In my great enterprise! O hope! O love!
O sharp remembrance of long baffled joy!
Inspire me now.

SCENE 4.

The KING; the INFANTA.

I:4:1 KING.
I see my daughter?

I:4:2 SOL.
Sir, your duteous child.

I:4:3 KING.
Art thou indeed my child? I had some doubt
I was a father.

I:4:4 SOL.
These are bitter words.

I:4:5 KING.
Even as thy conduct.

I:4:6 SOL.
Then it would appear
My conduct and my life are but the same.

I:4:7 KING.
I thought thou wert the Infanta of Castille,
Heir to our realm, the paragon of Spain
The Princess for whose smiles crowned Christendom
Sends forth its sceptred rivals. Is that bitter?
Or bitter is it with such privilege,
And standing on life's vantage ground, to cross
A nation's hope, that on thy nice career
Has gaged its heart?

I:4:8 SOL.
Have I no heart to gage?
A sacrificial virgin, must I bind
My life to the altar, to redeem a state,
Or heal some doomed People?

I:4:9 KING.
Is it so?
Is this an office alien to thy sex?
Or what thy youth repudiates? We but ask
What nature sanctions.

I:4:10 SOL.
Nature sanctions Love;
Your charter is more liberal. Let that pass.
I am no stranger to my duty, sir,
And read it thus. The blood that shares my sceptre
Should be august as mine. A woman loses
In love what she may gain in rank, who tops
Her husband's place; though throned, I would exchange
An equal glance. His name should be a spell
. To rally soldiers. Politic he should be;
And skilled in climes and tongues; that stranger knights
Should bruit on, high Castillian courtesies.
Such chief might please a state?

I:4:11 KING.
Fortunate realm!

I:4:12