Act 4
SCENE 4.1: A PART OF THE FOREST NEAR THE CAVE OF PROMETHEUS. PANTHEA AND IONE ARE SLEEPING: THEY AWAKEN GRADUALLY DURING THE FIRST SONG.
VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS: The pale stars are gone! For the sun, their swift shepherd, To their folds them compelling, In the depths of the dawn, Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee _5 Beyond his blue dwelling, As fawns flee the leopard. But where are ye?
[A TRAIN OF DARK FORMS AND SHADOWS PASSES BY CONFUSEDLY, SINGING.]
Here, oh, here: We bear the bier _10 Of the father of many a cancelled year! Spectres we Of the dead Hours be, We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.
Strew, oh, strew _15 Hair, not yew! Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew! Be the faded flowers Of Death’s bare bowers Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours! _20
Haste, oh, haste! As shades are chased, Trembling, by day, from heaven’s blue waste. We melt away, Like dissolving spray, _25 From the children of a diviner day, With the lullaby Of winds that die On the bosom of their own harmony!
IONE: What dark forms were they? _30
PANTHEA: The past Hours weak and gray, With the spoil which their toil Raked together From the conquest but One could foil.
IONE: Have they passed?
PANTHEA: They have passed; _35 They outspeeded the blast, While ’tis said, they are fled:
IONE: Whither, oh, whither?
PANTHEA: To the dark, to the past, to the dead.
VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS: Bright clouds float in heaven, _40 Dew-stars gleam on earth, Waves assemble on ocean, They are gathered and driven By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee! They shake with emotion, _45 They dance in their mirth. But where are ye?
The pine boughs are singing Old songs with new gladness, The billows and fountains _50 Fresh music are flinging, Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea; The storms mock the mountains With the thunder of gladness. But where are ye? _55
IONE: What charioteers are these?
PANTHEA: Where are their chariots?
SEMICHORUS OF HOURS: The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth Has drawn back the figured curtain of sleep Which covered our being and darkened our birth In the deep.
A VOICE: In the deep?
SEMICHORUS 2: Oh, below the deep. _60
SEMICHORUS 1: An hundred ages we had been kept Cradled in visions of hate and care, And each one who waked as his brother slept, Found the truth—
SEMICHORUS 2: Worse than his visions were!
SEMICHORUS 1: We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep; _65 We have known the voice of Love in dreams; We have felt the wand of Power, and leap—
SEMICHORUS 2: As the billows leap in the morning beams!
CHORUS: Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze, Pierce with song heaven’s silent light, _70 Enchant the day that too swiftly flees, To check its flight ere the cave of Night.
Once the hungry Hours were hounds Which chased the day like a bleeding deer, And it limped and stumbled with many wounds _75 Through the nightly dells of the desert year.
But now, oh weave the mystic measure Of music, and dance, and shapes of light, Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure, Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite—
A VOICE: Unite! _80
PANTHEA: See, where the Spirits of the human mind Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach.
CHORUS OF SPIRITS: We join the throng Of the dance and the song, By the whirlwind of gladness borne along; _85 As the flying-fish leap From the Indian deep, And mix with the sea-birds, half-asleep.
CHORUS OF HOURS: Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet, For sandals of lightning are on your feet, _90 And your wings are soft and swift as thought, And your eyes are as love which is veiled not?
CHORUS OF SPIRITS: We come from the mind Of human kind Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind, _95 Now ’tis an ocean Of clear emotion, A heaven of serene and mighty motion.
From that deep abyss Of wonder and bliss, _100 Whose caverns are crystal palaces; From those skiey towers Where Thought’s crowned powers Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!
From the dim recesses _105 Of woven caresses, Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses; From the azure isles, Where sweet Wisdom smiles, Delaying your ships with her siren wiles. _110
From the temples high Of Man’s ear and eye, Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy; From the murmurings Of the unsealed springs _115 Where Science bedews her Daedal wings.
Years after years, Through blood, and tears, And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears; We waded and flew, _120 And the islets were few Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.
Our feet now, every palm, Are sandalled with calm, And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm; _125 And, beyond our eyes, The human love lies Which makes all it gazes on Paradise.
NOTE: _116 her B; his 1820.
CHORUS OF SPIRITS AND HOURS: Then weave the web of the mystic measure; From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth, _130 Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure, Fill the dance and the music of mirth, As the waves of a thousand streams rush by To an ocean of splendour and harmony!
CHORUS OF SPIRITS: Our spoil is won, _135 Our task is done, We are free to dive, or soar, or run; Beyond and around, Or within the bound Which clips the world with darkness round. _140
We’ll pass the eyes Of the starry skies Into the hoar deep to colonize; Death, Chaos, and Night, From the sound of our flight, _145 Shall flee, like mist from a tempest’s might.
And Earth, Air, and Light, And the Spirit of Might, Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight; And Love, Thought, and Breath, _150 The powers that quell Death, Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.
And our singing shall build In the void’s loose field A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield; _155 We will take our plan From the new world of man, And our work shall be called the Promethean.
CHORUS OF HOURS: Break the dance, and scatter the song; Let some depart, and some remain; _160
SEMICHORUS 1: We, beyond heaven, are driven along:
SEMICHORUS 2: Us the enchantments of earth retain:
SEMICHORUS 1: Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free, With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea, And a heaven where yet heaven could never be; _165
SEMICHORUS 2: Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright, Leading the Day and outspeeding the Night, With the powers of a world of perfect light;
SEMICHORUS 1: We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere, Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear _170 From its chaos made calm by love, not fear.
SEMICHORUS 2: We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth, And the happy forms of its death and birth Change to the music of our sweet mirth.
CHORUS OF HOURS AND SPIRITS: Break the dance, and scatter the song; _175 Let some depart, and some remain, Wherever we fly we lead along In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong, The clouds that are heavy with love’s sweet rain.
PANTHEA: Ha! they are gone!
IONE: Yet feel you no delight _180 From the past sweetness?
PANTHEA: As the bare green hill When some soft cloud vanishes into rain, Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water To the unpavilioned sky!
IONE: Even whilst we speak New notes arise. What is that awful sound? _185
PANTHEA: ’Tis the deep music of the rolling world Kindling within the strings of the waved air Aeolian modulations.
IONE: Listen too, How every pause is filled with under-notes, Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones, _190 Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul, As the sharp stars pierce winter’s crystal air And gaze upon themselves within the sea.
PANTHEA: But see where through two openings in the forest Which hanging branches overcanopy, _195 And where two runnels of a rivulet, Between the close moss violet-inwoven, Have made their path of melody, like sisters Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles, Turning their dear disunion to an isle _200 Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts; Two visions of strange radiance float upon The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound, Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet Under the ground and through the windless air. _205
IONE: I see a chariot like that thinnest boat, In which the Mother of the Months is borne By ebbing light into her western cave, When she upsprings from interlunar dreams; O’er which is curved an orblike canopy _210 Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods, Distinctly seen through that dusk aery veil, Regard like shapes in an enchanter’s glass; Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold, Such as the genii of the thunderstorm _215 Pile on the floor of the illumined sea When the sun rushes under it; they roll And move and grow as with an inward wind; Within it sits a winged infant, white Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow, _220 Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost, Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl. Its hair is white, the brightness of white light Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens _225 Of liquid darkness, which the Deity Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes, Tempering the cold and radiant air around, With fire that is not brightness; in its hand _230 It sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point A guiding power directs the chariot’s prow Over its wheeled clouds, which as they roll Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds, Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew. _235
NOTES: _208 light B; night 1820. _212 aery B; airy 1820. _225 strings B, edition 1839; string 1820.
PANTHEA: And from the other opening in the wood Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony, A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres, Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass Flow, as through empty space, music and light: _240 Ten thousand orbs involving and involved, Purple and azure, white, and green, and golden, Sphere within sphere; and every space between Peopled with unimaginable shapes, Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep, _245 Yet each inter-transpicuous, and they whirl Over each other with a thousand motions, Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning, And with the force of self-destroying swiftness, Intensely, slowly, solemnly, roll on, _250 Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones, Intelligible words and music wild. With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist Of elemental subtlety, like light; _255 And the wild odour of the forest flowers, The music of the living grass and air, The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed, Seem kneaded into one aereal mass _260 Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself, Pillowed upon its alabaster arms, Like to a child o’erwearied with sweet toil, On its own folded wings, and wavy hair, The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep, _265 And you can see its little lips are moving, Amid the changing light of their own smiles, Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.
NOTE: _242 white and green B; white, green 1820.
IONE: ’Tis only mocking the orb’s harmony.
PANTHEA: And from a star upon its forehead, shoot, _270 Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined, Embleming heaven and earth united now, Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought, _275 Filling the abyss with sun-like lightenings, And perpendicular now, and now transverse, Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass, Make bare the secrets of the earth’s deep heart; Infinite mine of adamant and gold, _280 Valueless stones, and unimagined gems, And caverns on crystalline columns poised With vegetable silver overspread; Wells of unfathomed fire, and water springs Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed, _285 Whose vapours clothe earth’s monarch mountain-tops With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on And make appear the melancholy ruins Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships; Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears, _290 And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts, Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin! _295 The wrecks beside of many a city vast, Whose population which the earth grew over Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie, Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons, Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes _300 Huddled in gray annihilation, split, Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these, The anatomies of unknown winged things, And fishes which were isles of living scale, And serpents, bony chains, twisted around _305 The iron crags, or within heaps of dust To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs Had crushed the iron crags; and over these The jagged alligator, and the might Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once _310 Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores, And weed-overgrown continents of earth, Increased and multiplied like summer worms On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe Wrapped deluge round it like a cloak, and they _315 Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried, ‘Be not!’ And like my words they were no more.
NOTES: _274 spokes B, edition 1839; spoke 1820. _276 lightenings B; lightnings 1820. _280 mines B; mine 1820. _282 poised B; poized edition 1839; poured 1820.
THE EARTH: The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness! The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness, _320 The vaporous exultation not to be confined! Ha! ha! the animation of delight Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.
THE MOON: Brother mine, calm wanderer, _325 Happy globe of land and air, Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee, Which penetrates my frozen frame, And passes with the warmth of flame, With love, and odour, and deep melody _330 Through me, through me!
THE EARTH: Ha! ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains, My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter. The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses, _335 And the deep air’s unmeasured wildernesses, Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.
They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse, Who all our green and azure universe Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending _340 A solid cloud to rain hot thunderstones, And splinter and knead down my children’s bones, All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending,—
Until each crag-like tower, and storied column, Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn, _345 My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire, My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom, Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire:
How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up _350 By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all; And from beneath, around, within, above, Filling thy void annihilation, love Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball. _355
NOTES: _335-_336 the abysses, And 1820, 1839; the abysses Of B. _355 the omitted 1820.
THE MOON: The snow upon my lifeless mountains Is loosened into living fountains, My solid oceans flow, and sing and shine: A spirit from my heart bursts forth, It clothes with unexpected birth _360 My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine On mine, on mine!
Gazing on thee I feel, I know Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow, And living shapes upon my bosom move: _365 Music is in the sea and air, Winged clouds soar here and there, Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of: ’Tis love, all love!
THE EARTH: It interpenetrates my granite mass, _370 Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers; Upon the winds, among the clouds ’tis spread, It wakes a life in the forgotten dead, They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers. _375
And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being: With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver Thought’s stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever, _380 Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,
Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror, Which could distort to many a shape of error, This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love; Which over all his kind, as the sun’s heaven _385 Gliding o’er ocean, smooth, serene, and even, Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move:
Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left, Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured; _390 Then when it wanders home with rosy smile, Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored.
Man, oh, not men! a chain of linked thought, Of love and might to be divided not, _395 Compelling the elements with adamantine stress; As the sun rules, even with a tyrant’s gaze, The unquiet republic of the maze Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven’s free wilderness.
Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, _400 Whose nature is its own divine control, Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea; Familiar acts are beautiful through love; Labour, and pain, and grief, in life’s green grove Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be! _405
His will, with all mean passions, bad delights, And selfish cares, its trembling satellites, A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey, Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm, _410 Forcing life’s wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.
All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass Of marble and of colour his dreams pass; Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear; Language is a perpetual Orphic song, _415 Which rules with Daedal harmony a throng Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.
The lightning is his slave; heaven’s utmost deep Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on! _420 The tempest is his steed, he strides the air; And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.
NOTE: _387 life B; light 1820.
THE MOON: The shadow of white death has passed From my path in heaven at last, _425 A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep; And through my newly-woven bowers, Wander happy paramours, Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep Thy vales more deep. _430
THE EARTH: As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold, And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist, And wanders up the vault of the blue day, Outlives the noon, and on the sun’s last ray _435 Hangs o’er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.
NOTE: _432 unfrozen B, edition 1839; infrozen 1820.
THE MOON: Thou art folded, thou art lying In the light which is undying Of thine own joy, and heaven’s smile divine; All suns and constellations shower _440 On thee a light, a life, a power Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine On mine, on mine!
THE EARTH: I spin beneath my pyramid of night, Which points into the heavens dreaming delight, _445 Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep; As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing, Under the shadow of his beauty lying, Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.
THE MOON: As in the soft and sweet eclipse, _450 When soul meets soul on lovers’ lips, High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull; So when thy shadow falls on me, Then am I mute and still, by thee Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, _455 Full, oh, too full!
Thou art speeding round the sun Brightest world of many a one; Green and azure sphere which shinest With a light which is divinest _460 Among all the lamps of Heaven To whom life and light is given; I, thy crystal paramour Borne beside thee by a power Like the polar Paradise, _465 Magnet-like of lovers’ eyes; I, a most enamoured maiden Whose weak brain is overladen With the pleasure of her love, Maniac-like around thee move Gazing, an insatiate bride, _470 On thy form from every side Like a Maenad, round the cup Which Agave lifted up In the weird Cadmaean forest. _475 Brother, wheresoe’er thou soarest I must hurry, whirl and follow Through the heavens wide and hollow, Sheltered by the warm embrace Of thy soul from hungry space, _480 Drinking from thy sense and sight Beauty, majesty, and might, As a lover or a chameleon Grows like what it looks upon, As a violet’s gentle eye _485 Gazes on the azure sky Until its hue grows like what it beholds, As a gray and watery mist Glows like solid amethyst Athwart the western mountain it enfolds, _490 When the sunset sleeps Upon its snow—
THE EARTH: And the weak day weeps That it should be so. Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight _495 Falls on me like thy clear and tender light Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night, Through isles for ever calm; Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce The caverns of my pride’s deep universe, _500 Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce Made wounds which need thy balm.
PANTHEA: I rise as from a bath of sparkling water, A bath of azure light, among dark rocks, Out of the stream of sound.
IONE: Ah me! sweet sister, _505 The stream of sound has ebbed away from us, And you pretend to rise out of its wave, Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph’s limbs and hair.
PANTHEA: Peace! peace! a mighty Power, which is as darkness, _510 Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky Is showered like night, and from within the air Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up Into the pores of sunlight: the bright visions, Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone, _515 Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.
IONE: There is a sense of words upon mine ear.
PANTHEA: An universal sound like words: Oh, list!
DEMOGORGON: Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul, Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies, _520 Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll The love which paves thy path along the skies:
THE EARTH: I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.
DEMOGORGON: Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth With wonder, as it gazes upon thee; _525 Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:
THE MOON: I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee!
DEMOGORGON: Ye Kings of suns and stars, Daemons and Gods, Ethereal Dominations, who possess _530 Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes Beyond Heaven’s constellated wilderness:
A VOICE FROM ABOVE: Our great Republic hears: we are blest, and bless.
DEMOGORGON: Ye happy Dead, whom beams of brightest verse Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray, _535 Whether your nature is that universe Which once ye saw and suffered—
A VOICE: FROM BENEATH: Or as they Whom we have left, we change and pass away.
DEMOGORGON: Ye elemental Genii, who have homes From man’s high mind even to the central stone _540 Of sullen lead; from heaven’s star-fretted domes To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:
A CONFUSED VOICE: We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.
DEMOGORGON: Spirits, whose homes are flesh; ye beasts and birds, Ye worms and fish; ye living leaves and buds; _545 Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds, Meteors and mists, which throng air’s solitudes:—
NOTE: _547 throng 1820, 1839; cancelled for feed B.
A VOICE: Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.
DEMOGORGON: Man, who wert once a despot and a slave; A dupe and a deceiver; a decay; _550 A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day:
ALL: Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.
DEMOGORGON: This is the day, which down the void abysm At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Heaven’s despotism, _555 And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep: Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep, And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs _560 And folds over the world its healing wings.
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, These are the seals of that most firm assurance Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength; And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, _565 Mother of many acts and hours, should free The serpent that would clasp her with his length; These are the spells by which to reassume An empire o’er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; _570 To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; _575 This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!
NOTES: _559 dread B, edition 1839; dead 1820. _575 falter B, edition 1839; flatter 1820.
CANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF “PROMETHEUS UNBOUND”.
[First printed by Mr. C.D. Locock, “Examination of the Shelley Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library”, 1903, pages 33-7.]
(following 1._37.) When thou descendst each night with open eyes In torture, for a tyrant seldom sleeps, Thou never; ... ...
(following 1._195.) Which thou henceforth art doomed to interweave ...
(following the first two words of 1._342.) [Of Hell:] I placed it in his choice to be The crown, or trampled refuse of the world With but one law itself a glorious boon— I gave— ...
(following 1._707.) SECOND SPIRIT: I leaped on the wings of the Earth-star damp As it rose on the steam of a slaughtered camp— The sleeping newt heard not our tramp As swift as the wings of fire may pass— We threaded the points of long thick grass Which hide the green pools of the morass But shook a water-serpent’s couch In a cleft skull, of many such The widest; at the meteor’s touch The snake did seem to see in dream Thrones and dungeons overthrown Visions how unlike his own... ’Twas the hope the prophecy Which 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 away The fire is in my heart—
ASIA: Thine eyes burn burn!— Hide them within thine hair—
PANTHEA: O quench thy lips I sink I perish
ASIA: Shelter me now—they burn It is his spirit in their orbs...my life Is 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 thee Sweet sister, for even now thy curved lips Tremble as if the sound were dying there Not dead
PANTHEA: Alas it was Prometheus spoke Within me, and I know it must be so I mixed my own weak nature with his love ...And my thoughts Are like the many forests of a vale Through which the might of whirlwind and of rain Had passed—they rest rest through the evening light As mine do now in thy beloved smile.
CANCELLED STAGE DIRECTIONS. (following 1._221.) [THE SOUND BENEATH AS OF EARTHQUAKE AND THE DRIVING OF WHIRLWINDS—THE RAVINE IS SPLIT, AND THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER RISES, SURROUNDED BY HEAVY CLOUDS WHICH DART FORTH LIGHTNING.]
(following 1._520.) [ENTER RUSHING BY GROUPS OF HORRIBLE FORMS; THEY SPEAK AS THEY PASS IN CHORUS.]
(following 1._552.) [A SHADOW PASSES OVER THE SCENE, AND A PIERCING SHRIEK IS HEARD.]
NOTE ON “PROMETHEUS UNBOUND”, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
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 steeds Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands A 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 drink With 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 locks Stream like a comet’s flashing hair: they all Sweep 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.
***
THE CENCI.
A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS.
[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.]
DEDICATION, TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.
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,
PERCY B. SHELLEY.
Rome, May 29, 1819.
THE CENCI.
Preface
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.
THE CENCI: A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
COUNT FRANCESCO CENCI. GIACOMO, BERNARDO, HIS SONS. CARDINAL CAMILLO. PRINCE COLONNA. ORSINO, A PRELATE. SAVELLA, THE POPE’S LEGATE. OLIMPIO, MARZIO, ASSASSINS. ANDREA, SERVANT TO CENCI. NOBLES. JUDGES. GUARDS, SERVANTS. LUCRETIA, WIFE OF CENCI AND STEP-MOTHER OF HIS CHILDREN. BEATRICE, HIS DAUGHTER.
THE SCENE LIES PRINCIPALLY IN ROME, BUT CHANGES DURING THE FOURTH ACT TO PETRELLA, A CASTLE AMONG THE APULIAN APENNINES.
TIME. DURING THE PONTIFICATE OF CLEMENT VIII.
Act 1, Scene 1 — AN APARTMENT IN THE CENCI PALACE. ENTER COUNT CENCI AND CARDINAL CAMILLO
CAMILLO: That matter of the murder is hushed up If you consent to yield his Holiness Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.— It needed all my interest in the conclave To bend him to this point; he said that you _5 Bought perilous impunity with your gold; That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded Enriched the Church, and respited from hell An erring soul which might repent and live: — But that the glory and the interest _10 Of the high throne he fills, little consist With making it a daily mart of guilt As manifold and hideous as the deeds Which you scarce hide from men’s revolted eyes.
CENCI: The third of my possessions—let it go! _15 Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope Had sent his architect to view the ground, Meaning to build a villa on my vines The next time I compounded with his uncle: I little thought he should outwit me so! _20 Henceforth no witness—not the lamp—shall see That which the vassal threatened to divulge Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward. The deed he saw could not have rated higher Than his most worthless life:—it angers me! _25 Respited me from Hell! So may the Devil Respite their souls from Heaven! No doubt Pope Clement, And his most charitable nephews, pray That the Apostle Peter and the Saints Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy _30 Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards Of their revenue.—But much yet remains To which they show no title.
CAMILLO: Oh, Count Cenci! So much that thou mightst honourably live _35 And reconcile thyself with thine own heart And with thy God, and with the offended world. How hideously look deeds of lust and blood Through those snow white and venerable hairs!— Your children should be sitting round you now, _40 But that you fear to read upon their looks The shame and misery you have written there. Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter? Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things else Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you. _45 Why is she barred from all society But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs? Talk with me, Count,—you know I mean you well. I stood beside your dark and fiery youth Watching its bold and bad career, as men _50 Watch meteors, but it vanished not—I marked Your desperate and remorseless manhood; now Do I behold you in dishonoured age Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes. Yet I have ever hoped you would amend, _55 And in that hope have saved your life three times.
CENCI: For which Aldobrandino owes you now My fief beyond the Pincian.—Cardinal, One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth, And so we shall converse with less restraint. _60 A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter— He was accustomed to frequent my house; So the next day HIS wife and daughter came And 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 crime Seeing I please my senses as I list, And vindicate that right with force or guile, _70 It is a public matter, and I care not If I discuss it with you. I may speak Alike to you and my own conscious heart— For you give out that you have half reformed me, Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent _75 If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt. All men delight in sensual luxury, All men enjoy revenge; and most exult Over the tortures they can never feel— Flattering their secret peace with others’ pain. _80 But I delight in nothing else. I love The 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. _85 This mood has grown upon me, until now Any design my captious fancy makes The picture of its wish, and it forms none But such as men like you would start to know, Is as my natural food and rest debarred _90 Until it be accomplished.
CAMILLO: Art thou not Most miserable?
CENCI: Why miserable?— No.—I am what your theologians call Hardened;—which they must be in impudence, So to revile a man’s peculiar taste. _95 True, I was happier than I am, while yet Manhood remained to act the thing I thought; While lust was sweeter than revenge; and now Invention palls:—Ay, we must all grow old— And but that there remains a deed to act _100 Whose horror might make sharp an appetite Duller than mine—I’d do,—I know not what. When I was young I thought of nothing else But pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets: Men, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees, _105 And 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 rather Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals, _110 The dry fixed eyeball; the pale, quivering lip, Which tell me that the spirit weeps within Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ. I rarely kill the body, which preserves, Like a strong prison, the soul within my power, _115 Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear For hourly pain.
NOTE: _100 And but that edition 1821; But that editions 1819, 1839.
CAMILLO: Hell’s most abandoned fiend Did 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
[ENTER ANDREA.]
ANDREA: My Lord, a gentleman from Salamanca Would speak with you.
CENCI: Bid him attend me In the grand saloon.
[EXIT ANDREA.]
CAMILLO: Farewell; and I will pray Almighty God that thy false, impious words Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee. _125
[EXIT CAMILLO.]
CENCI: The third of my possessions! I must use Close husbandry, or gold, the old man’s sword, Falls from my withered hand. But yesterday There came an order from the Pope to make Fourfold provision for my cursed sons; _130 Whom 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 _135 If 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 speak Though the heart triumphs with itself in words. O, thou most silent air, that shalt not hear _140 What now I think! Thou, pavement, which I tread Towards her chamber,—let your echoes talk Of 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.
[ENTER ANDREA.]
ANDREA: My lord?
CENCI: Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber _145 This evening:—no, at midnight and alone.
[EXEUNT.]
Act 1, Scene 2 — A GARDEN OF THE CENCI PALACE. ENTER BEATRICE AND ORSINO, AS IN CONVERSATION
BEATRICE: Pervert not truth, Orsino. You remember where we held That conversation;—nay, we see the spot Even from this cypress;—two long years are past Since, on an April midnight, underneath _5 The 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 obtain The dispensation of the Pope to marry. _10 Because I am a Priest do you believe Your 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; _15 Nor will I leave this home of misery Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady To whom I owe life, and these virtuous thoughts, Must suffer what I still have strength to share. Alas, Orsino! All the love that once _20 I felt for you, is turned to bitter pain. Ours was a youthful contract, which you first Broke, by assuming vows no Pope will loose. And thus I love you still, but holily, Even as a sister or a spirit might; _25 And so I swear a cold fidelity. And it is well perhaps we shall not marry. You have a sly, equivocating vein That suits me not.—Ah, wretched that I am! Where shall I turn? Even now you look on me _30 As you were not my friend, and as if you Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles Making my true suspicion seem your wrong. Ah, no! forgive me; sorrow makes me seem Sterner than else my nature might have been; _35 I have a weight of melancholy thoughts, And they forebode,—but what can they forebode Worse 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 know My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice; _40 Doubt not but I will use my utmost skill So 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, _45 Here I stand bickering with my only friend! [TO ORSINO.] This night my father gives a sumptuous feast, Orsino; he has heard some happy news From Salamanca, from my brothers there, And with this outward show of love he mocks _50 His 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, _55 And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there, And all the chief nobility of Rome. And he has bidden me and my pale Mother Attire ourselves in festival array. Poor lady! She expects some happy change _60 In 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 Pope Will ne’er absolve me from my priestly vow But by absolving me from the revenue _65 Of 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 relation Of his sixth cousin, as he did her sister, _70 And 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, _75 And live a free life as to wine or women, And with a peevish temper may return To 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 _80 There rest no heavier sin than what they suffer From the devices of my love—a net From which he shall escape not. Yet I fear Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze, Whose beams anatomize me nerve by nerve _85 And lay me bare, and make me blush to see My hidden thoughts.—Ah, no! A friendless girl Who clings to me, as to her only hope:— I were a fool, not less than if a panther Were panic-stricken by the antelope’s eye, _90 If she escape me.
NOTE: _75 vassal edition 1821; slave edition 1819.
[EXIT.]
SCENE 1.3: A MAGNIFICENT HALL IN THE CENCI PALACE. A BANQUET. ENTER CENCI, LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, ORSINO, CAMILLO, NOBLES.
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 _5 An 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, _10 Will 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, _15 To act the deeds that rumour pins on you. [TO HIS COMPANION.] I never saw such blithe and open cheer In 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 heart Lifts from this earth to the great Father of all A prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep, And when he rises up from dreaming it; _25 One 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 hope It is accomplished, he should then rejoice, _30 And 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 ill Must have befallen my brothers.
LUCRETIA: Fear not, child, _35 He 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! _40 I thank thee! In one night didst thou perform, By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought. My disobedient and rebellious sons Are dead!—Why, dead!—What means this change of cheer? You hear me not, I tell you they are dead; _45 And they will need no food or raiment more: The tapers that did light them the dark way Are their last cost. The Pope, I think, will not Expect I should maintain them in their coffins. Rejoice with me—my heart is wondrous glad. _50
[LUCRETIA SINKS, HALF FAINTING; BEATRICE SUPPORTS HER.]
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 _55 To witness that I speak the sober truth;— And whose most favouring Providence was shown Even in the manner of their deaths. For Rocco Was kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others, When the church fell and crushed him to a mummy, _60 The rest escaped unhurt. Cristofano Was 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. _65 I beg those friends who love me, that they mark The day a feast upon their calendars. It was the twenty-seventh of December: Ay, read the letters if you doubt my oath.
[THE ASSEMBLY APPEARS CONFUSED; SEVERAL OF THE GUESTS RISE.]
FIRST GUEST: Oh, horrible! I will depart—
SECOND GUEST: And I.—
THIRD GUEST: No, stay! _70 I 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! _75 I see ’tis only raillery by his smile.
CENCI [FILLING A BOWL OF WINE, AND LIFTING IT UP]: Oh, thou bright wine whose purple splendour leaps And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl Under the lamplight, as my spirits do, To hear the death of my accursed sons! _80 Could 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, _85 And drag them from the very throne of Heaven, Now triumphs in my triumph!—But thou art Superfluous; 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! _90 Will none among this noble company Check 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, _95 Enjoy yourselves.—Beware! For my revenge Is as the sealed commission of a king That kills, and none dare name the murderer.
[THE BANQUET IS BROKEN UP; SEVERAL OF THE GUESTS ARE DEPARTING.]
BEATRICE: I do entreat you, go not, noble guests; What, although tyranny and impious hate _100 Stand sheltered by a father’s hoary hair? What if ’tis he who clothed us in these limbs Who 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 _105 To love and shelter? Shall we therefore find No refuge in this merciless wide world? O think what deep wrongs must have blotted out First love, then reverence in a child’s prone mind, Till it thus vanquish shame and fear! O think! _110 I have borne much, and kissed the sacred hand Which crushed us to the earth, and thought its stroke Was perhaps some paternal chastisement! Have excused much, doubted; and when no doubt Remained, have sought by patience, love, and tears _115 To soften him, and when this could not be I have knelt down through the long sleepless nights And lifted up to God, the Father of all, Passionate prayers: and when these were not heard I have still borne,—until I meet you here, _120 Princes and kinsmen, at this hideous feast Given at my brothers’ deaths. Two yet remain, His wife remains and I, whom if ye save not, Ye may soon share such merriment again As fathers make over their children’s graves. _125 O 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 OF BEATRICE’S SPEECH; HE HEARS THE CONCLUSION, AND NOW ADVANCES]: I hope my good friends here Will think of their own daughters—or perhaps _130 Of their own throats—before they lend an ear To this wild girl.
BEATRICE [NOT NOTICING THE WORDS OF CENCI]: Dare no one look on me? None answer? Can one tyrant overbear The sense of many best and wisest men? Or is it that I sue not in some form _135 Of scrupulous law, that ye deny my suit? O God! That I were buried with my brothers! And that the flowers of this departed spring Were fading on my grave! And that my father Were 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 thyself Where never eye can look upon thee more! Wouldst thou have honour and obedience Who art a torturer? Father, never dream, Though thou mayst overbear this company, _150 But ill must come of ill.—Frown not on me! Haste, hide thyself, lest with avenging looks My brothers’ ghosts should hunt thee from thy seat! Cover thy face from every living eye, And start if thou but hear a human step: _155 Seek out some dark and silent corner, there, Bow thy white head before offended God, And we will kneel around, and fervently Pray that he pity both ourselves and thee.
CENCI: My friends, I do lament this insane girl _160 Has spoilt the mirth of our festivity. Good night, farewell; I will not make you longer Spectators 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! _165 Beast 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 said I would not drink this evening; but I must; _170 For, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail With thinking what I have decreed to do.— [DRINKING THE WINE.] Be thou the resolution of quick youth Within my veins, and manhood’s purpose stern, And age’s firm, cold, subtle villainy; _175 As if thou wert indeed my children’s blood Which I did thirst to drink! The charm works well; It must be done; it shall be done, I swear!
[EXIT.]
END OF ACT 1.
Act 2, Scene 1 — AN APARTMENT IN THE CENCI PALACE. ENTER LUCRETIA AND BERNARDO
LUCRETIA: Weep not, my gentle boy; he struck but me Who have borne deeper wrongs. In truth, if he Had killed me, he had done a kinder deed. O God Almighty, do Thou look upon us, We have no other friend but only Thee! _5 Yet 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 been My father, do you think that I should weep! _10
LUCRETIA: Alas! Poor boy, what else couldst thou have done?
[ENTER BEATRICE.]
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 _15 A 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, _20 Even 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 Father Has sent back your petition thus unopened. _25 [GIVING A PAPER.] And he demands at what hour ’twere secure To 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 stand Wrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation, _30 As 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 _35 After that dreadful feast? Could it be worse Than when he smiled, and cried, ‘My sons are dead!’ And every one looked in his neighbour’s face To see if others were as white as he? At the first word he spoke I felt the blood _40 Rush 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 words Checked his unnatural pride; and I could see The devil was rebuked that lives in him. _45 Until this hour thus you have ever stood Between us and your father’s moody wrath Like a protecting presence; your firm mind Has been our only refuge and defence: What can have thus subdued it? What can now _50 Have 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, _55 Yet 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 once What did your father do or say to you? He stayed not after that accursed feast _60 One 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 me Under his feet, and made the blood stream down _65 My pallid cheeks. And he has given us all Ditch-water, and the fever-stricken flesh Of buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve, And we have eaten.—He has made me look On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust _70 Of 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; _75 He said, he looked, he did;—nothing at all Beyond 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. _80 If any one despairs it should be I Who loved him once, and now must live with him Till 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; _85 Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coil Shall 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? _90 And had we any other friend but you In infancy, with gentle words and looks, To win our father not to murder us? And shall I now desert you? May the ghost Of my dead Mother plead against my soul _95 If I abandon her who filled the place She left, with more, even, than a mother’s love!
BERNARDO: And I am of my sister’s mind. Indeed I would not leave you in this wretchedness, Even though the Pope should make me free to live _100 In 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!
[ENTER CENCI, SUDDENLY.]
CENCI: What! Beatrice here! Come hither! [SHE SHRINKS BACK, AND COVERS HER FACE.] Nay, hide not your face, ’tis fair; _105 Look up! Why, yesternight you dared to look With disobedient insolence upon me, Bending a stern and an inquiring brow On what I meant; whilst I then sought to hide That 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 words Fell from my lips, and who with tottering steps Fled from your presence, as you now from mine. Stay, I command you—from this day and hour _115 Never 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! _120 Thou 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 make Me bold, her fearful.—’Tis an awful thing To touch such mischief as I now conceive: _125 So 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? _130 Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote Parricide with his alphabet? Nor Giacomo? Nor those two most unnatural sons, who stirred Enmity up against me with the Pope? Whom in one night merciful God cut off: _135 Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill. You were not here conspiring? You said nothing Of how I might be dungeoned as a madman; Or be condemned to death for some offence, And you would be the witnesses?—This failing, _140 How just it were to hire assassins, or Put 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 _145 But you to be the executioners Of 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 _150 I’ll kill you. What! It was not by your counsel That Beatrice disturbed the feast last night? You did not hope to stir some enemies Against me, and escape, and laugh to scorn What every nerve of you now trembles at? _155 You judged that men were bolder than they are; Few dare to stand between their grave and me.
LUCRETIA: Look not so dreadfully! By my salvation I knew not aught that Beatrice designed; Nor do I think she designed any thing _160 Until she heard you talk of her dead brothers.
CENCI: Blaspheming liar! You are damned for this! But I will take you where you may persuade The stones you tread on to deliver you: For men shall there be none but those who dare _165 All things—not question that which I command. On Wednesday next I shall set out: you know That savage rock, the Castle of Petrella: ’Tis safely walled, and moated round about: Its dungeons underground, and its thick towers _170 Never told tales; though they have heard and seen What might make dumb things speak.—Why do you linger? Make speediest preparation for the journey! [EXIT LUCRETIA.] The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear A busy stir of men about the streets; _175 I 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 hole Is penetrated with the insolent light. _180 Come darkness! Yet, what is the day to me? And wherefore should I wish for night, who do A deed which shall confound both night and day? ’Tis she shall grope through a bewildering mist Of horror: if there be a sun in heaven _185 She 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 all For me: I bear a darker deadlier gloom Than the earth’s shade, or interlunar air, _190 Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud, In which I walk secure and unbeheld Towards my purpose.—Would that it were done!
[EXIT.]
Act 2, Scene 2 — A CHAMBER IN THE VATICAN. ENTER CAMILLO AND GIACOMO, IN CONVERSATION
CAMILLO: There is an obsolete and doubtful law By which you might obtain a bare provision Of food and clothing—
GIACOMO: Nothing more? Alas! Bare must be the provision which strict law Awards, and aged, sullen avarice pays. _5 Why did my father not apprentice me To some mechanic trade? I should have then Been trained in no highborn necessities Which I could meet not by my daily toil. The eldest son of a rich nobleman _10 Is heir to all his incapacities; He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you, Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once From thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food, An hundred servants, and six palaces, _15 To that which nature doth indeed require?—
CAMILLO: Nay, there is reason in your plea; ’twere hard.
GIACOMO: ’Tis hard for a firm man to bear: but I Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth, Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father _20 Without a bond or witness to the deed: And children, who inherit her fine senses, The fairest creatures in this breathing world; And she and they reproach me not. Cardinal, Do you not think the Pope would interpose _25 And stretch authority beyond the law?
CAMILLO: Though your peculiar case is hard, I know The Pope will not divert the course of law. After that impious feast the other night I spoke with him, and urged him then to check _30 Your father’s cruel hand; he frowned and said, ‘Children are disobedient, and they sting Their fathers’ hearts to madness and despair, Requiting years of care with contumely. I pity the Count Cenci from my heart; _35 His outraged love perhaps awakened hate, And thus he is exasperated to ill. In the great war between the old and young I, who have white hairs and a tottering body, Will keep at least blameless neutrality.’ _40 [ENTER ORSINO.] You, my good Lord Orsino, heard those words.
ORSINO: What words?
GIACOMO: Alas, repeat them not again! There then is no redress for me, at least None but that which I may achieve myself, Since I am driven to the brink.—But, say, _45 My innocent sister and my only brother Are dying underneath my father’s eye. The memorable torturers of this land, Galeaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin, Never inflicted on their meanest slave _50 What these endure; shall they have no protection?
CAMILLO: Why, if they would petition to the Pope I see not how he could refuse it—yet He holds it of most dangerous example In aught to weaken the paternal power, _55 Being, as ’twere, the shadow of his own. I pray you now excuse me. I have business That will not bear delay.
[EXIT CAMILLO.]
GIACOMO: But you, Orsino, Have the petition: wherefore not present it?
ORSINO: I have presented it, and backed it with _60 My earnest prayers, and urgent interest; It was returned unanswered. I doubt not But that the strange and execrable deeds Alleged in it—in truth they might well baffle Any belief—have turned the Pope’s displeasure _65 Upon the accusers from the criminal: So I should guess from what Camillo said.
GIACOMO: My friend, that palace-walking devil Gold Has whispered silence to his Holiness: And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire. _70 What should we do but strike ourselves to death? For he who is our murderous persecutor Is shielded by a father’s holy name, Or I would—
[STOPS ABRUPTLY.]
ORSINO: What? Fear not to speak your thought. Words are but holy as the deeds they cover: _75 A priest who has forsworn the God he serves; A judge who makes Truth weep at his decree; A friend who should weave counsel, as I now, But as the mantle of some selfish guile; A father who is all a tyrant seems, _80 Were the profaner for his sacred name.
NOTE: _77 makes Truth edition 1821; makes the truth editions 1819, 1839.
GIACOMO: Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain Feigns often what it would not; and we trust Imagination with such fantasies As the tongue dares not fashion into words, _85 Which have no words, their horror makes them dim To the mind’s eye.—My heart denies itself To think what you demand.
ORSINO: But a friend’s bosom Is as the inmost cave of our own mind Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day, _90 And from the all-communicating air. You look what I suspected—
GIACOMO: Spare me now! I am as one lost in a midnight wood, Who dares not ask some harmless passenger The path across the wilderness, lest he, _95 As my thoughts are, should be—a murderer. I know you are my friend, and all I dare Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee. But now my heart is heavy, and would take Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care. _100 Pardon me, that I say farewell—farewell! I would that to my own suspected self I could address a word so full of peace.
ORSINO: Farewell!—Be your thoughts better or more bold. [EXIT GIACOMO.] I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo _105 To feed his hope with cold encouragement: It fortunately serves my close designs That ’tis a trick of this same family To analyse their own and other minds. Such self-anatomy shall teach the will _110 Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers, Knowing what must be thought, and may be done. Into the depth of darkest purposes: So Cenci fell into the pit; even I, Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself, _115 And made me shrink from what I cannot shun, Show a poor figure to my own esteem, To which I grow half reconciled. I’ll do As little mischief as I can; that thought Shall fee the accuser conscience. [AFTER A PAUSE.] Now what harm _120 If Cenci should be murdered?—Yet, if murdered, Wherefore by me? And what if I could take The profit, yet omit the sin and peril In such an action? Of all earthly things I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words _125 And such is Cenci: and while Cenci lives His daughter’s dowry were a secret grave If a priest wins her.—Oh, fair Beatrice! Would that I loved thee not, or loving thee, Could but despise danger and gold and all _130 That frowns between my wish and its effect. Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape... Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar, And follows me to the resort of men, And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams, _135 So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire; And if I strike my damp and dizzy head My hot palm scorches it: her very name, But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably _140 I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights Till weak imagination half possesses The self-created shadow. Yet much longer Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours: From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo _145 I must work out my own dear purposes. I see, as from a tower, the end of all: Her father dead; her brother bound to me By a dark secret, surer than the grave; Her mother scared and unexpostulating _150 From the dread manner of her wish achieved; And she!—Once more take courage, my faint heart; What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee? I have such foresight as assures success: Some unbeheld divinity doth ever, _155 When dread events are near, stir up men’s minds To black suggestions; and he prospers best, Not who becomes the instrument of ill, But who can flatter the dark spirit, that makes Its empire and its prey of other hearts _160 Till it become his slave...as I will do.
[EXIT.]
END OF ACT 2.
Act 3, Scene 1 — AN APARTMENT IN THE CENCI PALACE. LUCRETIA, TO HER ENTER BEATRICE
BEATRICE [SHE ENTERS STAGGERING AND SPEAKS WILDLY]: Reach me that handkerchief!—My brain is hurt; My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me... I see but indistinctly...
LUCRETIA: My sweet child, You have no wound; ’tis only a cold dew That starts from your dear brow.—Alas! Alas! _5 What has befallen?
BEATRICE: How comes this hair undone? Its wandering strings must be what blind me so, And yet I tied it fast.—Oh, horrible! The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls Spin round! I see a woman weeping there, _10 And standing calm and motionless, whilst I Slide giddily as the world reels...My God! The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood! The sunshine on the floor is black! The air Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe _15 In charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps A clinging, black, contaminating mist About me...’tis substantial, heavy, thick, I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues My fingers and my limbs to one another, _20 And eats into my sinews, and dissolves My flesh to a pollution, poisoning The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life! My God! I never knew what the mad felt Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt! _25 [MORE WILDLY.] No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul Which would burst forth into the wandering air! [A PAUSE.] What hideous thought was that I had even now? ’Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here _30 O’er these dull eyes...upon this weary heart! O, world! O, life! O, day! O, misery!
LUCRETIA: What ails thee, my poor child? She answers not: Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain, But not its cause; suffering has dried away _35 The source from which it sprung...
BEATRICE [FRANTICLY]: Like Parricide... Misery has killed its father: yet its father Never like mine...O, God! What thing am I?
LUCRETIA: My dearest child, what has your father done?
BEATRICE [DOUBTFULLY]: Who art thou, questioner? I have no father. _40 [ASIDE.] She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me, It is a piteous office. [TO LUCRETIA, IN A SLOW, SUBDUED VOICE.] Do you know I thought I was that wretched Beatrice Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales From hall to hall by the entangled hair; _45 At others, pens up naked in damp cells Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there, Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story So did I overact in my sick dreams, That I imagined...no, it cannot be! _50 Horrible things have been in this wide world, Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived Than ever there was found a heart to do. But never fancy imaged such a deed _55 As... [PAUSES, SUDDENLY RECOLLECTING HERSELF.] Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die With fearful expectation, that indeed Thou art not what thou seemest...Mother!
LUCRETIA: Oh! My sweet child, know you...
BEATRICE: Yet speak it not: For then if this be truth, that other too _60 Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth, Linked with each lasting circumstance of life, Never to change, never to pass away. Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace; Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice. _65 I have talked some wild words, but will no more. Mother, come near me: from this point of time, I am... [HER VOICE DIES AWAY FAINTLY.]
LUCRETIA: Alas! What has befallen thee, child? What has thy father done?
BEATRICE: What have I done? Am I not innocent? Is it my crime _70 That one with white hair, and imperious brow, Who tortured me from my forgotten years, As parents only dare, should call himself My father, yet should be!—Oh, what am I? What name, what place, what memory shall be mine? _75 What retrospects, outliving even despair?
LUCRETIA: He is a violent tyrant, surely, child: We know that death alone can make us free; His death or ours. But what can he have done Of deadlier outrage or worse injury? _80 Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me, Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine With one another.
BEATRICE: ’Tis the restless life Tortured within them. If I try to speak, _85 I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done; What, yet I know not...something which shall make The thing that I have suffered but a shadow In the dread lightning which avenges it; Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying _90 The consequence of what it cannot cure. Some such thing is to be endured or done: When I know what, I shall be still and calm, And never anything will move me more. But now!—O blood, which art my father’s blood, _95 Circling through these contaminated veins, If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth, Could wash away the crime, and punishment By which I suffer...no, that cannot be! Many might doubt there were a God above _100 Who sees and permits evil, and so die: That faith no agony shall obscure in me.
LUCRETIA: It must indeed have been some bitter wrong; Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child, Hide not in proud impenetrable grief _105 Thy sufferings from my fear.
BEATRICE: I hide them not. What are the words which you would have me speak? I, who can feign no image in my mind Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up _110 In its own formless horror: of all words, That minister to mortal intercourse, Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell My misery: if another ever knew Aught like to it, she died as I will die, _115 And left it, as I must, without a name. Death, Death! Our law and our religion call thee A punishment and a reward...Oh, which Have I deserved?
LUCRETIA: The peace of innocence; Till in your season you be called to heaven. _120 Whate’er you may have suffered, you have done No evil. Death must be the punishment Of crime, or the reward of trampling down The thorns which God has strewed upon the path Which leads to immortality.
BEATRICE: Ay, death... _125 The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God, Let me not be bewildered while I judge. If I must live day after day, and keep These limbs, the unworthy temple of Thy spirit, As a foul den from which what Thou abhorrest _130 May mock Thee, unavenged...it shall not be! Self-murder...no, that might be no escape, For Thy decree yawns like a Hell between Our will and it:—O! In this mortal world There is no vindication and no law _135 Which can adjudge and execute the doom Of that through which I suffer. [ENTER ORSINO.] [SHE APPROACHES HIM SOLEMNLY.] Welcome, Friend! I have to tell you that, since last we met, I have endured a wrong so great and strange, That neither life nor death can give me rest. _140 Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.
NOTE: _140 nor edition 1821; or editions 1819, 1839 (1st).
ORSINO: And what is he who has thus injured you?
BEATRICE: The man they call my father: a dread name.
ORSINO: It cannot be...
BEATRICE: What it can be, or not, _145 Forbear to think. It is, and it has been; Advise me how it shall not be again. I thought to die; but a religious awe Restrains me, and the dread lest death itself Might be no refuge from the consciousness _150 Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak!
ORSINO: Accuse him of the deed, and let the law Avenge thee.
BEATRICE: Oh, ice-hearted counsellor! If I could find a word that might make known The crime of my destroyer; and that done, _155 My tongue should like a knife tear out the secret Which cankers my heart’s core; ay, lay all bare, So that my unpolluted fame should be With vilest gossips a stale mouthed story; A mock, a byword, an astonishment:— _160 If this were done, which never shall be done, Think of the offender’s gold, his dreaded hate, And the strange horror of the accuser’s tale, Baffling belief, and overpowering speech; Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapped _165 In hideous hints...Oh, most assured redress!
ORSINO: You will endure it then?
BEATRICE: Endure!—Orsino, It seems your counsel is small profit. [TURNS FROM HIM, AND SPEAKS HALF TO HERSELF.] Ay, All must be suddenly resolved and done. What is this undistinguishable mist _170 Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow, Darkening each other?
ORSINO: Should the offender live? Triumph in his misdeed? and make, by use, His crime, whate’er it is, dreadful no doubt, Thine element; until thou mayest become _175 Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue Of that which thou permittest?
BEATRICE [TO HERSELF]: Mighty death! Thou double-visaged shadow! Only judge! Rightfullest arbiter!
[SHE RETIRES, ABSORBED IN THOUGHT.]
LUCRETIA: If the lightning Of God has e’er descended to avenge... _180
ORSINO: Blaspheme not! His high Providence commits Its glory on this earth, and their own wrongs Into the hands of men; if they neglect To punish crime...
LUCRETIA: But if one, like this wretch, Should mock, with gold, opinion, law, and power? _185 If there be no appeal to that which makes The guiltiest tremble? If because our wrongs, For that they are unnatural, strange and monstrous, Exceed all measure of belief? O God! If, for the very reasons which should make _190 Redress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs? And we, the victims, bear worse punishment Than that appointed for their torturer?
ORSINO: Think not But that there is redress where there is wrong, So we be bold enough to seize it.
LUCRETIA: How? _195 If there were any way to make all sure, I know not...but I think it might be good To...
ORSINO: Why, his late outrage to Beatrice; For it is such, as I but faintly guess, As makes remorse dishonour, and leaves her _200 Only one duty, how she may avenge: You, but one refuge from ills ill endured; Me, but one counsel...
LUCRETIA: For we cannot hope That aid, or retribution, or resource Will arise thence, where every other one _205 Might find them with less need.
[BEATRICE ADVANCES.]
ORSINO: Then...
BEATRICE: Peace, Orsino! And, honoured Lady, while I speak, I pray, That you put off, as garments overworn, Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear, And all the fit restraints of daily life, _210 Which have been borne from childhood, but which now Would be a mockery to my holier plea. As I have said, I have endured a wrong, Which, though it be expressionless, is such As asks atonement; both for what is past, _215 And lest I be reserved, day after day, To load with crimes an overburthened soul, And be...what ye can dream not. I have prayed To God, and I have talked with my own heart, And have unravelled my entangled will, _220 And have at length determined what is right. Art thou my friend, Orsino? False or true? Pledge thy salvation ere I speak.
ORSINO: I swear To dedicate my cunning, and my strength, My silence, and whatever else is mine, _225 To thy commands.
LUCRETIA: You think we should devise His death?
BEATRICE: And execute what is devised, And suddenly. We must be brief and bold.
ORSINO: And yet most cautious.
LUCRETIA: For the jealous laws Would punish us with death and infamy _230 For that which it became themselves to do.
BEATRICE: Be cautious as ye may, but prompt. Orsino, What are the means?
ORSINO: I know two dull, fierce outlaws, Who think man’s spirit as a worm’s, and they Would trample out, for any slight caprice, _235 The meanest or the noblest life. This mood Is marketable here in Rome. They sell What we now want.
LUCRETIA: To-morrow before dawn, Cenci will take us to that lonely rock, Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines. _240 If he arrive there...
BEATRICE: He must not arrive.
ORSINO: Will it be dark before you reach the tower?
LUCRETIA: The sun will scarce be set.
BEATRICE: But I remember Two miles on this side of the fort, the road Crosses a deep ravine; ’tis rough and narrow, _245 And winds with short turns down the precipice; And in its depth there is a mighty rock, Which has, from unimaginable years, Sustained itself with terror and with toil Over a gulf, and with the agony _250 With which it clings seems slowly coming down; Even as a wretched soul hour after hour, Clings to the mass of life; yet, clinging, leans; And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag _255 Huge as despair, as if in weariness, The melancholy mountain yawns...below, You hear but see not an impetuous torrent Raging among the caverns, and a bridge Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow, _260 With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag, Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair Is matted in one solid roof of shade By the dark ivy’s twine. At noonday here ’Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night. _265
ORSINO: Before you reach that bridge make some excuse For spurring on your mules, or loitering Until...
BEATRICE: What sound is that?
LUCRETIA: Hark! No, it cannot be a servant’s step It must be Cenci, unexpectedly _270 Returned...Make some excuse for being here.
BEATRICE [TO ORSINO AS SHE GOES OUT]: That step we hear approach must never pass The bridge of which we spoke.
[EXEUNT LUCRETIA AND BEATRICE.]
ORSINO: What shall I do? Cenci must find me here, and I must bear The imperious inquisition of his looks _275 As to what brought me hither: let me mask Mine own in some inane and vacant smile. [ENTER GIACOMO, IN A HURRIED MANNER.] How! Have you ventured hither? Know you then That Cenci is from home?
NOTE: _278 hither edition 1821; thither edition 1819.
GIACOMO: I sought him here; And now must wait till he returns.
ORSINO: Great God! _280 Weigh you the danger of this rashness?
GIACOMO: Ay! Does my destroyer know his danger? We Are now no more, as once, parent and child, But man to man; the oppressor to the oppressed; The slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe: _285 He has cast Nature off, which was his shield, And Nature casts him off, who is her shame; And I spurn both. Is it a father’s throat Which I will shake, and say, I ask not gold; I ask not happy years; nor memories _290 Of tranquil childhood; nor home-sheltered love; Though all these hast thou torn from me, and more; But only my fair fame; only one hoard Of peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate, Under the penury heaped on me by thee, _295 Or I will...God can understand and pardon, Why should I speak with man?
ORSINO: Be calm, dear friend.
GIACOMO: Well, I will calmly tell you what he did. This old Francesco Cenci, as you know, Borrowed the dowry of my wife from me, _300 And then denied the loan; and left me so In poverty, the which I sought to mend By holding a poor office in the state. It had been promised to me, and already I bought new clothing for my ragged babes, _305 And my wife smiled; and my heart knew repose. When Cenci’s intercession, as I found, Conferred this office on a wretch, whom thus He paid for vilest service. I returned With this ill news, and we sate sad together _310 Solacing our despondency with tears Of such affection and unbroken faith As temper life’s worst bitterness; when he, As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse, Mocking our poverty, and telling us _315 Such was God’s scourge for disobedient sons. And then, that I might strike him dumb with shame, I spoke of my wife’s dowry; but he coined A brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted The sum in secret riot; and he saw _320 My wife was touched, and he went smiling forth. And when I knew the impression he had made, And felt my wife insult with silent scorn My ardent truth, and look averse and cold, I went forth too: but soon returned again; _325 Yet not so soon but that my wife had taught My children her harsh thoughts, and they all cried, ‘Give us clothes, father! Give us better food! What you in one night squander were enough For months!’ I looked, and saw that home was hell. _330 And to that hell will I return no more Until mine enemy has rendered up Atonement, or, as he gave life to me I will, reversing Nature’s law...
ORSINO: Trust me, The compensation which thou seekest here _335 Will be denied.
GIACOMO: Then...Are you not my friend? Did you not hint at the alternative, Upon the brink of which you see I stand, The other day when we conversed together? My wrongs were then less. That word parricide, _340 Although I am resolved, haunts me like fear.
ORSINO: It must be fear itself, for the bare word Is hollow mockery. Mark, how wisest God Draws to one point the threads of a just doom, So sanctifying it: what you devise _345 Is, as it were, accomplished.
GIACOMO: Is he dead?
ORSINO: His grave is ready. Know that since we met Cenci has done an outrage to his daughter.
GIACOMO: What outrage?
ORSINO: That she speaks not, but you may Conceive such half conjectures as I do, _350 From her fixed paleness, and the lofty grief Of her stern brow bent on the idle air, And her severe unmodulated voice, Drowning both tenderness and dread; and last From this; that whilst her step-mother and I, _355 Bewildered in our horror, talked together With obscure hints; both self-misunderstood And darkly guessing, stumbling, in our talk, Over the truth, and yet to its revenge, She interrupted us, and with a look _360 Which told, before she spoke it, he must die:...
GIACOMO: It is enough. My doubts are well appeased; There is a higher reason for the act Than mine; there is a holier judge than me, A more unblamed avenger. Beatrice, _365 Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised A living flower, but thou hast pitied it With needless tears! Fair sister, thou in whom Men wondered how such loveliness and wisdom _370 Did not destroy each other! Is there made Ravage of thee? O, heart, I ask no more Justification! Shall I wait, Orsino, Till he return, and stab him at the door?
ORSINO: Not so; some accident might interpose _375 To rescue him from what is now most sure; And you are unprovided where to fly, How to excuse or to conceal. Nay, listen: All is contrived; success is so assured That...
[ENTER BEATRICE.]
BEATRICE: ’Tis my brother’s voice! You know me not?
GIACOMO: My sister, my lost sister! _380
BEATRICE: Lost indeed! I see Orsino has talked with you, and That you conjecture things too horrible To speak, yet far less than the truth. Now, stay not, He might return: yet kiss me; I shall know _385 That then thou hast consented to his death. Farewell, farewell! Let piety to God, Brotherly love, justice and clemency, And all things that make tender hardest hearts Make thine hard, brother. Answer not...farewell. _390
[EXEUNT SEVERALLY.]
Act 3, Scene 2 — A MEAN APARTMENT IN GIACOMO’S HOUSE. GIACOMO ALONE
GIACOMO: ’Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet. [THUNDER, AND THE SOUND OF A STORM.] What! can the everlasting elements Feel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft Of mercy-winged lightning would not fall On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep: _5 They are now living in unmeaning dreams: But I must wake, still doubting if that deed Be just which is most necessary. O, Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge _10 Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame, Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls, Still flickerest up and down, how very soon, Did I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail and be As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks _15 Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine: But that no power can fill with vital oil That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! ’tis the blood Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold: It is the form that moulded mine that sinks _20 Into the white and yellow spasms of death: It is the soul by which mine was arrayed In God’s immortal likeness which now stands Naked before Heaven’s judgement seat! [A BELL STRIKES.] One! Two! The hours crawl on; and, when my hairs are white, _25 My son will then perhaps be waiting thus, Tortured between just hate and vain remorse; Chiding the tardy messenger of news Like those which I expect. I almost wish He be not dead, although my wrongs are great; _30 Yet...’tis Orsino’s step... [ENTER ORSINO.] Speak!
ORSINO: I am come To say he has escaped.
GIACOMO: Escaped!
ORSINO: And safe Within Petrella. He passed by the spot Appointed for the deed an hour too soon.
GIACOMO: Are we the fools of such contingencies? _35 And do we waste in blind misgivings thus The hours when we should act? Then wind and thunder, Which seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter With which Heaven mocks our weakness! I henceforth Will ne’er repent of aught designed or done _40 But my repentance.
ORSINO: See, the lamp is out.
GIACOMO: If no remorse is ours when the dim air Has drank this innocent flame, why should we quail When Cenci’s life, that light by which ill spirits See the worst deeds they prompt, shall sink for ever? _45 No, I am hardened.
ORSINO: Why, what need of this? Who feared the pale intrusion of remorse In a just deed? Although our first plan failed, Doubt not but he will soon be laid to rest. But light the lamp; let us not talk i’ the dark. _50
GIACOMO [LIGHTING THE LAMP]: And yet once quenched I cannot thus relume My father’s life: do you not think his ghost Might plead that argument with God?
ORSINO: Once gone You cannot now recall your sister’s peace; Your own extinguished years of youth and hope; _55 Nor your wife’s bitter words; nor all the taunts Which, from the prosperous, weak misfortune takes; Nor your dead mother; nor...
GIACOMO: O, speak no more! I am resolved, although this very hand Must quench the life that animated it. _60
ORSINO: There is no need of that. Listen: you know Olimpio, the castellan of Petrella In old Colonna’s time; him whom your father Degraded from his post? And Marzio, That desperate wretch, whom he deprived last year _65 Of a reward of blood, well earned and due?
GIACOMO: I knew Olimpio; and they say he hated Old Cenci so, that in his silent rage His lips grew white only to see him pass. Of Marzio I know nothing.
ORSINO: Marzio’s hate _70 Matches Olimpio’s. I have sent these men, But in your name, and as at your request, To talk with Beatrice and Lucretia.
GIACOMO: Only to talk?
ORSINO: The moments which even now Pass onward to to-morrow’s midnight hour _75 May memorize their flight with death: ere then They must have talked, and may perhaps have done, And made an end...
GIACOMO: Listen! What sound is that?
ORSINO: The house-dog moans, and the beams crack: nought else.
GIACOMO: It is my wife complaining in her sleep: _80 I doubt not she is saying bitter things Of me; and all my children round her dreaming That I deny them sustenance.
ORSINO: Whilst he Who truly took it from them, and who fills Their hungry rest with bitterness, now sleeps _85 Lapped in bad pleasures, and triumphantly Mocks thee in visions of successful hate Too like the truth of day.
GIACOMO: If e’er he wakes Again, I will not trust to hireling hands...
ORSINO: Why, that were well. I must be gone; good-night. _90 When next we meet—may all be done!
NOTE: _91 may all be done! Giacomo: And all edition 1821; Giacomo: May all be done, and all edition 1819.
GIACOMO: And all Forgotten: Oh, that I had never been!
[EXEUNT.]
END OF ACT 3.
Act 4, Scene 1 — AN APARTMENT IN THE CASTLE OF PETRELLA. ENTER CENCI
CENCI: She comes not; yet I left her even now Vanquished and faint. She knows the penalty Of her delay: yet what if threats are vain? Am I not now within Petrella’s moat? Or fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome? _5 Might I not drag her by the golden hair? Stamp on her? keep her sleepless till her brain Be overworn? Tame her with chains and famine? Less would suffice. Yet so to leave undone What I most seek! No, ’tis her stubborn will _10 Which by its own consent shall stoop as low As that which drags it down. [ENTER LUCRETIA.] Thou loathed wretch! Hide thee from my abhorrence: fly, begone! Yet stay! Bid Beatrice come hither.
NOTE: _4 not now edition 1821; now not edition 1819.
LUCRETIA: Oh, Husband! I pray, for thine own wretched sake _15 Heed what thou dost. A man who walks like thee Through crimes, and through the danger of his crimes, Each hour may stumble o’er a sudden grave. And thou art old; thy hairs are hoary gray; As thou wouldst save thyself from death and hell, _20 Pity thy daughter; give her to some friend In marriage: so that she may tempt thee not To hatred, or worse thoughts, if worse there be.
CENCI: What! like her sister who has found a home To mock my hate from with prosperity? _25 Strange ruin shall destroy both her and thee And all that yet remain. My death may be Rapid, her destiny outspeeds it. Go, Bid her come hither, and before my mood Be changed, lest I should drag her by the hair. _30
LUCRETIA: She sent me to thee, husband. At thy presence She fell, as thou dost know, into a trance; And in that trance she heard a voice which said, ‘Cenci must die! Let him confess himself! Even now the accusing Angel waits to hear _35 If God, to punish his enormous crimes, Harden his dying heart!’
CENCI: Why—such things are... No doubt divine revealings may be made. ’Tis plain I have been favoured from above, For when I cursed my sons they died.—Ay...so... _40 As to the right or wrong, that’s talk...repentance... Repentance is an easy moment’s work And more depends on God than me. Well...well... I must give up the greater point, which was To poison and corrupt her soul. [A PAUSE, LUCRETIA APPROACHES ANXIOUSLY, AND THEN SHRINKS BACK AS HE SPEAKS.] One, two; _45 Ay...Rocco and Cristofano my curse Strangled: and Giacomo, I think, will find Life a worse Hell than that beyond the grave: Beatrice shall, if there be skill in hate, Die in despair, blaspheming: to Bernardo, _50 He is so innocent, I will bequeath The memory of these deeds, and make his youth The sepulchre of hope, where evil thoughts Shall grow like weeds on a neglected tomb. When all is done, out in the wide Campagna, _55 I will pile up my silver and my gold; My costly robes, paintings, and tapestries; My parchments and all records of my wealth, And make a bonfire in my joy, and leave Of my possessions nothing but my name; _60 Which shall be an inheritance to strip Its wearer bare as infamy. That done, My soul, which is a scourge, will I resign Into the hands of him who wielded it; Be it for its own punishment or theirs, _65 He will not ask it of me till the lash Be broken in its last and deepest wound; Until its hate be all inflicted. Yet, Lest death outspeed my purpose, let me make Short work and sure...
[GOING.]
LUCRETIA [STOPS HIM]: Oh, stay! It was a feint: _70 She had no vision, and she heard no voice. I said it but to awe thee.
CENCI: That is well. Vile palterer with the sacred truth of God, Be thy soul choked with that blaspheming lie! For Beatrice worse terrors are in store _75 To bend her to my will.
LUCRETIA: Oh! to what will? What cruel sufferings more than she has known Canst thou inflict?
CENCI: Andrea! Go call my daughter, And if she comes not tell her that I come. What sufferings? I will drag her, step by step, _80 Through infamies unheard of among men: She shall stand shelterless in the broad noon Of public scorn, for acts blazoned abroad, One among which shall be...What? Canst thou guess? She shall become (for what she most abhors _85 Shall have a fascination to entrap Her loathing will) to her own conscious self All she appears to others; and when dead, As she shall die unshrived and unforgiven, A rebel to her father and her God, _90 Her corpse shall be abandoned to the hounds; Her name shall be the terror of the earth; Her spirit shall approach the throne of God Plague-spotted with my curses. I will make Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin. _95
[ENTER ANDREA.]
ANDREA: The Lady Beatrice...
CENCI: Speak, pale slave! What Said she?
ANDREA: My Lord, ’twas what she looked; she said: ‘Go tell my father that I see the gulf Of Hell between us two, which he may pass, I will not.’
[EXIT ANDREA.]
CENCI: Go thou quick, Lucretia, _100 Tell her to come; yet let her understand Her coming is consent: and say, moreover, That if she come not I will curse her. [EXIT LUCRETIA.] Ha! With what but with a father’s curse doth God Panic-strike armed victory, and make pale _105 Cities in their prosperity? The world’s Father Must grant a parent’s prayer against his child, Be he who asks even what men call me. Will not the deaths of her rebellious brothers Awe her before I speak? For I on them _110 Did imprecate quick ruin, and it came. [ENTER LUCRETIA.] Well; what? Speak, wretch!
LUCRETIA: She said, ‘I cannot come; Go tell my father that I see a torrent Of his own blood raging between us.’
CENCI [KNEELING]: God, Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh, _115 Which Thou hast made my daughter; this my blood, This particle of my divided being; Or rather, this my bane and my disease, Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant _120 To aught good use; if her bright loveliness Was kindled to illumine this dark world; If nursed by Thy selectest dew of love Such virtues blossom in her as should make The peace of life, I pray Thee for my sake, _125 As Thou the common God and Father art Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom! Earth, in the name of God, let her food be Poison, until she be encrusted round With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head _130 The blistering drops of the Maremma’s dew, Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs To loathed lameness! All-beholding sun, Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes _135 With thine own blinding beams!
LUCRETIA: Peace! Peace! For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words. When high God grants He punishes such prayers.
CENCI [LEAPING UP, AND THROWING HIS RIGHT HAND TOWARDS HEAVEN]: He does his will, I mine! This in addition, That if she have a child...
LUCRETIA: Horrible thought! _140
CENCI: That if she ever have a child; and thou, Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God, That thou be fruitful in her, and increase And multiply, fulfilling his command, And my deep imprecation! May it be _145 A hideous likeness of herself, that as From a distorting mirror, she may see Her image mixed with what she most abhors, Smiling upon her from her nursing breast. And that the child may from its infancy _150 Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed, Turning her mother’s love to misery: And that both she and it may live until It shall repay her care and pain with hate, Or what may else be more unnatural. _155 So he may hunt her through the clamorous scoffs Of the loud world to a dishonoured grave. Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come, Before my words are chronicled in Heaven. [EXIT LUCRETIA.] I do not feel as if I were a man, _160 But like a fiend appointed to chastise The offences of some unremembered world. My blood is running up and down my veins; A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle: I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe; _165 My heart is beating with an expectation Of horrid joy. [ENTER LUCRETIA.] What? Speak!
LUCRETIA: She bids thee curse; And if thy curses, as they cannot do, Could kill her soul...
CENCI: She would not come. ’Tis well, I can do both; first take what I demand, _170 And then extort concession. To thy chamber! Fly ere I spurn thee; and beware this night That thou cross not my footsteps. It were safer To come between the tiger and his prey. [EXIT LUCRETIA.] It must be late; mine eyes grow weary dim _175 With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep. Conscience! Oh, thou most insolent of lies! They say that sleep, that healing dew of Heaven, Steeps not in balm the foldings of the brain Which thinks thee an impostor. I will go _180 First to belie thee with an hour of rest, Which will be deep and calm, I feel: and then... O, multitudinous Hell, the fiends will shake Thine arches with the laughter of their joy! There shall be lamentation heard in Heaven _185 As o’er an angel fallen; and upon Earth All good shall droop and sicken, and ill things Shall with a spirit of unnatural life, Stir and be quickened...even as I am now.
[EXIT.]
Act 4, Scene 2 — BEFORE THE CASTLE OF PETRELLA. ENTER BEATRICE AND LUCRETIA ABOVE ON THE RAMPARTS
BEATRICE: They come not yet.
LUCRETIA: ’Tis scarce midnight.
BEATRICE: How slow Behind the course of thought, even sick with speed, Lags leaden-footed time!
LUCRETIA: The minutes pass... If he should wake before the deed is done?
BEATRICE: O, mother! He must never wake again. _5 What thou hast said persuades me that our act Will but dislodge a spirit of deep hell Out of a human form.
LUCRETIA: ’Tis true he spoke Of death and judgement with strange confidence For one so wicked; as a man believing _10 In God, yet recking not of good or ill. And yet to die without confession!...
BEATRICE: Oh! Believe that Heaven is merciful and just, And will not add our dread necessity To the amount of his offences.
[ENTER OLIMPIO AND MARZIO BELOW.]
LUCRETIA: See, _15 They come.
BEATRICE: All mortal things must hasten thus To their dark end. Let us go down.
[EXEUNT LUCRETIA AND BEATRICE FROM ABOVE.]
OLIMPIO: How feel you to this work?
MARZIO: As one who thinks A thousand crowns excellent market price For an old murderer’s life. Your cheeks are pale. _20
OLIMPIO: It is the white reflection of your own, Which you call pale.
MARZIO: Is that their natural hue?
OLIMPIO: Or ’tis my hate and the deferred desire To wreak it, which extinguishes their blood.
MARZIO: You are inclined then to this business?
OLIMPIO: Ay, _25 If one should bribe me with a thousand crowns To kill a serpent which had stung my child, I could not be more willing. [ENTER BEATRICE AND LUCRETIA BELOW.] Noble ladies!
BEATRICE: Are ye resolved?
OLIMPIO: Is he asleep?
MARZIO: Is all Quiet?
LUCRETIA: I mixed an opiate with his drink: _30 He sleeps so soundly...
BEATRICE: That his death will be But as a change of sin-chastising dreams, A dark continuance of the Hell within him, Which God extinguish! But ye are resolved? Ye know it is a high and holy deed? _35
OLIMPIO: We are resolved.
MARZIO: As to the how this act Be warranted, it rests with you.
BEATRICE: Well, follow!
OLIMPIO: Hush! Hark! What noise is that?
MARZIO: Ha! some one comes!
BEATRICE: Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest Your baby hearts. It is the iron gate, _40 Which ye left open, swinging to the wind, That enters whistling as in scorn. Come, follow! And be your steps like mine, light, quick and bold.
[EXEUNT.]