(following 1._707.)SECOND SPIRIT:I leaped on the wings of the Earth-star dampAs it rose on the steam of a slaughtered camp—The sleeping newt heard not our trampAs swift as the wings of fire may pass—We threaded the points of long thick grassWhich hide the green pools of the morassBut shook a water-serpent’s couchIn a cleft skull, of many suchThe widest; at the meteor’s touchThe snake did seem to see in dreamThrones and dungeons overthrownVisions how unlike his own…’Twas the hope the prophecyWhich begins and ends in thee…
(following 2.1._110.) Lift up thine eyes Panthea—they pierce they burn
PANTHEA:Alas! I am consumed—I melt awayThe fire is in my heart—
ASIA:Thine eyes burn burn!—Hide them within thine hair—
PANTHEA:O quench thy lipsI sink I perish
ASIA:Shelter me now—they burnIt is his spirit in their orbs…my lifeIs ebbing fast—I cannot speak—
PANTHEA:Rest, rest!Sleep death annihilation pain! aught else…
(following 2.4._27.) Or looks which tell that while the lips are calm And the eyes cold, the spirit weeps within Tears like the sanguine sweat of agony; …
UNCANCELLED PASSAGE. (following 2.5._71.)
ASIA:You said that spirits spoke, but it was theeSweet sister, for even now thy curved lipsTremble as if the sound were dying thereNot dead
PANTHEA:Alas it was Prometheus spokeWithin me, and I know it must be soI mixed my own weak nature with his love…And my thoughtsAre like the many forests of a valeThrough which the might of whirlwind and of rainHad passed—they rest rest through the evening lightAs mine do now in thy beloved smile.
CANCELLED STAGE DIRECTIONS.(following 1._221.)[THE SOUND BENEATH AS OF EARTHQUAKE AND THE DRIVING OF WHIRLWINDS—THERAVINE IS SPLIT, AND THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER RISES, SURROUNDED BYHEAVY CLOUDS WHICH DART FORTH LIGHTNING.]
(following 1._520.)[ENTER RUSHING BY GROUPS OF HORRIBLE FORMS; THEY SPEAK AS THEY PASS INCHORUS.]
(following 1._552.) [A SHADOW PASSES OVER THE SCENE, AND A PIERCING SHRIEK IS HEARD.]
On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return. His principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to his emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. In December, 1817, he had written from Marlow to a friend, saying:
‘My health has been materially worse. My feelings at intervals are of a deadly and torpid kind, or awakened to such a state of unnatural and keen excitement that, only to instance the organ of sight, I find the very blades of grass and the boughs of distant trees present themselves to me with microscopic distinctness. Towards evening I sink into a state of lethargy and inanimation, and often remain for hours on the sofa between sleep and waking, a prey to the most painful irritability of thought. Such, with little intermission, is my condition. The hours devoted to study are selected with vigilant caution from among these periods of endurance. It is not for this that I think of travelling to Italy, even if I knew that Italy would relieve me. But I have experienced a decisive pulmonary attack; and although at present it has passed away without any considerable vestige of its existence, yet this symptom sufficiently shows the true nature of my disease to be consumptive. It is to my advantage that this malady is in its nature slow, and, if one is sufficiently alive to its advances, is susceptible of cure from a warm climate. In the event of its assuming any decided shape, IT WOULD BE MY DUTY to go to Italy without delay. It is not mere health, but life, that I should seek, and that not for my own sake—I feel I am capable of trampling on all such weakness; but for the sake of those to whom my life may be a source of happiness, utility, security, and honour, and to some of whom my death might be all that is the reverse.’
In almost every respect his journey to Italy was advantageous. He left behind friends to whom he was attached; but cares of a thousand kinds, many springing from his lavish generosity, crowded round him in his native country, and, except the society of one or two friends, he had no compensation. The climate caused him to consume half his existence in helpless suffering. His dearest pleasure, the free enjoyment of the scenes of Nature, was marred by the same circumstance.
He went direct to Italy, avoiding even Paris, and did not make any pause till he arrived at Milan. The first aspect of Italy enchanted Shelley; it seemed a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and brighter heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long descriptive letters during the first year of his residence in Italy, which, as compositions, are the most beautiful in the world, and show how truly he appreciated and studied the wonders of Nature and Art in that divine land.
The poetical spirit within him speedily revived with all the power and with more than all the beauty of his first attempts. He meditated three subjects as the groundwork for lyrical dramas. One was the story of Tasso; of this a slight fragment of a song of Tasso remains. The other was one founded on the Book of Job, which he never abandoned in idea, but of which no trace remains among his papers. The third was the “Prometheus Unbound”. The Greek tragedians were now his most familiar companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of Aeschylus filled him with wonder and delight. The father of Greek tragedy does not possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and tenderness of Euripides; the interest on which he founds his dramas is often elevated above human vicissitudes into the mighty passions and throes of gods and demi-gods: such fascinated the abstract imagination of Shelley.
We spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake of Como during that interval. Thence we passed in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to Rome, whither we returned early in March, 1819. During all this time Shelley meditated the subject of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other poems were composed during this interval, and while at the Bagni di Lucca he translated Plato’s “Symposium”. But, though he diversified his studies, his thoughts centred in the Prometheus. At last, when at Rome, during a bright and beautiful Spring, he gave up his whole time to the composition. The spot selected for his study was, as he mentions in his preface, the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. These are little known to the ordinary visitor at Rome. He describes them in a letter, with that poetry and delicacy and truth of description which render his narrated impressions of scenery of unequalled beauty and interest.
At first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several months after, when at Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the prophecies with regard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition.
The prominent feature of Shelley’s theory of the destiny of the human species was that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of Christianity: God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall,
‘Brought death into the world and all our woe.’
Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these Notes to notice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it with fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved best to dwell on was the image of One warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all—even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of fortitude and hope and the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of Good. Such he had depicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim of tyrants. He now took a more idealized image of the same subject. He followed certain classical authorities in figuring Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the regenerator, who, unable to bring mankind back to primitive innocence, used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, by leading mankind, beyond the state wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which they are virtuous through wisdom. Jupiter punished the temerity of the Titan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to devour his still-renewed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven portending the fall of Jove, the secret of averting which was known only to Prometheus; and the god offered freedom from torture on condition of its being communicated to him. According to the mythological story, this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture, and set him free; and Thetis was married to Peleus, the father of Achilles.
Shelley adapted the catastrophe of this story to his peculiar views. The son greater than his father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and Thetis, was to dethrone Evil, and bring back a happier reign than that of Saturn. Prometheus defies the power of his enemy, and endures centuries of torture; till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to the real event, but darkly guessing that some great good to himself will flow, espouses Thetis. At the moment, the Primal Power of the world drives him from his usurped throne, and Strength, in the person of Hercules, liberates Humanity, typified in Prometheus, from the tortures generated by evil done or suffered. Asia, one of the Oceanides, is the wife of Prometheus—she was, according to other mythological interpretations, the same as Venus and Nature. When the benefactor of mankind is liberated, Nature resumes the beauty of her prime, and is united to her husband, the emblem of the human race, in perfect and happy union. In the Fourth Act, the Poet gives further scope to his imagination, and idealizes the forms of creation—such as we know them, instead of such as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal Earth, the mighty parent, is superseded by the Spirit of the Earth, the guide of our planet through the realms of sky; while his fair and weaker companion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss from the annihilation of Evil in the superior sphere.
Shelley develops, more particularly in the lyrics of this drama, his abstruse and imaginative theories with regard to the Creation. It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are far from vague. It was his design to write prose metaphysical essays on the nature of Man, which would have served to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered fragments of observations and remarks alone remain. He considered these philosophical views of Mind and Nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry.
More popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible imagery. Shelley loved to idealize the real—to gift the mechanism of the material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also on the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind. Sophocles was his great master in this species of imagery.
I find in one of his manuscript books some remarks on a line in the “Oedipus Tyrannus”, which show at once the critical subtlety of Shelley’s mind, and explain his apprehension of those ‘minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us,’ which he pronounces, in the letter quoted in the note to the “Revolt of Islam”, to comprehend all that is sublime in man.
‘In the Greek Shakespeare, Sophocles, we find the image,
Pollas d’ odous elthonta phrontidos planois:
a line of almost unfathomable depth of poetry; yet how simple are the images in which it is arrayed!
“Coming to many ways in the wanderings of careful thought.”
If the words odous and planois had not been used, the line might have been explained in a metaphorical instead of an absolute sense, as we say “WAYS and means,” and “wanderings” for error and confusion. But they meant literally paths or roads, such as we tread with our feet; and wanderings, such as a man makes when he loses himself in a desert, or roams from city to city—as Oedipus, the speaker of this verse, was destined to wander, blind and asking charity. What a picture does this line suggest of the mind as a wilderness of intricate paths, wide as the universe, which is here made its symbol; a world within a world which he who seeks some knowledge with respect to what he ought to do searches throughout, as he would search the external universe for some valued thing which was hidden from him upon its surface.’
In reading Shelley’s poetry, we often find similar verses, resembling, but not imitating the Greek in this species of imagery; for, though he adopted the style, he gifted it with that originality of form and colouring which sprung from his own genius.
In the “Prometheus Unbound”, Shelley fulfils the promise quoted from a letter in the Note on the “Revolt of Islam”. (While correcting the proof-sheets of that poem, it struck me that the poet had indulged in an exaggerated view of the evils of restored despotism; which, however injurious and degrading, were less openly sanguinary than the triumph of anarchy, such as it appeared in France at the close of the last century. But at this time a book, “Scenes of Spanish Life”, translated by Lieutenant Crawford from the German of Dr. Huber, of Rostock, fell into my hands. The account of the triumph of the priests and the serviles, after the French invasion of Spain in 1823, bears a strong and frightful resemblance to some of the descriptions of the massacre of the patriots in the “Revolt of Islam”.) The tone of the composition is calmer and more majestic, the poetry more perfect as a whole, and the imagination displayed at once more pleasingly beautiful and more varied and daring. The description of the Hours, as they are seen in the cave of Demogorgon, is an instance of this—it fills the mind as the most charming picture—we long to see an artist at work to bring to our view the
‘cars drawn by rainbow-winged steedsWhich trample the dim winds: in each there standsA wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drinkWith eager lips the wind of their own speed,As if the thing they loved fled on before,And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locksStream like a comet’s flashing hair: they allSweep onward.’
Through the whole poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law of the world.
England had been rendered a painful residence to Shelley, as much by the sort of persecution with which in those days all men of liberal opinions were visited, and by the injustice he had lately endured in the Court of Chancery, as by the symptoms of disease which made him regard a visit to Italy as necessary to prolong his life. An exile, and strongly impressed with the feeling that the majority of his countrymen regarded him with sentiments of aversion such as his own heart could experience towards none, he sheltered himself from such disgusting and painful thoughts in the calm retreats of poetry, and built up a world of his own—with the more pleasure, since he hoped to induce some one or two to believe that the earth might become such, did mankind themselves consent. The charm of the Roman climate helped to clothe his thoughts in greater beauty than they had ever worn before. And, as he wandered among the ruins made one with Nature in their decay, or gazed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many passages in the “Prometheus” which show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty of poetical description peculiarly his own. He felt this, as a poet must feel when he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and he wrote from Rome, ‘My “Prometheus Unbound” is just finished, and in a month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my former attempts.’
I may mention, for the information of the more critical reader, that the verbal alterations in this edition of “Prometheus” are made from a list of errata written by Shelley himself.
***
[Composed at Rome and near Leghorn (Villa Valsovano), May-August 5, 1819; published 1820 (spring) by C. & J. Ollier, London. This edition of two hundred and fifty copies was printed in Italy ‘because,’ writes Shelley to Peacock, September 21, 1819, ‘it costs, with all duties and freightage, about half what it would cost in London.’ A Table of Errata in Mrs. Shelley’s handwriting is printed by Forman in “The Shelley Library”, page 91. A second edition, published by Ollier in 1821 (C.H. Reynell, printer), embodies the corrections indicated in this Table. No manuscript of “The Cenci” is known to exist. Our text follows that of the second edition (1821); variations of the first (Italian) edition, the title-page of which bears date 1819, are given in the footnotes. The text of the “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st and 2nd editions (Mrs. Shelley), follows for the most part that of the editio princeps of 1819.]
Mv dear friend—
I inscribe with your name, from a distant country, and after an absence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary efforts.
Those writings which I have hitherto published, have been little else than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to be, or may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality. I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am content to paint, with such colours as my own heart furnishes, that which has been.
Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, honourable, innocent and brave; one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive, and how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of purer life and manners I never knew: and I had already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added to the list.
In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political tyranny and imposture which the tenor of your life has illustrated, and which, had I health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us, comforting each other in our task, live and die.
All happiness attend you! Your affectionate friend,
Rome, May 29, 1819.
A manuscript was communicated to me during my travels in Italy, which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome, and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that city during the Pontificate of Clement VIII, in the year 1599. The story is, that an old man having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived at length an implacable hatred towards his children; which showed itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion, aggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant. The young maiden, who was urged to this tremendous deed by an impulse which overpowered its horror, was evidently a most gentle and amiable being, a creature formed to adorn and be admired, and thus violently thwarted from her nature by the necessity of circumstance and opinion. The deed was quickly discovered, and, in spite of the most earnest prayers made to the Pope by the highest persons in Rome, the criminals were put to death. The old man had during his life repeatedly bought his pardon from the Pope for capital crimes of the most enormous and unspeakable kind, at the price of a hundred thousand crowns; the death therefore of his victims can scarcely be accounted for by the love of justice. The Pope, among other motives for severity, probably felt that whoever killed the Count Cenci deprived his treasury of a certain and copious source of revenue. (The Papal Government formerly took the most extraordinary precautions against the publicity of facts which offer so tragical a demonstration of its own wickedness and weakness; so that the communication of the manuscript had become, until very lately, a matter of some difficulty.) Such a story, if told so as to present to the reader all the feelings of those who once acted it, their hopes and fears, their confidences and misgivings, their various interests, passions, and opinions, acting upon and with each other, yet all conspiring to one tremendous end, would be as a light to make apparent some of the most dark and secret caverns of the human heart.
On my arrival at Rome I found that the story of the Cenci was a subject not to be mentioned in Italian society without awakening a deep and breathless interest; and that the feelings of the company never failed to incline to a romantic pity for the wrongs, and a passionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which they urged her, who has been mingled two centuries with the common dust. All ranks of people knew the outlines of this history, and participated in the overwhelming interest which it seems to have the magic of exciting in the human heart. I had a copy of Guido’s picture of Beatrice which is preserved in the Colonna Palace, and my servant instantly recognized it as the portrait of La Cenci.
This national and universal interest which the story produces and has produced for two centuries and among all ranks of people in a great City, where the imagination is kept for ever active and awake, first suggested to me the conception of its fitness for a dramatic purpose. In fact it is a tragedy which has already received, from its capacity of awakening and sustaining the sympathy of men, approbation and success. Nothing remained as I imagined, but to clothe it to the apprehensions of my countrymen in such language and action as would bring it home to their hearts. The deepest and the sublimest tragic compositions, King Lear and the two plays in which the tale of Oedipus is told, were stories which already existed in tradition, as matters of popular belief and interest, before Shakspeare and Sophocles made them familiar to the sympathy of all succeeding generations of mankind.
This story of the Cenci is indeed eminently fearful and monstrous: anything like a dry exhibition of it on the stage would be insupportable. The person who would treat such a subject must increase the ideal, and diminish the actual horror of the events, so that the pleasure which arises from the poetry which exists in these tempestuous sufferings and crimes may mitigate the pain of the contemplation of the moral deformity from which they spring. There must also be nothing attempted to make the exhibition subservient to what is vulgarly termed a moral purpose. The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama, is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession of which knowledge, every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and kind. If dogmas can do more, it is well: but a drama is no fit place for the enforcement of them. Undoubtedly, no person can be truly dishonoured by the act of another; and the fit return to make to the most enormous injuries is kindness and forbearance, and a resolution to convert the injurer from his dark passions by peace and love. Revenge, retaliation, atonement, are pernicious mistakes. If Beatrice had thought in this manner she would have been wiser and better; but she would never have been a tragic character: the few whom such an exhibition would have interested, could never have been sufficiently interested for a dramatic purpose, from the want of finding sympathy in their interest among the mass who surround them. It is in the restless and anatomizing casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitious horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge, that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered, consists.
I have endeavoured as nearly as possible to represent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoid the error of making them actuated by my own conceptions of right or wrong, false or true: thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the sixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind. They are represented as Catholics, and as Catholics deeply tinged with religion. To a Protestant apprehension there will appear something unnatural in the earnest and perpetual sentiment of the relations between God and men which pervade the tragedy of the Cenci. It will especially be startled at the combination of an undoubting persuasion of the truth of the popular religion with a cool and determined perseverance in enormous guilt. But religion in Italy is not, as in Protestant countries, a cloak to be worn on particular days; or a passport which those who do not wish to be railed at carry with them to exhibit; or a gloomy passion for penetrating the impenetrable mysteries of our being, which terrifies its possessor at the darkness of the abyss to the brink of which it has conducted him. Religion coexists, as it were, in the mind of an Italian Catholic, with a faith in that of which all men have the most certain knowledge. It is interwoven with the whole fabric of life. It is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no necessary connection with any one virtue. The most atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and without any shock to established faith, confess himself to be so. Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check. Cenci himself built a chapel in the court of his Palace, and dedicated it to St. Thomas the Apostle, and established masses for the peace of his soul. Thus in the first scene of the fourth act Lucretia’s design in exposing herself to the consequences of an expostulation with Cenci after having administered the opiate, was to induce him by a feigned tale to confess himself before death; this being esteemed by Catholics as essential to salvation; and she only relinquishes her purpose when she perceives that her perseverance would expose Beatrice to new outrages.
I have avoided with great care in writing this play the introduction of what is commonly called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice’s description of the chasm appointed for her father’s murder should be judged to be of that nature. (An idea in this speech was suggested by a most sublime passage in “El Purgaterio de San Patricio” of Calderon; the only plagiarism which I have intentionally committed in the whole piece.)
In a dramatic composition the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate one another, the former being reserved simply for the full development and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thus that the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit for dramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling, which raises what is low, and levels to the apprehension that which is lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In other respects, I have written more carelessly; that is, without an over-fastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirely agree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men to true sympathy we must use the familiar language of men, and that our great ancestors the ancient English poets are the writers, a study of whom might incite us to do that for our own age which they have done for theirs. But it must be the real language of men in general and not that of any particular class to whose society the writer happens to belong. So much for what I have attempted; I need not be assured that success is a very different matter; particularly for one whose attention has but newly been awakened to the study of dramatic literature.
I endeavoured whilst at Rome to observe such monuments of this story as might be accessible to a stranger. The portrait of Beatrice at the Colonna Palace is admirable as a work of art: it was taken by Guido during her confinement in prison. But it is most interesting as a just representation of one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of Nature. There is a fixed and pale composure upon the features: she seems sad and stricken down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound with folds of white drapery from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape, and fall about her neck. The moulding of her face is exquisitely delicate; the eyebrows are distinct and arched: the lips have that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suffering has not repressed and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish. Her forehead is large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. In the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity which, united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow, are inexpressibly pathetic. Beatrice Cenci appears to have been one of those rare persons in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another: her nature was simple and profound. The crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and the mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world.
The Cenci Palace is of great extent; and though in part modernized, there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture in the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this tragedy. The Palace is situated in an obscure corner of Rome, near the quarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of Mount Palatine half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of trees. There is a court in one part of the Palace (perhaps that in which Cenci built the Chapel to St. Thomas), supported by granite columns and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship, and built up, according to the ancient Italian fashion, with balcony over balcony of open-work. One of the gates of the Palace formed of immense stones and leading through a passage, dark and lofty and opening into gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particularly.
Of the Castle of Petrella, I could obtain no further information than that which is to be found in the manuscript.
CAMILLO:That matter of the murder is hushed upIf you consent to yield his HolinessYour fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.—It needed all my interest in the conclaveTo bend him to this point; he said that you _5Bought perilous impunity with your gold;That crimes like yours if once or twice compoundedEnriched the Church, and respited from hellAn erring soul which might repent and live: —But that the glory and the interest _10Of the high throne he fills, little consistWith making it a daily mart of guiltAs manifold and hideous as the deedsWhich you scarce hide from men’s revolted eyes.
CENCI:The third of my possessions—let it go! _15Ay, I once heard the nephew of the PopeHad sent his architect to view the ground,Meaning to build a villa on my vinesThe next time I compounded with his uncle:I little thought he should outwit me so! _20Henceforth no witness—not the lamp—shall seeThat which the vassal threatened to divulgeWhose throat is choked with dust for his reward.The deed he saw could not have rated higherThan his most worthless life:—it angers me! _25Respited me from Hell! So may the DevilRespite their souls from Heaven! No doubt Pope Clement,And his most charitable nephews, prayThat the Apostle Peter and the SaintsWill grant for their sake that I long enjoy _30Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of daysWherein to act the deeds which are the stewardsOf their revenue.—But much yet remainsTo which they show no title.
CAMILLO:Oh, Count Cenci!So much that thou mightst honourably live _35And reconcile thyself with thine own heartAnd with thy God, and with the offended world.How hideously look deeds of lust and bloodThrough those snow white and venerable hairs!—Your children should be sitting round you now, _40But that you fear to read upon their looksThe shame and misery you have written there.Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter?Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things elseBeauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you. _45Why is she barred from all societyBut her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs?Talk with me, Count,—you know I mean you well.I stood beside your dark and fiery youthWatching its bold and bad career, as men _50Watch meteors, but it vanished not—I markedYour desperate and remorseless manhood; nowDo I behold you in dishonoured ageCharged with a thousand unrepented crimes.Yet I have ever hoped you would amend, _55And in that hope have saved your life three times.
CENCI:For which Aldobrandino owes you nowMy fief beyond the Pincian.—Cardinal,One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth,And so we shall converse with less restraint. _60A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter—He was accustomed to frequent my house;So the next day HIS wife and daughter cameAnd asked if I had seen him; and I smiled:I think they never saw him any more. _65
CAMILLO:Thou execrable man, beware!—
CENCI:Of thee?Nay, this is idle: —We should know each other.As to my character for what men call crimeSeeing I please my senses as I list,And vindicate that right with force or guile, _70It is a public matter, and I care notIf I discuss it with you. I may speakAlike to you and my own conscious heart—For you give out that you have half reformed me,Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent _75If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt.All men delight in sensual luxury,All men enjoy revenge; and most exultOver the tortures they can never feel—Flattering their secret peace with others’ pain. _80But I delight in nothing else. I loveThe sight of agony, and the sense of joy,When this shall be another’s, and that mine.And I have no remorse and little fear,Which are, I think, the checks of other men. _85This mood has grown upon me, until nowAny design my captious fancy makesThe picture of its wish, and it forms noneBut such as men like you would start to know,Is as my natural food and rest debarred _90Until it be accomplished.
CAMILLO:Art thou notMost miserable?
CENCI:Why miserable?—No.—I am what your theologians callHardened;—which they must be in impudence,So to revile a man’s peculiar taste. _95True, I was happier than I am, while yetManhood remained to act the thing I thought;While lust was sweeter than revenge; and nowInvention palls:—Ay, we must all grow old—And but that there remains a deed to act _100Whose horror might make sharp an appetiteDuller than mine—I’d do,—I know not what.When I was young I thought of nothing elseBut pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets:Men, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees, _105And I grew tired:—yet, till I killed a foe,And heard his groans, and heard his children’s groans,Knew I not what delight was else on earth,Which now delights me little. I the ratherLook on such pangs as terror ill conceals, _110The dry fixed eyeball; the pale, quivering lip,Which tell me that the spirit weeps withinTears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ.I rarely kill the body, which preserves,Like a strong prison, the soul within my power, _115Wherein I feed it with the breath of fearFor hourly pain.
NOTE: _100 And but that edition 1821; But that editions 1819, 1839.
CAMILLO:Hell’s most abandoned fiendDid never, in the drunkenness of guilt,Speak to his heart as now you speak to me;I thank my God that I believe you not. _120
ANDREA:My Lord, a gentleman from SalamancaWould speak with you.
CENCI:Bid him attend meIn the grand saloon.
CAMILLO:Farewell; and I will prayAlmighty God that thy false, impious wordsTempt not his spirit to abandon thee. _125
CENCI:The third of my possessions! I must useClose husbandry, or gold, the old man’s sword,Falls from my withered hand. But yesterdayThere came an order from the Pope to makeFourfold provision for my cursed sons; _130Whom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca,Hoping some accident might cut them off;And meaning if I could to starve them there.I pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them!Bernardo and my wife could not be worse _135If dead and damned:—then, as to Beatrice—[LOOKING AROUND HIM SUSPICIOUSLY.]I think they cannot hear me at that door;What if they should? And yet I need not speakThough the heart triumphs with itself in words.O, thou most silent air, that shalt not hear _140What now I think! Thou, pavement, which I treadTowards her chamber,—let your echoes talkOf my imperious step scorning surprise,But not of my intent!—Andrea!
NOTES: _131 Whom I had edition 1821; Whom I have editions 1819, 1839. _140 that shalt edition 1821; that shall editions 1819, 1839.
ANDREA:My lord?
CENCI:Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber _145This evening:—no, at midnight and alone.
BEATRICE:Pervert not truth,Orsino. You remember where we heldThat conversation;—nay, we see the spotEven from this cypress;—two long years are pastSince, on an April midnight, underneath _5The moonlight ruins of Mount Palatine,I did confess to you my secret mind.
ORSINO:You said you loved me then.
BEATRICE:You are a Priest.Speak to me not of love.
ORSINO:I may obtainThe dispensation of the Pope to marry. _10Because I am a Priest do you believeYour image, as the hunter some struck deer,Follows me not whether I wake or sleep?
BEATRICE:As I have said, speak to me not of love;Had you a dispensation I have not; _15Nor will I leave this home of miseryWhilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle ladyTo whom I owe life, and these virtuous thoughts,Must suffer what I still have strength to share.Alas, Orsino! All the love that once _20I felt for you, is turned to bitter pain.Ours was a youthful contract, which you firstBroke, by assuming vows no Pope will loose.And thus I love you still, but holily,Even as a sister or a spirit might; _25And so I swear a cold fidelity.And it is well perhaps we shall not marry.You have a sly, equivocating veinThat suits me not.—Ah, wretched that I am!Where shall I turn? Even now you look on me _30As you were not my friend, and as if youDiscovered that I thought so, with false smilesMaking my true suspicion seem your wrong.Ah, no! forgive me; sorrow makes me seemSterner than else my nature might have been; _35I have a weight of melancholy thoughts,And they forebode,—but what can they forebodeWorse than I now endure?
NOTE: _24 And thus editions 1821, 1839; And yet edition 1819.
ORSINO:All will be well.Is the petition yet prepared? You knowMy zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice; _40Doubt not but I will use my utmost skillSo that the Pope attend to your complaint.
BEATRICE:Your zeal for all I wish;—Ah me, you are cold!Your utmost skill…speak but one word…[ASIDE.]Alas!Weak and deserted creature that I am, _45Here I stand bickering with my only friend![TO ORSINO.]This night my father gives a sumptuous feast,Orsino; he has heard some happy newsFrom Salamanca, from my brothers there,And with this outward show of love he mocks _50His inward hate. ’Tis bold hypocrisy,For he would gladlier celebrate their deaths,Which I have heard him pray for on his knees:Great God! that such a father should be mine!But there is mighty preparation made, _55And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there,And all the chief nobility of Rome.And he has bidden me and my pale MotherAttire ourselves in festival array.Poor lady! She expects some happy change _60In his dark spirit from this act; I none.At supper I will give you the petition:Till when—farewell.
ORSINO:Farewell.[EXIT BEATRICE.]I know the PopeWill ne’er absolve me from my priestly vowBut by absolving me from the revenue _65Of many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice,I think to win thee at an easier rate.Nor shall he read her eloquent petition:He might bestow her on some poor relationOf his sixth cousin, as he did her sister, _70And I should be debarred from all access.Then as to what she suffers from her father,In all this there is much exaggeration:—Old men are testy and will have their way;A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal, _75And live a free life as to wine or women,And with a peevish temper may returnTo a dull home, and rate his wife and children;Daughters and wives call this foul tyranny.I shall be well content if on my conscience _80There rest no heavier sin than what they sufferFrom the devices of my love—a netFrom which he shall escape not. Yet I fearHer subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze,Whose beams anatomize me nerve by nerve _85And lay me bare, and make me blush to seeMy hidden thoughts.—Ah, no! A friendless girlWho clings to me, as to her only hope:—I were a fool, not less than if a pantherWere panic-stricken by the antelope’s eye, _90If she escape me.
NOTE: _75 vassal edition 1821; slave edition 1819.
CENCI:Welcome, my friends and kinsmen; welcome ye,Princes and Cardinals, pillars of the church,Whose presence honours our festivity.I have too long lived like an anchorite,And in my absence from your merry meetings _5An evil word is gone abroad of me;But I do hope that you, my noble friends,When you have shared the entertainment here,And heard the pious cause for which ’tis given,And we have pledged a health or two together, _10Will think me flesh and blood as well as you;Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so,But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful.
FIRST GUEST:In truth, my Lord, you seem too light of heart,Too sprightly and companionable a man, _15To act the deeds that rumour pins on you.[TO HIS COMPANION.]I never saw such blithe and open cheerIn any eye!
SECOND GUEST:Some most desired event,In which we all demand a common joy,Has brought us hither; let us hear it, Count. _20
CENCI:It is indeed a most desired event.If when a parent from a parent’s heartLifts from this earth to the great Father of allA prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep,And when he rises up from dreaming it; _25One supplication, one desire, one hope,That he would grant a wish for his two sons,Even all that he demands in their regard—And suddenly beyond his dearest hopeIt is accomplished, he should then rejoice, _30And call his friends and kinsmen to a feast,And task their love to grace his merriment,—Then honour me thus far—for I am he.
BEATRICE [TO LUCRETIA]:Great God! How horrible! some dreadful illMust have befallen my brothers.
LUCRETIA:Fear not, child, _35He speaks too frankly.
BEATRICE:Ah! My blood runs cold.I fear that wicked laughter round his eye,Which wrinkles up the skin even to the hair.
CENCI:Here are the letters brought from Salamanca;Beatrice, read them to your mother. God! _40I thank thee! In one night didst thou perform,By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought.My disobedient and rebellious sonsAre dead!—Why, dead!—What means this change of cheer?You hear me not, I tell you they are dead; _45And they will need no food or raiment more:The tapers that did light them the dark wayAre their last cost. The Pope, I think, will notExpect I should maintain them in their coffins.Rejoice with me—my heart is wondrous glad. _50
BEATRICE :It is not true!—Dear Lady, pray look up.Had it been true, there is a God in Heaven,He would not live to boast of such a boon.Unnatural man, thou knowest that it is false.
CENCI:Ay, as the word of God; whom here I call _55To witness that I speak the sober truth;—And whose most favouring Providence was shownEven in the manner of their deaths. For RoccoWas kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others,When the church fell and crushed him to a mummy, _60The rest escaped unhurt. CristofanoWas stabbed in error by a jealous man,Whilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival;All in the self-same hour of the same night;Which shows that Heaven has special care of me. _65I beg those friends who love me, that they markThe day a feast upon their calendars.It was the twenty-seventh of December:Ay, read the letters if you doubt my oath.
FIRST GUEST:Oh, horrible! I will depart—
SECOND GUEST:And I.—
THIRD GUEST:No, stay! _70I do believe it is some jest; though faith!’Tis mocking us somewhat too solemnly.I think his son has married the Infanta,Or found a mine of gold in El Dorado.’Tis but to season some such news; stay, stay! _75I see ’tis only raillery by his smile.
CENCI [FILLING A BOWL OF WINE, AND LIFTING IT UP]:Oh, thou bright wine whose purple splendour leapsAnd bubbles gaily in this golden bowlUnder the lamplight, as my spirits do,To hear the death of my accursed sons! _80Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood,Then would I taste thee like a sacrament,And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,Who, if a father’s curses, as men say,Climb with swift wings after their children’s souls, _85And drag them from the very throne of Heaven,Now triumphs in my triumph!—But thou artSuperfluous; I have drunken deep of joy,And I will taste no other wine to-night.Here, Andrea! Bear the bowl around.
A GUEST [RISING]:Thou wretch! _90Will none among this noble companyCheck the abandoned villain?
CAMILLO:For God’s sake,Let me dismiss the guests! You are insane,Some ill will come of this.
SECOND GUEST:Seize, silence him!
FIRST GUEST:I will!
THIRD GUEST:And I!
CENCI [ADDRESSING THOSE WHO RISE WITH A THREATENING GESTURE]:Who moves? Who speaks?[TURNING TO THE COMPANY.]’tis nothing, _95Enjoy yourselves.—Beware! For my revengeIs as the sealed commission of a kingThat kills, and none dare name the murderer.
BEATRICE:I do entreat you, go not, noble guests;What, although tyranny and impious hate _100Stand sheltered by a father’s hoary hair?What if ’tis he who clothed us in these limbsWho tortures them, and triumphs? What, if we,The desolate and the dead, were his own flesh,His children and his wife, whom he is bound _105To love and shelter? Shall we therefore findNo refuge in this merciless wide world?O think what deep wrongs must have blotted outFirst love, then reverence in a child’s prone mind,Till it thus vanquish shame and fear! O think! _110I have borne much, and kissed the sacred handWhich crushed us to the earth, and thought its strokeWas perhaps some paternal chastisement!Have excused much, doubted; and when no doubtRemained, have sought by patience, love, and tears _115To soften him, and when this could not beI have knelt down through the long sleepless nightsAnd lifted up to God, the Father of all,Passionate prayers: and when these were not heardI have still borne,—until I meet you here, _120Princes and kinsmen, at this hideous feastGiven at my brothers’ deaths. Two yet remain,His wife remains and I, whom if ye save not,Ye may soon share such merriment againAs fathers make over their children’s graves. _125O Prince Colonna, thou art our near kinsman,Cardinal, thou art the Pope’s chamberlain,Camillo, thou art chief justiciary,Take us away!
CENCI [HE HAS BEEN CONVERSING WITH CAMILLO DURING THE FIRST PART OFBEATRICE’S SPEECH; HE HEARS THE CONCLUSION, AND NOW ADVANCES]:I hope my good friends hereWill think of their own daughters—or perhaps _130Of their own throats—before they lend an earTo this wild girl.
BEATRICE [NOT NOTICING THE WORDS OF CENCI]:Dare no one look on me?None answer? Can one tyrant overbearThe sense of many best and wisest men?Or is it that I sue not in some form _135Of scrupulous law, that ye deny my suit?O God! That I were buried with my brothers!And that the flowers of this departed springWere fading on my grave! And that my fatherWere celebrating now one feast for all! _140
NOTE: _132 no edition 1821; not edition 1819.
CAMILLO:A bitter wish for one so young and gentle.Can we do nothing?
COLONNA:Nothing that I see.Count Cenci were a dangerous enemy:Yet I would second any one.
A CARDINAL:And I.
CENCI:Retire to your chamber, insolent girl! _145
BEATRICE:Retire thou, impious man! Ay, hide thyselfWhere never eye can look upon thee more!Wouldst thou have honour and obedienceWho art a torturer? Father, never dream,Though thou mayst overbear this company, _150But ill must come of ill.—Frown not on me!Haste, hide thyself, lest with avenging looksMy brothers’ ghosts should hunt thee from thy seat!Cover thy face from every living eye,And start if thou but hear a human step: _155Seek out some dark and silent corner, there,Bow thy white head before offended God,And we will kneel around, and ferventlyPray that he pity both ourselves and thee.
CENCI:My friends, I do lament this insane girl _160Has spoilt the mirth of our festivity.Good night, farewell; I will not make you longerSpectators of our dull domestic quarrels.Another time.—[EXEUNT ALL BUT CENCI AND BEATRICE.]My brain is swimming round;Give me a bowl of wine![TO BEATRICE.]Thou painted viper! _165Beast that thou art! Fair and yet terrible!I know a charm shall make thee meek and tame,Now get thee from my sight![EXIT BEATRICE.]Here, Andrea,Fill up this goblet with Greek wine. I saidI would not drink this evening; but I must; _170For, strange to say, I feel my spirits failWith thinking what I have decreed to do.—[DRINKING THE WINE.]Be thou the resolution of quick youthWithin my veins, and manhood’s purpose stern,And age’s firm, cold, subtle villainy; _175As if thou wert indeed my children’s bloodWhich I did thirst to drink! The charm works well;It must be done; it shall be done, I swear!
LUCRETIA:Weep not, my gentle boy; he struck but meWho have borne deeper wrongs. In truth, if heHad killed me, he had done a kinder deed.O God Almighty, do Thou look upon us,We have no other friend but only Thee! _5Yet weep not; though I love you as my own,I am not your true mother.
BERNARDO:Oh, more, more,Than ever mother was to any child,That have you been to me! Had he not beenMy father, do you think that I should weep! _10
LUCRETIA:Alas! Poor boy, what else couldst thou have done?
BEATRICE [IN A HURRIED VOICE]:Did he pass this way? Have you seen him, brother?Ah, no! that is his step upon the stairs;’Tis nearer now; his hand is on the door;Mother, if I to thee have ever been _15A duteous child, now save me! Thou, great God,Whose image upon earth a father is,Dost thou indeed abandon me? He comes;The door is opening now; I see his face;He frowns on others, but he smiles on me, _20Even as he did after the feast last night.[ENTER A SERVANT.]Almighty God, how merciful Thou art!’Tis but Orsino’s servant.—Well, what news?
SERVANT:My master bids me say, the Holy FatherHas sent back your petition thus unopened. _25[GIVING A PAPER.]And he demands at what hour ’twere secureTo visit you again?
LUCRETIA:At the Ave Mary.[EXIT SERVANT.]So, daughter, our last hope has failed. Ah me!How pale you look; you tremble, and you standWrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation, _30As if one thought were over strong for you:Your eyes have a chill glare; O, dearest child!Are you gone mad? If not, pray speak to me.
BEATRICE:You see I am not mad: I speak to you.
LUCRETIA:You talked of something that your father did _35After that dreadful feast? Could it be worseThan when he smiled, and cried, ‘My sons are dead!’And every one looked in his neighbour’s faceTo see if others were as white as he?At the first word he spoke I felt the blood _40Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance;And when it passed I sat all weak and wild;Whilst you alone stood up, and with strong wordsChecked his unnatural pride; and I could seeThe devil was rebuked that lives in him. _45Until this hour thus you have ever stoodBetween us and your father’s moody wrathLike a protecting presence; your firm mindHas been our only refuge and defence:What can have thus subdued it? What can now _50Have given you that cold melancholy look,Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear?
BEATRICE:What is it that you say? I was just thinking’Twere better not to struggle any more.Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody, _55Yet never—Oh! Before worse comes of it’Twere wise to die: it ends in that at last.
LUCRETIA:Oh, talk not so, dear child! Tell me at onceWhat did your father do or say to you?He stayed not after that accursed feast _60One moment in your chamber.—Speak to me.
BERNARDO:Oh, sister, sister, prithee, speak to us!
BEATRICE [SPEAKING VERY SLOWLY, WITH A FORCED CALMNESS]:It was one word, Mother, one little word;One look, one smile.[WILDLY.]Oh! He has trampled meUnder his feet, and made the blood stream down _65My pallid cheeks. And he has given us allDitch-water, and the fever-stricken fleshOf buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve,And we have eaten.—He has made me lookOn my beloved Bernardo, when the rust _70Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs,And I have never yet despaired—but now!What could I say?[RECOVERING HERSELF.]Ah, no! ’tis nothing new.The sufferings we all share have made me wild:He only struck and cursed me as he passed; _75He said, he looked, he did;—nothing at allBeyond his wont, yet it disordered me.Alas! I am forgetful of my duty,I should preserve my senses for your sake.
LUCRETIA:Nay, Beatrice; have courage, my sweet girl. _80If any one despairs it should be IWho loved him once, and now must live with himTill God in pity call for him or me.For you may, like your sister, find some husband,And smile, years hence, with children round your knees; _85Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coilShall be remembered only as a dream.
BEATRICE:Talk not to me, dear lady, of a husband.Did you not nurse me when my mother died?Did you not shield me and that dearest boy? _90And had we any other friend but youIn infancy, with gentle words and looks,To win our father not to murder us?And shall I now desert you? May the ghostOf my dead Mother plead against my soul _95If I abandon her who filled the placeShe left, with more, even, than a mother’s love!
BERNARDO:And I am of my sister’s mind. IndeedI would not leave you in this wretchedness,Even though the Pope should make me free to live _100In some blithe place, like others of my age,With sports, and delicate food, and the fresh air.Oh, never think that I will leave you, Mother!
LUCRETIA:My dear, dear children!
CENCI:What! Beatrice here!Come hither![SHE SHRINKS BACK, AND COVERS HER FACE.]Nay, hide not your face, ’tis fair; _105Look up! Why, yesternight you dared to lookWith disobedient insolence upon me,Bending a stern and an inquiring browOn what I meant; whilst I then sought to hideThat which I came to tell you—but in vain. _110
BEATRICE [WILDLY STAGGERING TOWARDS THE DOOR]:Oh, that the earth would gape! Hide me, O God!
CENCI:Then it was I whose inarticulate wordsFell from my lips, and who with tottering stepsFled from your presence, as you now from mine.Stay, I command you—from this day and hour _115Never again, I think, with fearless eye,And brow superior, and unaltered cheek,And that lip made for tenderness or scorn,Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind;Me least of all. Now get thee to thy chamber! _120Thou too, loathed image of thy cursed mother,[TO BERNARDO.]Thy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate![EXEUNT BEATRICE AND BERNARDO.][ASIDE.]So much has passed between us as must makeMe bold, her fearful.—’Tis an awful thingTo touch such mischief as I now conceive: _125So men sit shivering on the dewy bank,And try the chill stream with their feet; once in…How the delighted spirit pants for joy!
LUCRETIA [ADVANCING TIMIDLY TOWARDS HIM]:O husband! Pray forgive poor Beatrice.She meant not any ill.
CENCI:Nor you perhaps? _130Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by roteParricide with his alphabet? Nor Giacomo?Nor those two most unnatural sons, who stirredEnmity up against me with the Pope?Whom in one night merciful God cut off: _135Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill.You were not here conspiring? You said nothingOf how I might be dungeoned as a madman;Or be condemned to death for some offence,And you would be the witnesses?—This failing, _140How just it were to hire assassins, orPut sudden poison in my evening drink?Or smother me when overcome by wine?Seeing we had no other judge but God,And He had sentenced me, and there were none _145But you to be the executionersOf His decree enregistered in heaven?Oh, no! You said not this?
LUCRETIA:So help me God,I never thought the things you charge me with!
CENCI:If you dare to speak that wicked lie again _150I’ll kill you. What! It was not by your counselThat Beatrice disturbed the feast last night?You did not hope to stir some enemiesAgainst me, and escape, and laugh to scornWhat every nerve of you now trembles at? _155You judged that men were bolder than they are;Few dare to stand between their grave and me.
LUCRETIA:Look not so dreadfully! By my salvationI knew not aught that Beatrice designed;Nor do I think she designed any thing _160Until she heard you talk of her dead brothers.
CENCI:Blaspheming liar! You are damned for this!But I will take you where you may persuadeThe stones you tread on to deliver you:For men shall there be none but those who dare _165All things—not question that which I command.On Wednesday next I shall set out: you knowThat savage rock, the Castle of Petrella:’Tis safely walled, and moated round about:Its dungeons underground, and its thick towers _170Never told tales; though they have heard and seenWhat might make dumb things speak.—Why do you linger?Make speediest preparation for the journey![EXIT LUCRETIA.]The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hearA busy stir of men about the streets; _175I see the bright sky through the window panes:It is a garish, broad, and peering day;Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears,And every little corner, nook, and holeIs penetrated with the insolent light. _180Come darkness! Yet, what is the day to me?And wherefore should I wish for night, who doA deed which shall confound both night and day?’Tis she shall grope through a bewildering mistOf horror: if there be a sun in heaven _185She shall not dare to look upon its beams;Nor feel its warmth. Let her then wish for night;The act I think shall soon extinguish allFor me: I bear a darker deadlier gloomThan the earth’s shade, or interlunar air, _190Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud,In which I walk secure and unbeheldTowards my purpose.—Would that it were done!
CAMILLO:There is an obsolete and doubtful lawBy which you might obtain a bare provisionOf food and clothing—
GIACOMO:Nothing more? Alas!Bare must be the provision which strict lawAwards, and aged, sullen avarice pays. _5Why did my father not apprentice meTo some mechanic trade? I should have thenBeen trained in no highborn necessitiesWhich I could meet not by my daily toil.The eldest son of a rich nobleman _10Is heir to all his incapacities;He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you,Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at onceFrom thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food,An hundred servants, and six palaces, _15To that which nature doth indeed require?—