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SCENE II.--_The Doge's Apartment_.
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron · about 20 minutes
SCENE II.--The Doge's Apartment.
_The_ DOGE _as Prisoner, and the_ DUCHESS _attending him_.
_Doge_. Now, that the priest is gone, 'twere useless all
To linger out the miserable minutes;
But one pang more, the pang of parting from thee,
And I will leave the few last grains of sand,
Which yet remain of the accorded hour,
Still falling--I have done with Time.
_Ang_. Alas!
And I have been the cause, the unconscious cause;
And for this funeral marriage, this black union,
Which thou, compliant with my father's wish,
Didst promise at _his_ death, thou hast sealed thine own. 10
_Doge_. Not so: there was that in my spirit ever
Which shaped out for itself some great reverse;
The marvel is, it came not until now--
And yet it was foretold me.
_Ang_. How foretold you?
_Doge_. Long years ago--so long, they are a doubt[466]
In memory, and yet they live in annals:
When I was in my youth, and served the Senate
And Signory as Podesta and Captain
Of the town of Treviso, on a day
Of festival, the sluggish Bishop who 20
Conveyed the Host aroused my rash young anger,
By strange delay, and arrogant reply
To my reproof: I raised my hand and smote him,
Until he reeled beneath his holy burthen;[fp]
And as he rose from earth again, he raised
His tremulous hands in pious wrath towards Heaven.
Thence pointing to the Host, which had fallen from him,
He turned to me, and said, "The Hour will come
When he thou hast o'erthrown shall overthrow thee:
The Glory shall depart from out thy house, 30
The Wisdom shall be shaken from thy soul,
And in thy best maturity of Mind
A madness of the heart shall seize upon thee;[fq]
Passion shall tear thee when all passions cease
In other men, or mellow into virtues;
And Majesty which decks all other heads,
Shall crown to leave thee headless; honours shall
But prove to thee the heralds of Destruction,
And hoary hairs of Shame, and both of Death,
But not such death as fits an agéd man."40
Thus saying, he passed on.--That Hour is come.
_Ang_. And with this warning couldst thou not have striven
To avert the fatal moment, and atone,
By penitence, for that which thou hadst done?
_Doge_. I own the words went to my heart, so much
That I remembered them amid the maze
Of Life, as if they formed a spectral voice,
Which shook me in a supernatural dream;
And I repented; but 'twas not for me
To pull in resolution:[467] what must be 50
I could not change, and would not fear.--Nay more,
Thou can'st not have forgot, what all remember,
That on my day of landing here as Doge,[468]
On my return from Rome, a mist of such
Unwonted density went on before
The Bucentaur, like the columnar cloud
Which ushered Israel out of Egypt, till
The pilot was misled, and disembarked us
Between the Pillars of Saint Mark's, where 'tis
The custom of the state to put to death 60
Its criminals, instead of touching at
The Riva della Paglia, as the wont is,--
So that all Venice shuddered at the omen.
_Ang_. Ah! little boots it now to recollect
Such things.
_Doge_. And yet I find a comfort in
The thought, that these things are the work of Fate;
For I would rather yield to Gods than men,
Or cling to any creed of destiny,
Rather than deem these mortals, most of whom[fr]
I know to be as worthless as the dust, 70
And weak as worthless, more than instruments
Of an o'er-ruling Power; they in themselves
Were all incapable--they could not be
Vistors of him who oft had conquered for them.
_Ang_. Employ the minutes left in aspirations
Of a more healing nature, and in peace
Even with these wretches take thy flight to Heaven.
_Doge_. I _am_ at peace: the peace of certainty
That a sure Hour will come, when their sons' sons,
And this proud city, and these azure waters, 80
And all which makes them eminent and bright,
Shall be a desolation and a curse,
A hissing and a scoff unto the nations,
A Carthage, and a Tyre, an Ocean Babel.
_Ang_. Speak not thus now: the surge of Passion still
Sweeps o'er thee to the last; thou dost deceive
Thyself, and canst not injure them--be calmer.
_Doge_. I stand within Eternity, and see
Into Eternity, and I behold--
Aye, palpable as I see thy sweet face 90
For the last time--the days which I denounce
Unto all time against these wave-girt walls,
And they who are indwellers.
_Guard_ (_coming forward_). Doge of Venice,
The Ten are in attendance on your Highness.
_Doge_. Then farewell, Angiolina!--one embrace--
Forgive the old man who hath been to thee
A fond but fatal husband--love my memory--
I would not ask so much for me still living,
But thou canst judge of me more kindly now,
Seeing my evil feelings are at rest. 100
Besides, of all the fruit of these long years,
Glory, and Wealth, and Power, and Fame, and Name,
Which generally leave some flowers to bloom
Even o'er the grave, I have nothing left, not even
A little love, or friendship, or esteem,
No, not enough to extract an epitaph
From ostentatious kinsmen; in one hour
I have uprooted all my former life,
And outlived everything, except thy heart,
The pure, the good, the gentle, which will oft 110
With unimpaired but not a clamorous grief[fs]
Still keep----Thou turn'st so pale!--Alas! she faints,
She has no breath, no pulse!--Guards! lend your aid--
I cannot leave her thus, and yet 'tis better,
Since every lifeless moment spares a pang.
When she shakes off this temporary death,
I shall be with the Eternal.--Call her women--
One look!--how cold her hand!--as cold as mine
Shall be ere she recovers.--Gently tend her,
And take my last thanks--I am ready now. 120
[_The Attendants of_ ANGIOLINA _enter, and surround
their Mistress, who has fainted.--Exeunt the_ DOGE,
_Guards, etc., etc._
SCENE III.--_The Court of the Ducal Palace; the outer gates
are shut against the people.--The_ DOGE _enters in his ducal
robes, in procession with the_ COUNCIL OF TEN _and other Patricians,
attended by the Guards, till they arrive at the top of the
"Giants' Staircase[469] (where the Doges took the oaths); the
the Executioner is stationed there with his sword.--On arriving, a_
CHIEF OF THE TEN _takes off the ducal cap from the Doge's head_.
_Doge_. So now the Doge is nothing, and at last
I am again Marino Faliero:
'Tis well to be so, though but for a moment,[ft]
Here was I crowned, and here, bear witness, Heaven!
With how much more contentment I resign
That shining mockery, the ducal bauble,
Than I received the fatal ornament.
_One of the Ten_. Thou tremblest, Faliero!
_Doge_. 'Tis with age, then.[470]
_Ben_. Faliero! hast thou aught further to commend,
Compatible with justice, to the Senate? 10
_Doge_. I would commend my nephew to their mercy,
My consort to their justice; for methinks
My death, and such a death, might settle all
Between the State and me.
_Ben_. They shall be cared for;
Even notwithstanding thine unheard-of crime.
_Doge_. Unheard of! aye, there's not a history
But shows a thousand crowned conspirators
_Against_ the people; but to set them free,
One Sovereign only died, and one is dying.
_Ben_. And who were they who fell in such a cause? 20
_Doge_. The King of Sparta, and the Doge of Venice--
Agis and Faliero!
_Ben_. Hast thou more
To utter or to do?
_Doge_. May I speak?
_Ben_. Thou may'st;
But recollect the people are without,
Beyond the compass of the human voice.
_Doge_. I speak to Time and to Eternity,
Of which I grow a portion, not to man.
Ye Elements! in which to be resolved
I hasten, let my voice be as a Spirit
Upon you! Ye blue waves! which bore my banner. 30
Ye winds! which fluttered o'er as if you loved it,
And filled my swelling sails as they were wafted
To many a triumph! Thou, my native earth,
Which I have bled for! and thou, foreign earth,
Which drank this willing blood from many a wound!
Ye stones, in which my gore will not sink, but
Reek up to Heaven! Ye skies, which will receive it!
Thou Sun! which shinest on these things, and Thou!
Who kindlest and who quenchest suns!--Attest![fu]
I am not innocent--but are these guiltless? 40
I perish, but not unavenged; far ages
Float up from the abyss of Time to be,
And show these eyes, before they close, the doom
Of this proud City, and I leave my curse
On her and hers for ever!----Yes, the hours
Are silently engendering of the day,
When she, who built 'gainst Attila a bulwark,
Shall yield, and bloodlessly and basely yield,
Unto a bastard Attila,[471] without
Shedding so much blood in her last defence, 50
As these old veins, oft drained in shielding her,
Shall pour in sacrifice.--She shall be bought
And sold, and be an appanage to those
Who shall despise her![472]--She shall stoop to be
A province for an Empire, petty town
In lieu of Capital, with slaves for senates,
Beggars for nobles, panders for a people![fv]
Then when the Hebrew's in thy palaces,[473]
The Hun in thy high places, and the Greek
Walks o'er thy mart, and smiles on it for his; 60
When thy patricians beg their bitter bread
In narrow streets, and in their shameful need
Make their nobility a plea for pity;
Then, when the few who still retain a wreck
Of their great fathers' heritage shall fawn
Round a barbarian Vice of Kings' Vice-gerent,[474]
Even in the Palace where they swayed as Sovereigns,
Even in the Palace where they slew their Sovereign,
Proud of some name they have disgraced, or sprung
From an adulteress boastful of her guilt 70
With some large gondolier or foreign soldier,
Shall bear about their bastardy in triumph
To the third spurious generation;--when
Thy sons are in the lowest scale of being,
Slaves turned o'er to the vanquished by the victors,
Despised by cowards for greater cowardice,
And scorned even by the vicious for such vices
As in the monstrous grasp of their conception
Defy all codes to image or to name them;
Then, when of Cyprus, now thy subject kingdom, 80
All thine inheritance shall be her shame
Entailed on thy less virtuous daughters, grown
A wider proverb for worse prostitution;--
When all the ills of conquered states shall cling thee,
Vice without splendour, Sin without relief[fw][475]
Even from the gloss of Love to smooth it o'er,
But in its stead, coarse lusts of habitude,[476]
Prurient yet passionless, cold studied lewdness,
Depraving Nature's frailty to an art;--
When these and more are heavy on thee, when 90
Smiles without mirth, and pastimes without Pleasure,
Youth without Honour, Age without respect,
Meanness and Weakness, and a sense of woe
'Gainst which thou wilt not strive, and dar'st not murmur,[477]
Have made thee last and worst of peopled deserts,
Then, in the last gasp of thine agony,
Amidst thy many murders, think of _mine!_
Thou den of drunkards with the blood of Princes![478]
Gehenna of the waters! thou Sea-Sodom![fx][479]
Thus I devote thee to the Infernal Gods! 100
Thee and thy serpent seed!
[_Here the_ DOGE _turns and addresses the Executioner._
Slave, do thine office!
Strike as I struck the foe! Strike as I would
Have struck those tyrants! Strike deep as my curse!
Strike--and but once!
[_The_ DOGE _throws himself upon his knees, and as
the Executioner raises his sword the scene closes._
SCENE IV.--_The Piazza and Piazzetta of St. Mark's.--
The people in crowds gathered round the grated gates
of the Ducal Palace, which are shut._
_First Citizen_. I have gained the Gate, and can discern the Ten,
Robed in their gowns of state, ranged round the Doge.
_Second Cit_. I cannot reach thee with mine utmost effort.
How is it? let us hear at least, since sight
Is thus prohibited unto the people,
Except the occupiers of those bars.
_First Cit_. One has approached the Doge, and now they strip
The ducal bonnet from his head--and now
He raises his keen eyes to Heaven; I see
Them glitter, and his lips move--Hush! hush!--no, 10
'Twas but a murmur--Curse upon the distance!
His words are inarticulate, but the voice
Swells up like muttered thunder; would we could
But gather a sole sentence!
_Second Cit_. Hush! we perhaps may catch the sound.
_First Cit_. 'Tis vain.
I cannot hear him.--How his hoary hair
Streams on the wind like foam upon the wave!
Now--now--he kneels--and now they form a circle
Round him, and all is hidden--but I see
The lifted sword in air----Ah! hark! it falls! 20
[_The people murmur._
_Third Cit_. Then they have murdered him who would have freed us.
_Fourth Cit_. He was a kind man to the commons ever.
_Fifth Cit_. Wisely they did to keep their portals barred.
Would we had known the work they were preparing
Ere we were summoned here--we would have brought
Weapons, and forced them!
_Sixth Cit_. Are you sure he's dead?
_First Cit_. I saw the sword fall--Lo! what have we here?
_Enter on the Balcony of the Palace which fronts St. Mark's
Place a_ CHIEF OF THE TEN,[480] _with a bloody sword.
He waves it thrice before the People, and exclaims,_
"Justice hath dealt upon the mighty Traitor!"
[_The gates are opened; the populace rush in towards the
The foremost of them exclaims to those behind,_
"The gory head rolls down the Giants' Steps!"[fy][481]
[_The curtain falls_.[482]
FOOTNOTES:
[359] {331}[Marin Faliero was not in command of the land forces at the siege of Zara in 1346. According to contemporary documents, he held a naval command under Civran, who was in charge of the fleet. Byron was misled by an error in Morelli's Italian version of the Chronica iadratina seu historia obsidionis Jaderæ, p. xi. (See Marino faliero avanti il Dogado, by Vittorio Lazzarino, published in Nuovo Archivio Veneto, 1893, vol. v. pt. i. p. 132, note 4.)]
[360] [For the siege of Alesia (Alise in Côte d'Or), which resulted in the defeat of the Gauls and the surrender of Vercingetorix, see De Bella Gallico, vii. 68-90. Belgrade fell to Prince Eugene, August 18, 1717.]
[361] {332}[If this event ever took place, it must have been in 1346, when the future Doge was between sixty and seventy years of age. The story appears for the first time in the chronicle of Bartolomeo Zuccato, notajo e cancelliere of the Comune di Treviso, which belongs to the first half of the sixteenth century. The Venetian chroniclers who were Faliero's contemporaries, and Anonimo Torriano, a Trevisan, who wrote before Zuccato, are silent. See Marino Faliero, La Congiura, by Vittorio Lazzarino.--Nuovo Archivio Veneto, 1897, vol. xiii. pt. i. p. 29.]
[362] ["Square talked in a very different strain.... In pronouncing these [sentences from the Tusculan Questions, etc.] he was one day so eager that he unfortunately bit his tongue ... this accident gave Thwackum, who was present, and who held all such doctrines to be heathenish and atheistical, an opportunity to clap a judgment on his back."--The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Bk. V. chap. ii. 1768, i. 234. See, too, Letter to Murray, November 23, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 142; Life, p. 570.]
[363] [[Principj di storia civile della Repubblica di Venezia. Scritti da Vettor Sandi, 1755, Part II. tom. i. pp. 127, 128.]
[364] [Storia della Republica Veneziana. Scritta da Andrea Navagiero, apud Muratori, Italic. Rerum, Scriptores, 1733, xxiii. p. 924, sq.]
[365] [Istoria dell' assedio e della Ricupera di Zara, Fatta da' Veneziani nell' anno 1346. Scritta da auctore contemporaneo, pp. i.-xxxviii.]
[366] {333}[Michele Steno was not, as Sanudo and others state, one of the Capi of the Quarantia in 1355, but twenty years later, in 1375. When Faliero was elected to the Dogeship, Steno was a youth of twenty, and a man under thirty years of age was not eligible for the Quarantia.--La Congiura, etc., p. 64.]
[367] [History does not bear out the tradition of her youth. Aluica Gradenigo was born in the first decade of the fourteenth century, and became Dogaressa when she was more than forty-five years of age.--La Congiura, p. 69.]
[368] [See A View of the Society and Manners in Italy, by John Moore, M.D., 1781, i. 144-152. The "stale jest" is thus worded: "This lady imagined she had been affronted by a young Venetian nobleman at a public ball, and she complained bitterly ... to her husband. The old Doge, who had all the desire imaginable to please his wife, determined, in this matter, at least, to give her ample satisfaction."]
[369] {334}[For Frederick's verse, "Evitez de Bernis la stérile abondance," see La Bibliographie Universelle, art. "Bernis"; and for his jest, "Je ne la connais pas," see History of Frederick the Great, by Thomas Carlyle, 1898, vi. 14.]
[370] [For the story of the abduction of Dervorgilla, wife of Tiernan O'Ruarc, by Dermot Mac-Murchad, King of Leinster, in 1153, see Moore's History of Ireland, 1837, ii. 200.]
[371] {335}[Istoria della Repubblica di Venezia, del Sig. Abate Laugier, Tradotta del Francese. Venice, 1778, iv. 30.]
[372] {336}[The marble staircase on which Faliero took the ducal oath, and on which he was afterwards beheaded, led into the courtyard of the palace. It was erected by a decree of the Senate in 1340, and was pulled down to make room for Rizzo's façade, which was erected in 1484. The "Scala dei Giganti" (built by Antonio Rizzo, circ. 1483) does not occupy the site of the older staircase.]
[373] [On the north side of the Campo, in front of the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (better known as San Zanipolo), stands the Scuola di San Marco. Attached to the lower hall of the Scuola is the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pace, in which the sarcophagus containing the bones of Marino Faliero was discovered in 1815.]
[374] [In the Campo in front of the church is the equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, designed by Andrea Veroccio, and cast in 1496 by Alessandro Leopardi.--Handbook: Northern Italy, p. 374.]
[375] {337}[See Poetical Works, 1898, i. 317, note 1.]
[376] [See Letters, 1898, ii. 79, note 3.]
[ct] It is like being at the whole process of a woman's toilet--it disenchants.--[MS. M.]
[cu] Any man of common independence.--[MS. M. erased.]
[377] {338}While I was in the sub-committee of Drury Lane Theatre, I can vouch for my colleagues, and I hope for myself, that we did our best to bring back the legitimate drama. I tried what I could to get De Montford revived, but in vain, and equally in vain in favour of Sotheby's Ivan, which was thought an acting play; and I endeavoured also to wake Mr. Coleridge to write us a tragedy[A]. Those who are not in the secret will hardly believe that the School for Scandal is the play which has brought the least money, averaging the number of times it has been acted since its production; so Manager Dibdin assured me. Of what has occurred since Maturin's Bertram I am not aware[B]; so that I may be traducing, through ignorance, some excellent new writers; if so, I beg their pardon. I have been absent from England nearly five years, and, till last year, I never read an English newspaper since my departure, and am now only aware of theatrical matters through the medium of the Parisian Gazette of Galignani, and only for the last twelve months. Let me, then, deprecate all offence to tragic or comic writers, to whom I wish well, and of whom I know nothing. The long complaints of the actual state of the drama arise, however, from no fault of the performers. I can conceive nothing better than Kemble, Cooke, and Kean, in their very different manners, or than Elliston in Gentleman's comedy, and in some parts of tragedy. Miss O'Neill[C] I never saw, having made and kept a determination to see nothing which should divide or disturb my recollection of Siddons. Siddons and Kemble were the ideal of tragic action; I never saw anything at all resembling them, even in person; for this reason, we shall never see again Coriolanus or Macbeth. When Kean is blamed for want of dignity, we should remember that it is a grace, not an art, and not to be attained by study. In all, not super-natural parts, he is perfect; even his very defects belong, or seem to belong, to the parts themselves, and appear truer to nature. But of Kemble we may say, with reference to his acting, what the Cardinal de Retz said of the Marquis of Montrose, "that he was the only man he ever saw who reminded him of the heroes of Plutarch."[D]
[A] [See letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, March 31, 1815, Letters, 1899, iii. 190; letter to Moore, October 28, 1815, and note 1 (with quotation from unpublished letter of Coleridge), and passages from Byron's Detached Thoughts (1821) ... ibid., pp. 230, 233-238.]
[B] [Maturin's Bertram was played for the first time at Drury Lane, May 9, 1816. (See Detached Thoughts (1821), Letters, 1899, iii. 233, and letter to Murray, October 12, 1817, Letters, 1900, iv. 171.)]
[C] [Elizabeth O'Neill (1791-1872), afterwards Lady Becher, made her début in 1814, and retired from the stage in 1819. Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) made her final appearance on the stage June 9, 1818, and her brother John Philip Kemble (1757-1823) appeared for the last time in Coriolanus, June 23, 1817. Of the other actors mentioned in this note, George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812) had long been dead; Edmund Kean (1787-1833) had just returned from a successful tour in the United States; and Robert William Elliston (1774-1831) (vide ante, p. 328) had, not long before (1819), become lessee of Drury Lane Theatre.]
[D]["Le comte de Montross, Écossais et chef de la maison de Graham, le seul homme du monde qui m'ait jamais rappelé l'idée de certains héros que l'on ne voit plus que dans les vies de Plutarque, avail soutenu le parti du roi d'Angleterre dans son pays, avec une grandeur d'àme qui rien avait point de pareille en ce siècle."--Mémoires du Cardinal de Retz, 1820, ii. 88.]
[378] {339}[This appreciation of the Mysterious Mother, which he seems to have read in Lord Dover's preface to Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann, provoked Coleridge to an angry remonstrance. "I venture to remark, first, that I do not believe that Lord Byron spoke sincerely; for I suspect that he made a tacit exception of himself at least.... Thirdly, that the Mysterious Mother is the most disgusting, vile, detestable composition that ever came from the hand of man. No one with a spark of true manliness, of which Horace Walpole had none, could have written it."--Table Talk, March 20, 1834. Croker took a very different view, and maintained "that the good old English blank verse, the force of character expressed in the wretched mother ... argue a strength of conception, and vigour of expression capable of great things," etc. Over and above the reasonable hope and expectation that this provocative eulogy of Walpole's play would annoy the "Cockneys" and the "Lakers," Byron was no doubt influenced in its favour by the audacity of the plot, which not only put septentrional prejudices at defiance, but was an instance in point that love ought not "to make a tragic subject unless it is love furious, criminal, and hopeless" (Letter to Murray, January 4, 1821). He would, too, be deeply and genuinely moved by such verse as this--
"Consult a holy man! inquire of him!
--Good father, wherefore? what should I inquire?
Must I be taught of him that guilt is woe?
That innocence alone is happiness--
That martyrdom itself shall leave the villain
The villain that it found him? Must I learn
That minutes stamped with crime are past recall?
That joys are momentary; and remorse
Eternal?...
Nor could one risen from the dead proclaim
This truth in deeper sounds to my conviction;
We want no preacher to distinguish vice
From virtue. At our birth the God revealed
All conscience needs to know. No codicil
To duty's rubric here and there was placed
In some Saint's casual custody."