165
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
175
Which is in every heart! O, misery!
[She faints, and is borne out.
Savella. She faints: an ill appearance this.
Beatrice. My Lord,
She knows not yet the uses of the world.
She fears that power is as a beast which grasps
And loosens not: a snake whose look transmutes
180
All things to guilt which is its nutriment.
She cannot know how well the supine slaves
Of blind authority read the truth of things
When written on a brow of guilelessness:
She sees not yet triumphant Innocence
185
Stand at the judgement-seat of mortal man,
A judge and an accuser of the wrong
Which drags it there. Prepare yourself, my Lord;
Our suite will join yours in the court below.
[Exeunt.
END OF THE FOURTH ACT.
ACT V
SCENE I.—An Apartment in ORSINO’S Palace. Enter ORSINO and GIACOMO.
Giacomo. Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end?
O, 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!
5
O, that the hour when present had cast off
The mantle of its mystery, and shown
The ghastly form with which it now returns
When its scared game is roused, cheering the hounds
Of conscience to their prey! Alas! Alas!
10
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
15
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. O, had I never
20
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. ’Tis thus
25
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
30
Of penitence; confess ’tis 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.
35
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.
40
What! will you cast by self-accusing flight
Assured conviction upon Beatrice?
She, who alone in this unnatural work,
Stands like God’s angel ministered upon
By fiends; avenging such a nameless wrong
45
As turns black parricide to piety;
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
50
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.
55
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
60
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
65
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, ’twere 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. 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
75
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
80
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!
[A shout is heard.
Is that my name I hear proclaimed abroad?
85
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. ’Tis easy then
For a new name and for a country new,
90
And a new life, fashioned on old desires,
To change the honours 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!
95
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
100
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
S
CENE II.—A Hall of Justice. CAMILLO, JUDGES, &c., are discovered seated; MARZIO is led in.
First Judge. 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.
5
Marzio. My God! I did not kill him; I know nothing;
Olimpio sold the robe to me from which
You would infer my guilt.
Second Judge. Away with him!
First Judge. Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack’s kiss
Speak false? Is it so soft a questioner,
10
That you would bandy lover’s talk with it
Till it wind out your life and soul? Away!
Marzio. Spare me! O, spare! I will confess.
First Judge. Then speak.
Marzio. I strangled him in his sleep.
First Judge. Who urged you to it?
Marzio. His own son Giacomo, and the young prelate
15
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.
First Judge. This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there,
Lead forth the prisoner!
Enter LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, and GIACOMO, guarded.
20
Look upon this man;
When did you see him last?
Beatrice. We never saw him.
Marzio. You know me too well, Lady Beatrice.
Beatrice. I know thee! How? where? when?
Marzio. You know ’twas I
Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes
25
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
30
The terrible resentment of those eyes
On the dead earth! Turn them away from me!
They wound: ’twas 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. Guards, lead him not away.
35
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
40
From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart
And bade to answer, not as he believes,
But as those may suspect or do desire
Whose questions thence suggest their own reply:
And that in peril of such hideous torments
45
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,
And you were told: ‘Confess that you did poison
Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child
50
Who was the lodestar of your life:’—and though
All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,
And all the things hoped for or done therein
Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief,
55
Yet you would say, ‘I confess anything:’
And beg from your tormentors, like that slave,
The refuge of dishonourable death.
I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert
My innocence.
Camillo (much moved). What shall we think, my Lords?
60
Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen
Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul
That she is guiltless.
Judge. Yet she must be tortured.
Camillo. I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew
(If he now lived he would be just her age;
65
His hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes
Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep)
As that most perfect image of God’s love
That ever came sorrowing upon the earth.
She is as pure as speechless infancy!
70
Judge. 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.
75
The prisoners stand accused of parricide
Upon such evidence as justifies
Torture.
Beatrice. What evidence? This man’s?
Judge. Even so.
Beatrice (to MARZIO). Come near. And who art thou thus chosen forth
Out of the multitude of living men
To kill the innocent?
80
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,
85
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.
90
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,
95
Which your suspicions dictate to this slave,
And the rack makes him utter, 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,
100
Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes,
For my own death? That with such horrible need
For deepest silence, I should have neglected
So trivial a precaution, as the making
His tomb the keeper of a secret written
105
On a thief’s memory? 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.
110
(To the JUDGES.) I have told it all;
For pity’s sake lead me away to death.
Camillo. Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice,
He shrinks from her regard like autumn’s leaf
From the keen breath of the serenest north.
115
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,
120
And so my lot was ordered, that a father
First turned the moments of awakening life
To drops, each poisoning youth’s sweet hope; and then
Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul;
And my untainted fame; and even that peace
125
Which sleeps within the core of the heart’s heart;
But the wound was not mortal; so my hate
Became the only worship I could lift
To our great father, who in pity and love,
Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off;
130
And thus his wrong becomes my accusation;
And art thou the accuser? If thou hopest
Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth:
Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.
If thou hast done murders, made thy life’s path
135
Over the trampled laws of God and man,
Rush not before thy Judge, and say: ‘My maker,
I have done this and more; for there was one
Who was most pure and innocent on earth;
And because she endured what never any
140
Guilty or innocent endured before:
Because her wrongs could not be told, not thought;
Because thy hand at length did rescue her;
I with my words killed her and all her kin.’
Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay
145
The reverence living in the minds of men
Towards our ancient house, and stainless fame!
Think what it is to strangle infant pity,
Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,
Till it become a crime to suffer. Think
150
What ’tis to blot with infamy and blood
All that which shows like innocence, and is,
Hear me, great God! I swear, most innocent,
So that the world lose all discrimination
Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt,
155
And that which now compels thee to reply
To what I ask: Am I or am I not
A parricide?
Marzio. Thou art not!
Judge. What is this?
The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley: (A Modern Library E-Book) Page 51
