But now I purpose that the world shall see
How much those slanderers have wronged me: 
Nor will I trouble you with courts and kings;
Or drive a feigned battle out of breath;
Or keep a coil myself upon the stage;
But think you see me in my secret cell,
Arm’d with my portass,[425] bidding of my beads. 
But on a sudden I’m o’ercome with sleep! 
If aught ensue, watch you, for Dunstan[426] dreams.

[He layeth him down to sleep; lightning and thunder; the curtains drawn on a sudden; PLUTO, MINOS, AEACUS, RHADAMANTHUS, set in counsel; before them MALBECCO’S ghost guarded with furies.

PLU.  You ever-dreaded judges of black hell,
Grim Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanth,
Lords of Cocytus, Styx, and Phlegethon,
Princes of darkness, Pluto’s ministers,
Know that the greatness of his present cause
Hath made ourselves in person sit as judge,
To hear th’arraignment of Malbecco’s ghost. 
Stand forth, thou ghastly pattern of despair,
And to this powerful synod tell thy tale,
That we may hear if thou canst justly say
Thou wert not author of thy own decay.

MAL.[427] Infernal Jove, great prince of Tartary,
With humble reverence poor Malbecco speaks,
Still trembling with the fatal memory
Of his so late concluded tragedy. 
I was (with thanks to your great bounty) bred
A wealthy lord, whilst that I liv’d on earth;
And so might have continu’d to this day,
Had not that plague of mankind fall’n on me: 
For I (poor man) join’d woe unto my name
By choosing out a woman for my wife. 
A wife! a curse ordained for the world. 
Fair Helena! fair she was indeed,
But foully stain’d with inward wickedness. 
I kept her bravely, and I lov’d her dear;
But that dear love did cost my life and all. 
To reckon up a thousand of her pranks,
Her pride, her wasteful spending, her unkindness,
Her false dissembling, seeming sanctity,
Her scolding, pouting, prating, meddling,
And twenty hundred more of the same stamp,
Were but to heap[428] an endless catalogue
Of what the world is plagu’d with every day. 
But for the main of that I have to tell,
It chanced thus—­Late in a rainy night,
A crew of gallants came unto my house,