Selected Poems and Prose

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  I have endeavoured as nearly as possible to represent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoid the error of making them actuated by my own conceptions of right or wrong, false or true, thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the sixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind. They are represented as Catholics, and as Catholics deeply tinged with religion. To a Protestant apprehension there will appear something unnatural in the earnest and perpetual sentiment of the relations between God and man which pervade the tragedy of the Cenci. It will especially be startled at the combination of an undoubting persuasion of the truth of the popular religion with a cool and determined perseverance in enormous guilt. But religion in Italy is not, as in Protestant countries, a cloak to be worn on particular days; or a passport which those who do not wish to be railed at carry with them to exhibit; or a gloomy passion for penetrating the impenetrable mysteries of our being, which terrifies its possessor at the darkness of the abyss to the brink of which it has conducted him. Religion coexists, as it were, in the mind of an Italian Catholic with a faith in that of which all men have the most certain knowledge. It is interwoven with the whole fabric of life. It is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no necessary connexion with any one virtue. The most atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and without any shock to established faith, confess himself to be so. Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check. Cenci himself built a chapel in the court of his Palace, and dedicated it to St. Thomas the Apostle, and established masses for the peace of his soul. Thus in the first scene of the fourth act Lucretia’s design in exposing herself to the consequences of an expostulation with Cenci after having administered the opiate, was to induce him by a feigned tale to confess himself before death; this being esteemed by Catholics as essential to salvation; and she only relinquishes her purpose when she perceives that her perseverance would expose Beatrice to new outrages.

  I have avoided with great care in writing this play the introduction of what is commonly called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice’s description of the chasm appointed for her father’s murder should be judged to be of that nature.*

  In a dramatic composition the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate one another, the former being reserved simply for the full development and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thus that the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit for dramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling, which raises what is low, and levels to the apprehension that which is lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In other respects I have written more carelessly; that is, without an over-fastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirely agree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men to true sympathy we must use the familiar language of men. And that our great ancestors the antient English poets are the writers, a study of whom might incite us to do that for our own age which they have done for theirs. But it must be the real language of men in general and not that of any particular class to whose society the writer happens to belong. So much for what I have attempted; I need not be assured that success is a very different matter; particularly for one whose attention has but newly been awakened to the study of dramatic literature.

  I endeavoured whilst at Rome to observe such monuments of this story as might be accessible to a stranger. The portrait of Beatrice at the Colonna Palace is admirable as a work of art: it was taken by Guido during her confinement in prison. But it is most interesting as a just representation of one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of Nature. There is a fixed and pale composure upon the features: she seems sad and stricken down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound with folds of white drapery from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape, and fall about her neck. The moulding of her face is exquisitely delicate; the eye brows are distinct and arched: the lips have that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suffering has not repressed and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish. Her forehead is large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. In the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity which united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow are inexpressibly pathetic. Beatrice Cenci appears to have been one of those rare persons in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another: her nature was simple and profound. The crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and the mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world.

  The Cenci Palace is of great extent; and though in part modernized, there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture in the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this tragedy. The Palace is situated in an obscure corner of Rome, near the quarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of Mount Palatine half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of trees. There is a court in one part of the palace (perhaps that in which Cenci built the Chapel to St. Thomas), supported by granite columns and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship and built up, according to the antient Italian fashion, with balcony over balcony of open work. One of the gates of the palace formed of immense stones and leading through a passage, dark and lofty and opening into gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particularly.

  Of the Castle of Petrella, I could obtain no further information than that which is to be found in the manuscript.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Nobles—Judges—Guards—Servants

  LUCRETIA, Wife of Cenci, and step-mother of his children

  BEATRICE, his daughter

  The scene lies principally in Rome, but changes during the Fourth Act to Petrella, a castle among the Apulian Apennines.

  Time. During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.

  ACT I

  SCENE I.—An apartment in the Cenci Palace. Enter COUNT CENCI, and CARDINAL CAMILLO.

  Camillo. That matter of the murder is hushed up

  If you consent to yield his Holiness

  Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.—

  It needed all my interest in the conclave

  5To 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:—

  10But 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.

  15 Cenci. The third of my possessions—let it go!

  Aye, 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:

  20I 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

  25Than 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

  Th
at the Apostle Peter and the saints

  30Will 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 shew no title.

  Camillo.      Oh, Count Cenci!

  35So much that thou mightst honourably 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

  Thro’ those snow white and venerable hairs!—

  40Your 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

  45Beauteous 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

  50Watching 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 dishonoured age

  Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes.

  55Yet 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,

  60And 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:

  65I think they never saw him any more.

  Camillo. Thou execrable man, beware!—

  Cenci.         Of thee?

  Nay this is idle:—We should know each other.

  As to my character for what men call crime

  Seeing I please my senses as I list,

  70And 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,

  75Therefore 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—

  80Flattering their secret peace with others’ pain.

  But I delight in nothing else. I love

  The sight of agony, and the sense of joy,

  When this shall be another’s, and that mine.

  And I have no remorse and little fear,

  85Which 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, and it forms none

  But such as men like you would start to know,

  90Is 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,

  95So 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:—Aye, we must all grow old—

  100And 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:

  105Men, 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

  110Look 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,

  115Like 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;

  120I 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

  125Tempt 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

  130Fourfold provision for my cursed 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!

  135Bernardo and my wife could not be worse

  If dead and damned:—then, as to Beatrice—

  [looking around him suspiciously

  I think they cannot hear me at that door;

  What if they should? And yet I need not speak

  Though the heart triumphs with itself in words.

  140O, 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.     My Lord?

  145 Cenci. Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber

  This evening:—no, at midnight and alone.   [Exeunt.

  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 past

  5Since, on an April midnight, underneath

  The moon-light 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

  10The 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;
<
br />   15Had you a dispensation, I have not;

  Nor will I leave this home of misery

  Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady

  To whom I owe life, and these virtuous thoughts,

  Must suffer what I still have strength to share.

  20Alas, 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 thus I love you still, but holily,

  25Even as a sister or a spirit might;

  And so I swear a cold fidelity.

  And it is well perhaps we shall not marry.

  You have a sly, equivocating vein

  That suits me not.—Ah, wretched that I am!

  30Where shall I turn? Even now you look on me

  As you were not my friend, and as if you

  Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles

  Making my true suspicion seem your wrong.

  Ah! No, forgive me; sorrow makes me seem

  35Sterner than else my nature might have been;

  I have a weight of melancholy thoughts,

  And they forbode,—but what can they forbode

  Worse than I now endure?

  Orsino.      All will be well.

  Is the petition yet prepared? You know

  40My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice;