Chapter: [HIERONIMO's garden.]

                Enter ISABELLA with a weapon.

  [ISA.]  Tell me no more!  O monstrous homicides!
    Since neither piety nor pity moves
    The king to justice or compassion,
    I will revenge myself upon this place,
    Where thus they murder'd my beloved son.

                She cuts down the arbour.

    Down with these branches and these loathsome boughs
    On this unfortunate and fatal pine!
    Down with them, Isabella; rent them up,
    And burns the roots from whence the rest is sprung!
    I will leave not a root, a stalk, a tree,
    A bough, a branch, a blossom, nor a leaf,--
    Not, not an herb within this garden plot,
    Accursed complot of my misery!
    Fruitless forever may this garden be,
    Barren the earth, and blissless whosoever
    Imagines not to keep it unmanur'd!
    An eastern wind comix'd with noisome airs
    Shall blast the plants and young saplings here,
    The earth with serpents shall be pestered,
    And passengers, for fear to be infect,
    Shall stand aloof, and, looking at it, tell
    There, murder'd, died the son of Isabell.
    Aye, here he died, and here I him embrace!
    See where his ghost solicits with his wounds
    Revenge on her that should revenge his death!
    Hieronimo, make haste to see thy son,
    For Sorrow and Despair hath 'cited me
    To hear Horatio plead with Radamant.
    Make haste, Hieronimo, to hold excus'd
    Thy negligence in pursuit of their deaths
    Whose hateful wrath bereav'd him of his breath.
    Ah, nay;  thou dost delay their deaths,
    Forgiv'st the murd'rers of thy noble son;
    And none but I bestir me,--to no end!
    And, as I curse this tree from further fruit,
    So shall my womb be cursed for his sake;
    And with this weapon will I wound this breast,--
    That hapless breast that gave Horatio suck!

                She stabs herself.

 Our attention is next brought back to Hieronimo's wife, Isabella. She is utterly overcome with grief as she soliloquizes at the scene of her son's murder. In her passion, she cuts down every single tree in the bower where her son was hanged. She curses the place to be ever filled with snakes and all kinds of slimy things. As she chides her husband for delaying revenge for so long, she stabs herself in the stomach and dies. This is probably the most sorrowful scene in the tragedy, and a reminder that women in the play had few outlets to express rage and seek justice after being wronged.

