The Cenci
A Tragedy in Five Acts
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The following script was adapted from Shelley's original by Christopher Goulding for production by the People's Theatre in May 2001. If you wish to use this adaptation in a production please feel free to do so. However, it would be nice if you acknowledged the People's Theatre and Christopher Goulding part in the production of this adaptation, and also let us know you are using this version of the script.
Thank you,
Martin Collins.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
|
COUNT FRANCESCO CENCI.
|
|
|
LUCRETIA,
|
Wife of CENCI and Stepmother of his children.
|
|
BEATRICE,
|
his Daughter.
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GIACOMO,
|
His son.
|
|
BERNARDO,
|
His Sons.
|
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CARDINAL CAMILLO.
| His confessor.
|
|
ORSINO,
|
A prelate.
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SAVELLA,
|
The Pope's Legate.
|
|
OLIMPIO,
|
An assassin.
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MARZIO,
|
An assassin.
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ANDREA,
|
Servant to CENCI.
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SCENE
lies principally in Rome, but changes during the fourth Act to Pretrella, a
castle among the Apulian apennines.
TIME.
During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.
ACT I; SCENE I
An Apartment in the Cenci Palace.
COUNT CENCI
is discovered on stage
CARDINAL CAMILLO
enters.
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
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
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!
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!
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!
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
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 honorably live
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
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.
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
Watch meteors, but it vanished not; I marked
Your desperate and remorseless manhood; now
Do I behold you in dishonored age
Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes.
Yet I have ever hoped you would amend,
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.
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.
CAMILLO
Thou execrable man, beware!
CENCI
nbsp; 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,
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,
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.
But I delight in nothing else. I love
The sight of agony, and I have no remorse and little fear,
Which are, I think, the checks of other men.
This mood has grown upon me, until now
Any design my captious fancy makes
The picture of its wish
Is as my natural food and rest debarred
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.
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
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,--
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--
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,
Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear
For hourly pain.
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.
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.
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 cursèd sons,
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
If dead and damned. Then, as to Beatrice--
O thou most silent air, that shalt not hear
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!
Enter
ANDREA
ANDREA
nbsp; My
Lord?
CENCI
Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber
This evening:--no, at midnight and alone.
Exeunt.
Return to index of scenes
ACT 1; SCENE II
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 passed
Since, on an April midnight, underneath
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.
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;
Nor will I leave this home of misery.
Alas, Orsino! All the love that once
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 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?
I have a weight of melancholy thoughts,
And they forebode,--but what can they forebode
Worse than I now endure?
ORSINO
All will be well.
Is the petition yet prepared? You know
My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice;
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,
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
His inward hate. 'T is 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,
And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there,
And all the chief nobility of Rome.
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
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,
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.
Daughters and wives call this foul tyranny.
I shall be well content if on my conscience
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,
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, If she escape me.
Exit.
Return to index of scenes
ACT 1; SCENE III
A magnificent Hall in the Cenci Palace. A Banquet. Enter
CENCI, LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, ORSINO, CAMILLO, GIACOMO, BERNARDO & SAVELLA.
CENCI
Welcome, my friends and kinsmen; welcome ye,
Princes and Cardinals, pillars of the church,
Whose presence honors our festivity.
I have too long lived like an anchorite;
An evil word is gone abroad of me;
But I do hope that you, my noble friends,
When you have shared the entertainment here,
Will think me flesh and blood as well as you;
Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so,
But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful.
GIACOMO
In truth, my Lord, you seem too light of heart,
Too sprightly and companionable a man,
To act the deeds that rumor pins on you.
BERNARDO
Some most desired event,
In which we all demand a common joy,
Has brought us hither; let us hear it, Count.
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 - one supplication, one desire, one hope,
That he would grant a wish for his two sons,
And suddenly beyond his dearest hope
It is accomplished, he should then rejoice,
And call his friends and kinsmen to a feast.
BEATRICE
(
to LUCRETIA
)
Great God! How horrible! some dreadful ill
Must have befallen my brothers.
LUCRETIA
Fear not, child, 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!
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;
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.
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
To witness that I speak the sober truth;
And whose most favoring 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;
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.
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.
GIACOMO
Oh, horrible! I will depart.
BERNARDO
And I.
ANDREA
No, stay!
I do believe it is some jest; though, faith!
'T is mocking us somewhat too solemnly.
I think his son has married the Infanta,
Or found a mine of gold in El Dorado.
'T is but to season some such news; stay, stay!
I see 't is only raillery by his smile.
CENCI
(
filling a bowl of wine, and lifting it up
)
O thou bright wine, whose purple splendor leaps
And bubbles gayly in this golden bowl
Under the lamp-light, as my spirits do,
To hear the death of my accursèd sons!
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,
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.
SAVELLA
Thou wretch!
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.
SAVELLA
Silence him!
CENCI
(
addressing those who make to leave with a threatening gesture
)
Who moves? Who speaks?
'T is nothing,
Enjoy yourselves.--Beware! for my revenge
Is as the sealed commission of a king,
That kills, and none dare name the murderer.
Guests make to depart in disgust.
BEATRICE
I do entreat you, go not, noble guests;
Although tyranny and impious hate
Stand sheltered by a father's hoary hair?
Shall we therefore find
No refuge in this merciless wide world?
I have borne much, and kissed the sacred hand
Which crushed us to the earth.
Have excused much, doubted; and have sought by patience, love and tears
To soften him; and when this could not be,
I have knelt down through the long sleepless nights,
And lifted up to God, passionate prayers;
And when these were not heard,
I have still borne,--until I meet you here,
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.
Cardinal, thou art the Pope's chamberlain;
Camillo, thou art chief justiciary;
Take us away!
CENCI
I
hope my good friends here
Will think of their own daughters--or perhaps
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? Oh, God! that I were buried with my brothers!
And that my father were celebrating now one feast for all!
CAMILLO
A bitter wish for one so young and gentle.
Can we do nothing?--
SAVELLA
Nothing that I see. Count Cenci were a dangerous
enemy;
Yet I would second any one.
CENCI
Retire to your chamber, insolent girl!
BEATRICE
Retire thou, impious man! Ay, hide thyself
Where never eye can look upon thee more!
Wouldst thou have honor and obedience,
Who art a torturer? Father, never dream,
Though thou mayst overbear this company,
But ill must come of ill.
CENCI
My friends, I do lament this insane girl
Has spoiled 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, BEATRICE and ANDREA.
My brain is swimming round. Give me a bowl of wine!
(
To
BEATRICE
)
Thou
painted viper!
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;
For, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail
With thinking what I have decreed to do.
Exit ANDREA
(
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;
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.
Return to index of scenes
ACT II; SCENE I
An Apartment in the Cenci Palace. LUCRETIA and BERNARDO are discovered.
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!
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?
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;
'T is nearer now; his hand is on the door;
Mother, if I to thee have ever been
A duteous child, now save me!
Enter
a Servant
Almighty God, how merciful thou art!
'T is but Orsino's servant.--Well, what news?
ANDREA
My master bids me say the Holy Father
Has sent back your petition thus unopened.
(
Giving a paper
)
And he demands at what hour 't were secure to visit you again?
LUCRETIA
At the Ave Mary.
Exit Servant.
So, daughter, our last hope has failed.
How pale you look! you tremble, and you stand
Wrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation,
As if one thought were overstrong for you;
Your eyes have a chill glare; oh, 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
After that dreadful feast? Could it be worse
Than when he smiled, and cried, 'My sons are dead!'
And every one looked in his neighbor's face
To see if others were as white as he?
Until this hour thus you have ever stood
Between us and your father's moody wrath
Like a protecting presence.
What can have thus subdued it? What can now
Have given you that cold melancholy look,
Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear?
BEATRICE
I was just thinking 'twere better not to struggle any more.
Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody;
Yet never--oh! before worse comes of it,
'T were 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 accursèd feast
One moment in your chamber.--Speak to me.
BERNARDO
Oh, sister, sister, prithee, speak to us!
BEATRICE
It was one word, mother, one little word;
One look, one smile.
Oh! he has trampled me
Under his feet, and made the blood stream down
My pallid cheeks. He has made me look
On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust
Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs;
And I have never yet despaired--but now!
What would I say?
Ah no! 't is nothing new.
The sufferings we all share have made me wild;
He only struck and cursed me as he passed;
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.
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;
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?
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,
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.
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, 't is fair;
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.
BEATRICE
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
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!
Thou too, loathed image of thy cursèd 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.--'T is an awful thing
To touch such mischief as I now conceive;
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?
Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote
Parricide with his alphabet? nor Giacomo?
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,
How just it were to hire assassins, or
Put sudden poison in my evening drink?
Or smother me when overcome by wine?
LUCRETIA
So help me God,
I never thought the things you charge me with!
CENCI
If you dare to speak that wicked lie again,
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? 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 anything
Until she heard you talk of her dead brothers.
CENCI
Blaspheming liar! you are damned for this!
On Wednesday next I shall set out
To that savage rook, the Castle of Petrella;
'T is safely walled, and moated round about;
Its dungeons under ground and its thick towers
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
.
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?
'T is she shall grope through a bewildering mist
Of horror; if there be a sun in heaven,
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,
Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud,
In which I walk secure and unbeheld
Towards my purpose.--Would that it were done!
Exit.
Return to index of scenes
ACT 2: SCENE II
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!
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
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,
To that which nature doth indeed require?--
CAMILLO
Nay, there is reason in your plea; 't were hard.
GIACOMO
'T is 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,
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 will interpose
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
Your father's cruel hand; he frowned and said,
'Children are disobedient, and they sting
Their fathers' hearts to madness and despair.'
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,
My innocent sister and my only brother
Are dying underneath my father's eye.
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,
Being, as 't were, 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
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
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.
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.
GIACOMO
Ask me not what I think; we trust
Imagination with such fantasies
As the tongue dares not fashion into 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
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 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.
Pardon me that I say farewell--farewell!
ORSINO
Farewell!--Be your thoughts better or more bold.
Exit
GIACOMO
.
I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo
To feed his hope with cold encouragement.
It fortunately serves my close designs
That 't is a trick of this same family
To analyze their own and other minds.
Such self-anatomy shall teach the will dangerous secrets;
So Cenci fell into the pit;
Even I 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.
Now what harm 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? While Cenci lives,
His daughter's dowry were a secret grave
If a priest wins her.--O fair Beatrice!
Would that I loved thee not. There is no escape;
Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar,
And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams,
Her very name makes my heart
Sicken and pant. Yet much longer
Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours.
From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo
I must work out my own dear purposes.
Her father dead; her brother bound to me
By a dark secret, surer than the grave;
I have such foresight as assures success.
Some unbeheld divinity doth ever,
When dread events are near, stir up men's minds
To black suggestions; and he prospers best,
Who can flatter the dark spirit that makes
Its empire and its prey of other hearts
Till it become his slave--as I will do.
[
Exit.
Return to index of scenes
ACT III; SCENE I
An Apartment in the Cenci Palace.
BEATRICE
is discovered,
LUCRETIA
enters.
BEATRICE
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; 't is only a cold dew
That starts from your dear brow.--Alas, alas!
What has befallen?
BEATRICE
How comes this hair undone?
Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,
And yet I tied it fast.
The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls
Spin round 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 vapors such as the dead breathe
In charnel-pits! I am choked!
My God! I never knew what the mad felt
Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt!
No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs
Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul
Which would burst forth into the wandering air!
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
The source from which it sprung.
BEATRICE
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
Who art thou, questioner? I have no father.
[
Aside.
She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,
It is a piteous office.
(
To Lucretia
)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;
Or pens up naked in damp cells
Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there
Till she will eat strange flesh. This woeful story
So did I overact in my sick dreams
That I imagined--no, it cannot be!
Horrible things have been in this wild 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 as--
LUCRETIA
Oh! My sweet child, know you--
BEATRICE
If this be truth, that other too
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.
I have talked some wild words, but will no more.
Mother, come near me; from this point of time,
I am--
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
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?
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?
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
'T is the restless life
Tortured within them. If I try to speak,
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;
Some such thing is to be endured or done;
When I know what, I shall be still and calm.
But now!--O blood, which art my father's blood,
Circling through these contaminated veins,
If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,
Could wash away the crime by which I suffer—
No, that cannot be! Many might doubt there were a God above
Who sees and permits evil, and so die.
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
Thy sufferings from my fear.
BEATRICE
I hide them not.
What are the words which you would have me speak?
LUCRETIA
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--I pray thee, God,
Let me not be bewildered while I judge.
If I must live day after day, and keep
These limbs, as a foul den from which what thou abhorrest
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.--Oh! in this mortal world
There is no vindication and no law,
Which can adjudge and execute the doom
Of that through which I suffer.
Enter
ORSINO
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.
Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds
Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.
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,
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
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; ay, lay all bare,
So that my unpolluted fame should be
With vilest gossips a stale mouthèd story;
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
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
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, thine element; until thou mayest become
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--
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?
If there be no appeal to that which makes
The guiltiest tremble?
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?
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 dishonor, and leaves her
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
Might find them with less need.
BEATRICE
advances.
ORSINO
Then--
BEATRICE
Peace, Orsino!
And, honored Lady, while I speak, I pray
That you put off, forbearance and respect,
Remorse and fear, and all the fit restraints of daily life,
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. I have prayed
To God, and I have talked with my own heart,
And have unravelled my entangled will,
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,
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
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,
The meanest or the noblest life. This mood
Is marketable here in Rome. They sell
What we now want.
LUCRETIA
Tomorrow, before dawn,
Cenci will take us to that lonely rock,
Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines.
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 chasm.
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
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
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?
GIACOMO
I sought him here;
And now must wait till he returns.
ORSINO
Great God!
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.
He has cast Nature off, which was his shield,
And Nature casts him off, who is her shame;
And I spurn both.
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,
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,
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, when he,
As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse,
Mocking our poverty, and telling us
Such was God's scourge for disobedient sons.
He coined a brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted
The sum in secret riot; and he saw
My wife was touched, and he went smiling forth.
I looked, and saw that home was hell.
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
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,
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
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--
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.
But no -- shall I wait, Orsino,
Till he return, and stab him at the door?
ORSINO
Not so, some accident might interpose
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
'T is my brother's voice! You know me not?
GIACOMO
My sister, my lost sister!
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
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.
Exeunt severally.
Act III: SCENE II
A mean Apartment in
GIACOMO'S
House.
GIACOMO
alone trying to read a book. A thunder storm is heard.
GIACOMO
'T is midnight, and Orsino comes not yet.
My wife and children sleep;
But I must wake, still doubting if that deed
Be just which was most necessary. Oh,
Thou unreplenished lamp, whose narrow fire
Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge
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
Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine;
But that no power can fill with vital oil,--
That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! 't is the blood
Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold;
It is the form that moulded mine that sinks
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 judgment-seat!
The hours crawl on; and, when my hairs are white,
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;
Yet--'t is 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?
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,
But my repentance.
ORSINO
sp; See,
the lamp is out.
GIACOMO
If no remorse is ours when the dim air
Has drunk 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 forever?
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.
GIACOMO
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;
Nor your wife's bitter words; nor all the taunts
Which, from the prosperous, weak misfortune takes;
Nor your dead mother; nor--
GIACOMO
Oh, speak no more!
I am resolved, although this very hand
Must quench the life that animated it.
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
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
nbsp; Marzio's
hate
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 tomorrow's midnight hour
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;
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
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!
When next we meet, may all be done!
GIACOMO
And all forgotten! Oh, that I had never been!
Exeunt.
Interval.
Return to index of scenes
ACT IV: SCENE I.
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?
Or fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome?
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, 't is her stubborn will,
Which, by its own consent, shall stoop as low
As that which drags it down.
Enter
LUCRETIA
Thou loathèd wretch!
Hide thee from my abhorrence; fly, begone!
Bid Beatrice come hither.
LUCRETIA
Oh,
Husband! I pray, for thine own wretched sake,
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,
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?
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.
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
If God, to punish his enormous crimes,
Harden his dying heart!'
CENCI
Why--such things are.
No doubt divine revealings may be made.
'T is plain I have been favored from above,
For when I cursed my sons, they died.--Ay--so.
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;
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,
He is so innocent, I will bequeathe
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
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;
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,
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.
He makes to go, LUCRETIA stops him
LUCRETIA
Oh,
stay! it was a feint;
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
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.
To
LUCRETIA
What sufferings? I will drag her, step by step,
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 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,
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.
Enter
ANDREA
ANDREA
The Lady Beatrice--
CENCI
Speak, pale slave! what said she?
ANDREA
My Lord, 't was 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,
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 armèd victory, and make pale
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
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
God,
Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,
Which thou hast made my daughter;
This my blood, this particle of my divided being;
This my bane and my disease,
Whose sight infects and poisons me;
This devil which sprung from me as from a hell,
Was meant to aught good use;
If her bright loveliness was kindled to illumine this dark world;
I pray thee for my sake,
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
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 loathèd lameness! All-beholding sun,
Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes
With thine own blinding beams!
LUCRETIA
Peace, peace!
For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words.
CENCI
He does his will, I mine! This in addition,
That if she have a child--
LUCRETIA
Horrible thought!
CENCI
That if she ever have a child--and thou,
Quick Nature! I adjure thee
That thou be fruitful in her, and increase
And multiply, fulfilling God's command,
And my deep imprecation!--may it be
A hideous likeness of herself;
That as from a distorting mirror she may see
Her image mixed with what she most abhors.
And that the child may from its infancy
Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,
Turning her mother's love to misery!
Go, bid her come,
Before my words are chronicled in heaven.
Exit
LUCRETIA.
I do not feel as if I were a man,
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;
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. 'T is well,
I can do both; first take what I demand,
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
With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep--
Exit.
Return to index of scenes
ACT IV: SCENE II
Before the Castle of Petrella. Enter
BEATRICE
and
LUCRETIA
above on the ramparts.
BEATRICE
They come not yet.
LUCRETIA
'T is scarce
midnight.
BEATRICE
How slow behind the course of thought, even sick with speed,
Lags leaden-footed Time!
LUCRETIA
The minutes pass.
What if he should wake before the deed is done?
BEATRICE
O mother! he must never wake again.
What thou hast said persuades me that our act
Will but dislodge a spirit of deep hell
Out of a human form.
LUCRETIA
nbsp; 'T
is true he spoke
Of death and judgment with strange confidence
For one so wicked; as a man believing
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, 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.
OLIMPIO
It is the white reflection of your own,
Which you call pale.
MARZIO
Is that their natural hue?
OLIMPIO
Or 't is my hate, and the deferred desire
To wreak it, which extinguishes their blood.
MARZIO
You are inclined then to this business?
OLIMPIO
nbsp; Ay,
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
nbsp; Is
all quiet?
LUCRETIA
I mixed an opiate with his drink;
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?
OLIMPIO
We are resolved.
MARZIO
As to 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,
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.
Return to index of scenes
ACT IV: SCENE III
An Apartment in the Castle. Enter
BEATRICE
and
LUCRETIA.
LUCRETIA
They are about it now.
BEATRICE
Nay, it is done.
LUCRETIA
I have not heard him groan.
BEATRICE
He will not
groan.
LUCRETIA
What sound is that?
BEATRICE
List! 't is the tread of feet
About his bed.
LUCRETIA
My God!
If he be now a cold, stiff corpse--
BEATRICE
Oh,
fear not
What may be done, but what is left undone;
The act seals all.
Enter
OLIMPIO
and
MARZIO
Is it accomplished?
MARZIO
What?
OLIMPIO
Did you
not call?
BEATRICE
When?
OLIMPIO
Now.
BEATRICE
I ask
if all is over?
OLIMPIO
We dare not kill an old and sleeping man;
His thin gray hair, his stern and reverent brow,
His veinèd hands crossed on his heaving breast,
And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay,
Quelled me. Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it.
MARZIO
But I was bolder; for I chid Olimpio,
And bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave,
And leave me the reward. And now my knife
Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man
Stirred in his sleep, and said, 'God! hear, oh, hear
A father's curse! What, art thou not our father?'
And then he laughed. I knew it was the ghost
Of my dead father speaking through his lips,
And could not kill him.
BEATRICE
Miserable slaves!
Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man,
Found ye the boldness to return to me
With such a deed undone? Base palterers!
Cowards and traitors! Why, the very conscience
Which ye would sell for gold and for revenge
Is an equivocation; it sleeps over
A thousand daily acts disgracing men;
And when a deed, where mercy insults heaven--
Why do I talk?
(
Snatching a dagger from one of them, and raising it
)
Hadst thou a
tongue to say,
She murdered her own father, I must do it!
But never dream ye shall outlive him long!
OLIMPIO
Stop, for God's sake!
MARZIO
I will go back
and kill him.
OLIMPIO
Give me the weapon, we must do thy will.
BEATRICE
Take it! Depart! Return!
Exeunt
OLIMPIO
and
MARZIO.
How pale thou art!
We do but that which 't were a deadly crime
To leave undone.
LUCRETIA
Would it were done!
BEATRICE
Even whilst
That doubt is passing through your mind, the world
Is conscious of a change. Darkness and hell
Have swallowed up the vapor they sent forth
To blacken the sweet light of life. My breath
Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood
Runs freely through my veins. Hark!
Enter
OLIMPIO
and
MARZIO
He is--?
OLIMPIO
Dead!
MARZIO
We strangled him, that there might be no blood;
And then we threw his heavy corpse i' the garden
Under the balcony; 't will seem it fell.
BEATRICE
(
giving them a bag of coin
)
Here take this gold and hasten to your homes.
And, Marzio, because thou wast only awed
By that which made me tremble, wear thou this!
(
Clothes him in a rich mantle
)
It was the mantle which my grandfather
Wore in his high prosperity, and men
Envied his state; so may they envy thine.
Thou wert a weapon in the hand of God
To a just use. Live long and thrive! And, mark,
If thou hast crimes, repent; this deed is none.
A horn is sounded
LUCRETIA
Hark, 't is the castle horn: my God! it sounds
Like the last trump.
BEATRICE
Some tedious guest is coming.
LUCRETIA
The drawbridge is let down; there is a tramp
Of horses in the court; fly, hide yourselves!
Exeunt
OLIMPIO
and
MARZIO.
BEATRICE
Let us retire to counterfeit deep rest;
I scarcely need to counterfeit it now;
The spirit which doth reign within these limbs
Seems strangely undisturbed. I could even sleep
Fearless and calm; all ill is surely past.
Exeunt.
Return to index of scenes
ACT IV: SCENE IV.
Another Apartment in the Castle. The Legate
SAVELLA,
is discovered on.
LUCRETIA
and
BERNARDO.
enter.
SAVELLA
Lady, my duty to his Holiness
Be my excuse that thus unseasonably
I break upon your rest. I must speak with
Count Cenci; doth he sleep?
LUCRETIA
I think he sleeps;
Yet, wake him not, I pray, spare me awhile.
He is a wicked and a wrathful man;
Should he be roused out of his sleep tonight,
Which is, I know, a hell of angry dreams,
It were not well; indeed it were not well.
Wait till day break.
SAVELLA
I grieve thus to distress you, but the Count
Must answer charges of the gravest import,
And suddenly; such my commission is.
LUCRETIA
I dare not rouse him, I know none who dare;
'T were perilous; you might as safely waken
A serpent, or a corpse in which some fiend
Were laid to sleep.
SAVELLA
Lady, my moments here are counted.
I must rouse him from his sleep, since none else dare.
LUCRETIA
(
To
BERNARDO
) Bernardo, conduct you the Lord Legate to
Your father's chamber.
Exeunt
SAVELLA
and
BERNARDO.
Enter
BEATRICE
BEATRICE
'T is a messenger come to arrest the culprit who now stands
Before the throne of unappealable God.
Both Earth and Heaven, consenting arbiters,
Acquit our deed.
LUCRETIA
Oh, agony of fear!
Would that he yet might live! Even now I heard
The Legate's followers whisper as they passed
They had a warrant for his instant death.
All was prepared by unforbidden means,
Which we must pay so dearly, having done.
Even now they search the tower, and find the body;
Now they suspect the truth; now they consult
Before they come to tax us with the fact.
Oh, horrible, 't is all discovered!
BEATRICE
Mother, what is done wisely is done well. Be bold
As thou art just. Be faithful to thyself,
And fear no other witness but thy fear.
For if, as cannot be, some circumstance
Should rise in accusation, we can blind
Suspicion with such cheap astonishment,
Or overbear it with such guiltless pride,
As murderers cannot feign. The deed is done,
And what may follow now regards not me.
Consequence, to me,
Is as the wind which strikes the solid rook,
But shakes it not.
A cry within and tumult
VOICES (
off
)
Murder! Murder! Murder!
SAVELLA (
off
)
Go, search the castle round; sound the alarm;
Look to the gates, that none escape!
Enter
BERNARDO
BEATRICE
What
now?
BERNARDO
I know not what to say - my father 's dead.
BEATRICE
How, dead! he only sleeps; you mistake, brother.
His sleep is very calm, very like death;
'T is wonderful how well a tyrant sleeps.
He is not
dead?
BERNARDO
Dead; murdered!
SAVELLA
enters
.
LUCRETIA
Oh, no, no! He is not murdered, though he may be dead;
I have alone the keys of those apartments.
SAVELLA
Ha! is it so?
BEATRICE
My Lord, I pray excuse
us;
We will retire; my mother is not well;
She seems quite overcome with this strange horror.
Exeunt
LUCRETIA
and
BEATRICE.
SAVELLA
Can you suspect who may have murdered him?
BERNARDO
I know not what to think.
SAVELLA
Can you name any who had an interest in his death?
BERNARDO
Alas! I can name none who had not, and those most
Who most lament that such a deed is done;
My mother, and my sister, and myself.
SAVELLA
'T is strange! There were clear marks of violence.
I found the old man's body in the moonlight,
Hanging beneath the window of his chamber
Among the branches of a pine; he could not
Have fallen there, for all his limbs lay heaped
And effortless; 't is true there was no blood.
Favor me, sir--it much imports your house
That all should be made clear--to tell the ladies
That I request their presence.
Exit
BERNARDO.
Enter
ANDREA
ANDREA
My Lord, we found two men
Lurking among the rocks; there is no doubt
But that they are the murderers of Count Cenci;
Each had a bag of coin; this fellow wore
A gold-inwoven robe, which, shining bright
Under the dark rocks to the glimmering moon,
Betrayed them, the other fell
Desperately fighting.
SAVELLA
What does he confess?
ANDREA
He keeps firm silence; but these lines found on him
May speak.
SAVELLA
Their language is at least sincere.
(
Reads
)
"To the Lady Beatrice;
That the atonement of what my nature
sickens to conjecture may soon arrive, I
send thee, at thy brother's desire, those
who will speak and do more than I dare
write.
Thy devoted servant,
Orsino."
Enter
LUCRETIA, BEATRICE,
and
BERNARDO
Knowest thou this writing, lady?
BEATRICE
nbsp; No.
SAVELLA
(
To
LUCRETIA
) Nor thou?
LUCRETIA
Where was it found? What is it? It should be
Orsino's hand! It speaks of that strange horror
Which never yet found utterance, but which made
Between that hapless child and her dead father
A gulf of obscure hatred.
SAVELLA
Is it so,
Is it true, Lady, that thy father did
Such outrages as to awaken in thee
Unfilial hate?
BEATRICE
Not hate, 't was more than hate;
This is most true, yet wherefore question me?
SAVELLA
There is a deed demanding question done;
Thou hast a secret which will answer not.
BEATRICE
What sayest? My Lord, your words are bold and rash.
SAVELLA
I do arrest all present in the name
Of the Pope's Holiness. You must to Rome.
LUCRETIA
Oh, not to Rome! indeed we are not guilty.
BEATRICE
Guilty! who dares talk of guilt? My Lord,
I am more innocent of parricide
Than is a child born fatherless. Dear mother,
Your gentleness and patience are no shield
For this keen-judging world, this two-edged lie,
Which seems, but is not.
Wheather murdered Cenci, was
A sword in the right hand of justest God.
Wherefore should I have wielded it? unless
The crimes which mortal tongue dare never name
God therefore scruples to avenge.
SAVELLA
You
own
That you desired his death?
BEATRICE
nbsp; It
would have been
A crime no less than his, if for one moment
That fierce desire had faded in my heart.
'T is true I did believe, and hope, and pray,
Ay, I even knew--for God is wise and just--
That some strange sudden death hung over him.
'T is true that this did happen, and most true
There was no other rest for me on earth,
No other hope in Heaven. Now what of this?
SAVELLA
Strange thoughts beget strange deeds; and here are both;
I judge thee not.
BEATRICE
And yet, if you arrest me,
You are the judge and executioner
Of that which is the life of life; the breath
Of accusation kills an innocent name,
And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life
Which is a mask without it. 'T is most false
That I am guilty of foul parricide;
Although I must rejoice, for justest cause,
That other hands have sent my father's soul
To ask the mercy he denied to me.
Now leave us free; stain not a noble house
With vague surmises of rejected crime;
Leave us the wreck we have.
SAVELLA
I
dare not, Lady.
I pray that you prepare yourselves for Rome.
There the Pope's further pleasure will be known.
LUCRETIA
Oh, not to Rome! Oh, take us not to Rome!
BEATRICE
Why not to Rome, dear mother? There as here
Our innocence is as an armèd heel
To trample accusation. God is there,
As here, and with his shadow ever clothes
The innocent, the injured, and the weak;
And such are we. Cheer up, dear Lady!
Collect your wandering thoughts. My Lord,
As soon as you have taken some refreshment,
And had all such examinations made
Upon the spot as may be necessary
To the full understanding of this matter,
We shall be ready. Mother, will you come?
LUCRETIA
Ha! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest
Self-accusation from our agony!
Will Giacomo be there? Orsino? Marzio?
All present; all confronted; all demanding
Each from the other's countenance the thing
Which is in every heart! (
She faints, and is borne out
)
SAVELLA
An ill appearance this.
BEATRICE
My Lord, she knows not yet the uses of the world.
She sees not yet triumphant Innocence
Stand at the judgment-seat of mortal man.
Exeunt.
Return to index of scenes
ACT V: SCENE I
An Apartment in
ORSINO'S
Palace.
ORSINO
sits reading while
GIACOMO
paces.
GIACOMO
Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end?
Oh, that the vain remorse which must chastise
Crimes done had but as loud a voice to warn
As its keen sting is mortal to avenge!
Alas! It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed,
To kill an old and hoary-headed father.
ORSINO
It has turned out unluckily, in truth.
GIACOMO
To violate the sacred doors of sleep;
To cheat kind nature of the placid death
Which she prepares for overwearied age;
To drag from Heaven an unrepentant soul,
Which might have quenched in reconciling prayers
A life of burning crimes--
ORSINO
You cannot say I urged you to the deed.
GIACOMO
Oh,
had I never
Found in thy smooth and ready countenance
The mirror of my darkest thoughts; hadst thou
Never with hints and questions made me look
Upon the monster of my thought, until
It grew familiar to desire--
ORSINO
nbsp; 'T
is thus
Men cast the blame of their unprosperous acts
Upon the abettors of their own resolve;
Or anything but their weak, guilty selves.
And yet, confess the truth, it is the peril
In which you stand that gives you this pale sickness
Of penitence; confess 't is fear disguised
From its own shame that takes the mantle now
Of thin remorse. What if we yet were safe?
GIACOMO
How can that be? Already Beatrice,
Lucretia and the murderer are in prison.
I doubt not officers are, whilst we speak,
Sent to arrest us.
ORSINO
I have
all prepared
For instant flight. We can escape even now,
So we take fleet occasion by the hair.
GIACOMO
Rather expire in tortures, as I may.
What! will you cast by self-accusing flight
Assured conviction upon Beatrice?
Whilst we for basest ends--I fear, Orsino,
While I consider all your words and looks,
Comparing them with your proposal now,
That you must be a villain. For what end
Could you engage in such a perilous crime,
Training me on with hints, and signs, and smiles,
Even to this gulf? Thou art no liar? No,
Thou art a lie! Traitor and murderer!
Coward and slave! But no--defend thyself;
Drawing knife.
Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue
Disdains to brand thee with.
ORSINO
Put
up your weapon.
Is it the desperation of your fear
Makes you thus rash and sudden with a friend,
Now ruined for your sake? If honest anger
Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed
Was but to try you. As for me, I think
Thankless affection led me to this point,
From which, if my firm temper could repent,
I cannot now recede. Even whilst we speak,
The ministers of justice wait below;
They grant me these brief moments. Now, if you
Have any word of melancholy comfort
To speak to your pale wife, 't were best to pass
Out at the postern, and avoid them so.
GIACOMO
O generous friend! how canst thou pardon me?
Would that my life could purchase thine!
ORSINO
sp; That
wish
Now comes a day too late. Haste; fare thee well!
Hear'st thou not steps along the corridor?
Exit
GIACOMO.
I 'm sorry for it; but the guards are waiting
At his own gate, and such was my contrivance
That I might rid me both of him and them.
I thought to act a solemn comedy
Upon the painted scene of this new world,
And to attain my own peculiar ends
By some such plot of mingled good and ill
As others weave; but there arose a Power
Which grasped and snapped the threads of my device,
And turned it to a net of ruin--Ha!
Is that my name I hear proclaimed abroad?
But I will pass, wrapped in a vile disguise,
Rags on my back and a false innocence
Upon my face, through the misdeeming crowd,
Which judges by what seems. 'T is easy then,
For a new name and for a country new,
And a new life fashioned on old desires,
To change the honors of abandoned Rome.
And these must be the masks of that within,
Which must remain unaltered.--Oh, I fear
That what is past will never let me rest!
Why, when none else is conscious, but myself,
Of my misdeeds, should my own heart's contempt
Trouble me? Have I not the power to fly
My own reproaches? Shall I be the slave
Of--what? A word? which those of this false world
Employ against each other, not themselves,
As men wear daggers not for self-offence.
But if I am mistaken, where shall I
Find the disguise to hide me from myself,
As now I skulk from every other eye?
Exit.
Return to index of scenes
ACT V: SCENE II
A Hall of Justice.
CAMILLO
seated while
SAVELLA,
interegates
MARZIO. BEATRICE, LUCRETIA
and
GIACOMO
in chains.
SAVELLA
Accused, do you persist in your denial?
I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty?
I demand who were the participators
In your offence. Speak truth, and the whole truth.
MARZIO
My God! I did not kill him; I know nothing;
Olimpio sold the robe to me from which
You would infer my guilt.
SAVELLA
Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack's kiss,
Speak false? Is it so soft a questioner
That you would bandy lover's talk with it,
Till it wind out your life and soul? Away!
MARZIO
Spare me! Oh, spare! I will confess.
SAVELLA
Then speak.
MARZIO
I strangled him in his sleep.
SAVELLA
Who
urged you to it?
MARZIO
His own son Giacomo and the young prelate
Orsino sent me to Petrella; there
The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia
Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I
And my companion forthwith murdered him.
Now let me die.
SAVELLA
This sounds as bad as truth.
Guards, there, lead forth the prisoners.
Look upon this man;
When did you see him last?
BEATRICE
nbsp; We
never saw him.
MARZIO
You know me too well, Lady Beatrice.
BEATRICE
I know thee! how? where? when?
MARZIO
You
know 't was I
Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes
To kill your father. When the thing was done,
You clothed me in a robe of woven gold,
And bade me thrive; how I have thriven, you see.
You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia,
You know that what I speak is true.
BEATRICE
advances towards him; he covers his face, and shrinks back.
Oh,
dart
The terrible resentment of those eyes
On the dead earth! Turn them away from me!
They wound; 't was torture forced the truth. My Lords,
Having said this, let me be led to death.
BEATRICE
Poor wretch, I pity thee; yet stay awhile.
CAMILLO
Lead him not away.
BEATRICE
Cardinal Camillo,
You have a good repute for gentleness
And wisdom; can it be that you sit here
To countenance a wicked farce like this?
When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged
From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart
And bade to answer in peril of such hideous torments
As merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now
The thing you surely know, which is, that you,
If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel,
Yet you would say, 'I confess anything,'
And beg from your tormentors
The refuge of dishonorable death.
I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert
My innocence.
CAMILLO
Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen
Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul
That she is guiltless.
SAVELLA
Yet
she must be tortured.
CAMILLO
I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew
As that most perfect image of God's love
That ever came sorrowing upon the earth.
She is as pure as speechless infancy!
SAVELLA
Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord,
If you forbid the rack. His Holiness
Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime
By the severest forms of law; nay, even
To stretch a point against the criminals.
The prisoners stand accused of parricide
Upon such evidence as justifies torture.
BEATRICE
What evidence? This man's?
BEATRICE
(
to
MARZIO
)
And who art thou, thus chosen forth
Out of the multitude of living men,
To kill the innocent?
MARZIO
I am Marzio, thy father's vassal.
BEATRICE
Fix
thine eyes on mine; answer to what I ask.
(
Turning to the Judges
)
I
prithee mark
His countenance; unlike bold calumny,
Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks,
He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends
His gaze on the blind earth.
(
To
MARZIO
) What! wilt thou say
That I did murder my own father?
MARZIO
Oh! Spare me! My brain swims round--I cannot speak--
It was that horrid torture forced the truth.
Take me away! Let her not look on me!
I am a guilty miserable wretch!
I have said all I know; now, let me die!
BEATRICE
My Lords, if by my nature I had been
So stern as to have planned the crime alleged,
Do you think I should have left this two-edged instrument
Of my misdeed; this man, this bloody knife,
With my own name engraven on the heft,
Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes,
For my own death? What is his poor life?
What are a thousand lives? A parricide
Had trampled them like dust; and see, he lives!
(
Turning to
MARZIO
)
And thou--
MARZIO
Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more!
That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones,
Wound worse than torture. I have told it all;
For pity's sake lead me away to death.
CAMILLO
Lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice;
He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf
From the keen breath of the serenest north.
BEATRICE
O thou who tremblest on the giddy verge
Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me;
So mayst thou answer God with less dismay.
What evil have we done thee? I, alas!
Have lived but on this earth a few sad years,
And so my lot was ordered that a father
Poisoned youth's sweet hope; and my untainted fame.
If thou hopest for mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth;
Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.
If thou hast done murders,
Rush not before thy Judge, and say: 'My Maker,
I have done this and more; for I with my words
Killed one pure and innocent and all her kin.'
I ask thee: Am I, or am I not a parricide?
MARZIO
Thou art not!
SAVELLA
sp; What
is this?
MARZIO
I here declare those whom I did accuse
Are innocent. 'T is I alone am guilty.
SAVELLA
Drag him away to torments; let them be
Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds
Of the heart's inmost cell. Unbind him not
Till he confess.
MARZIO
She is most innocent!
I will not give you that fine piece of nature
To rend and ruin.
MARZIO
is lead off
SAVELLA
Let tortures strain the truth till it be white
As snow thrice-sifted by the frozen wind.
CAMILLO
Yet stained with blood.
SAVELLA
(
to
BEATRICE
)
sp; Know
you this paper, Lady?
BEATRICE
Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here
As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he,
Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge,
What, all in one? Here is Orsino's name;
Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine.
A scream off.
SAVELLA
exits to investigate
What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what.
And therefore on the chance that it may be
Some evil, will ye kill us?
SAVELLA
returns
SAVELLA
Marzio 's dead.
CAMILLO
What did he say?
SAVELLA
nbsp; Nothing.
As soon as we
Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us,
As one who baffles a deep adversary;
And holding his breath died.
There remains nothing
But to apply the question to those prisoners
Who yet remain stubborn.
CAMILLO
I
overrule
Further proceedings, and in the behalf
Of these most innocent and noble persons
Will use my interest with the Holy Father.
SAVELLA
Let the Pope's pleasure then be done. Meanwhile
Conduct these culprits each to separate cells;
And be the engines ready; for this night,
If the Pope's resolution be as grave,
Pious, and just as once, I 'll wring the truth
Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan.
Exeunt.
Return to index of scenes
ACT V: SCENE III
The Cell of a Prison.
BEATRICE
is discovered asleep on the floor. Enter
BERNARDO
BERNARDO
How gently slumber rests upon her face,
Like the last thoughts of some day sweetly spent,
Closing in night and dreams, and so prolonged.
After such torments as she bore last night,
How light and soft her breathing comes.
Wake, awake! What, sister, canst thou sleep?
BEATRICE
(
awaking
)
I was just dreaming that we were all in Paradise.
Thou knowest this cell seems like a kind of Paradise
After our father's presence.
BERNARDO
Dear sister, would that thy dream were not a dream!
Oh, God, how shall I tell?
BEATRICE
What
wouldst thou tell, sweet brother?
BERNARDO
Look not so calm and happy, or even whilst
I stand considering what I have to say, my heart will break.
BEATRICE
See
now, thou mak'st me weep;
How very friendless thou wouldst be, dear child,
If I were dead. Say what thou hast to say.
BERNARDO
They have confessed; they could endure no more
The tortures--
BEATRICE
Ha! what was there to confess?
They must have told some weak and wicked lie
To flatter their tormentors. Have they said
That they were guilty? O white innocence,
That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide
Thine awful and serenest countenance
From those who know thee not!
Enter
SAVELLA,
with
LUCRETIA
and
GIACOMO.
Ignoble hearts!
For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least
As mortal as the limbs through which they pass,
Are centuries of high splendor laid in dust?
Will you give up these bodies to be dragged
At horses' heels, so that our hair should sweep
The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd,
Who, that they may make our calamity
Their worship and their spectacle, will leave
The churches and the theatres as void
As their own hearts?
O thou who wert a mother to the parentless,
Kill not thy child! let not her wrongs kill thee!
Brother, lie down with me upon the rack,
And let us each be silent as a corpse;
It soon will be as soft as any grave.
'T is but the falsehood it can wring from fear
Makes the rack cruel.
GIACOMO
sp; They
will tear the truth
Even from thee at last, those cruel pains;
For pity's sake say thou art guilty now.
LUCRETIA
Oh, speak the truth! Let us all quickly die;
And after death, God is our judge, not they;
He will have mercy on us.
BERNARDO
If indeed
It can be true, say so, dear sister mine;
And then the Pope will surely pardon you,
And all be well.
SAVELLA
nbsp; Confess,
or I will warp
Your limbs with such keen tortures--
BEATRICE
Tortures!
Turn
The rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel!
My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart,
And of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul,
Which weeps within tears as of burning gall
To see, in this ill world where none are true,
My kindred false to their deserted selves;
And with considering all the wretched life
Which I have lived, and its now wretched end;
And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth
To me or mine; and what a tyrant thou art,
And what slaves these; and what a world we make,
The oppressor and the oppressed--such pangs compel
My answer. What is it thou wouldst with me?
SAVELLA
Art thou not guilty of thy father's death?
BEATRICE
Or wilt thou rather tax high-judging God
That he permitted such an act as that
Which I have suffered, and which he beheld;
Made it unutterable, and took from it
All refuge, all revenge, all consequence,
But that which thou hast called my father's death?
Which is or is not what men call a crime,
Which either I have done, or have not done;
Say what ye will. I shall deny no more.
If ye desire it thus, thus let it be,
And so an end of all. Now do your will;
No other pains shall force another word.
SAVELLA
She is convicted, but has not confessed.
Be it enough. You, young Lord,
Linger not here!
BEATRICE
Oh, tear him
not away!
BERNARDO
(
embracing
BEATRICE
)
Oh!
would ye divide
Body from soul?
SAVELLA
That is the headsman's business.
Exeunt
SAVELLA
and
BERNARDO
GIACOMO
Have I confessed? Is it all over now?
No hope! no refuge! O weak, wicked tongue,
Which hast destroyed me, would that thou hadst been
Cut out and thrown to dogs first! To have killed
My father first, and then betrayed my sister--
Covers his face and weeps
LUCRETIA
O
my child!
To what a dreadful end are we all come!
Why did I yield? Why did I not sustain
Those torments? Oh, that I were all dissolved
Into these fast and unavailing tears,
Which flow and feel not!
BEATRICE
What 't was weak to do,
'T is weaker to lament, once being done;
Take cheer! The God who knew my wrong, and made
Our speedy act the angel of his wrath,
Seems, and but seems, to have abandoned us.
Let us not think that we shall die for this.
Brother, sit near me; give me your firm hand,
You had a manly heart. Bear up! bear up!
O dearest Lady, put your gentle head
Upon my lap, and try to sleep awhile;
Your eyes look pale, hollow, and overworn,
With heaviness of watching and slow grief.
Lie down-- So, that will do.
Faith! they are sadder than I thought they were.
Return to index of scenes
ACT V: SCENE IV
A Hall of the Prison.
BEATRICE, LUCRETIA
and
GIACOMO
sleep. Enter
CAMILLO
and
BERNARDO.
CAMILLO
The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent.
He looked as calm and keen as is the engine
Which tortures and which kills, exempt itself
From aught that it inflicts; a marble form,
A rite, a law, a custom, not a man.
He frowned, as if to frown had been the trick
Of his machinery, on the advocates
Presenting the defences, which he tore
And threw behind, muttering with hoarse, harsh voice--
'Which among ye defended their old father
Killed in his sleep?' then to another--'Thou
Dost this in virtue of thy place; 't is well.'
He turned to me then, looking deprecation,
And said these three words, coldly--'They must die.'
BERNARDO
And yet you left him not?
CAMILLO
I urged him
still;
Pleading, as I could guess, the devilish wrong
Which prompted your unnatural parent's death.
And he replied--'Paolo Santa Croce
Murdered his mother yester evening,
And he is fled. Parricide grows so rife,
That soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young
Will strangle us all, dozing in our chairs.
Authority, and power, and hoary hair
Are grown crimes capital. You are my nephew,
You come to ask their pardon; stay a moment;
Here is their sentence; never see me more
Till, to the letter, it be all fulfilled.'
BERNARDO
Oh, God, not so! I did believe indeed
That all you said was but sad preparation
For happy news. Oh, there are words and looks
To bend the sternest purpose! Once I knew them,
Now I forget them at my dearest need.
What think you if I seek him out, and bathe
His feet and robe with hot and bitter tears?
Importune him with prayers - I will do it!
Oh, wait till I return!
He rushes out.
CAMILLO
Alas,
poor boy!
A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray
To the deaf sea.
BEATRICE
I
hardly dare to fear
That thou bring'st other news than a just pardon.
CAMILLO
May God in heaven be less inexorable
To the Pope's prayers than he has been to mine.
Here is the sentence and the warrant.
BEATRICE
nbsp; Oh,
My God! Can it be possible I have
To die so suddenly?
So young to be nailed down into a narrow place;
To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again
Upon familiar thoughts!
How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be-- What?
Let me not go mad!
Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world--
The wide, gray, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
If all things then should be--my father's spirit,
His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;
The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!
If he should come in the form which tortured me on earth,
And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix
His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!
Even though dead,
Does not his spirit live in all that breathe,
And despair? Who ever yet returned
To teach the laws of death's untrodden realm?
LUCRETIA
Trust
in God's sweet love,
The tender promises of Christ; ere night,
Think we shall be in Paradise.
BEATRICE
'T is
past!
Whatever comes, my heart shall sink no more.
And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill;
How tedious, false, and cold seem all things! I
Have met with much injustice in this world;
No difference has been made by God or man,
I am cut off from the only world I know,
From light, and life, and love, in youth's sweet prime.
You do well telling me to trust in God;
I hope I do trust in him. In whom else
Can any trust? And yet my heart is cold.
CAMILLO,
exits
GIACOMO
Know you not, mother--sister, know you not?
Bernardo even now is gone to implore
The Pope to grant our pardon.
LUCRETIA
Child,
perhaps
It will be granted. We may all then live
To make these woes a tale for distant years.
Oh, what a thought! It gushes to my heart
Like the warm blood.
BEATRICE
Yet
both will soon be cold.
Oh, trample out that thought! Worse than despair,
Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope.
No, mother, we must die;
Since such is the reward of innocent lives.
Come, obscure Death,
And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!
Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,
And rock me to the sleep from which none wake.
Live ye, who live, subject to one another
As we were once, who now--
BERNARDO
rushes in
BERNARDO
Oh,
horrible!
That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer,
Should all be vain! The ministers of death
Are waiting round the doors.
Enter
CAMILLO
and
SAVELLA
They come! Let me
Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves
Are blighted--white--cold. Say farewell, before
Death chokes that gentle voice! Oh, let me hear
You speak!
BEATRICE
Farewell, my tender brother. Think
Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now;
For thine own sake be constant to the love
Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I,
Though wrapped in a strange cloud of crime and shame,
Lived ever holy and unstained.
And never think a thought unkind
Of those who perhaps love thee in their graves.
Farewell! Farewell!
BERNARDO
I cannot say farewell!
CAMILLO
O
Lady Beatrice!
BEATRICE
Give yourself no unnecessary pain,
My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot; ay, that does well.
And yours I see is coming down. How often
Have we done this for one another; now
We shall not do it any more. My Lord,
We are quite ready. Well--'t is very well.
The End
Return to index of scenes
A copy of the complete
Cenci
script as Shelley intended it, along with other of his works, can be
found at the
Complete Poetical works of Percy Bisshe Shelley
web site.