Life Is A Dream Monologue
| Life Is A Dream Monologue by Pedro Calderón de la Barca | |
| Character: | Segismund |
| Gender: | Male |
| Age (range): | ? |
| Style: | Classical |
| Length: | 5 minutes |
Gotten Your Monologue Manager Yet? It's the only software of its kind that will easily allow you to search for, manage, and organize all your monologues at the click of a button! Click Here to Get it Now and we'll even throw in 400+ Monologues! |
|
- SEGISMUND: Princes and warriors of Poland--you
- That stare on this unnatural sight aghast,
- Listen to one who, Heaven-inspired to do
- What in its secret wisdom Heaven forecast,
- By that same Heaven instructed prophet-wise
- To justify the present in the past.
- What in the sapphire volume of the skies
- Is writ by God's own finger misleads none,
- But him whose vain and misconstructed eyes,
- They mock with misinterpretation,
- Or who, mistaking what he rightly read,
- Ill commentary makes, or misapplies
- Thinking tno shirk or thwart it. Which has done
- The wisdom of this venerable head;
- Who, well provided with the secret key
- To that gold alphabet, himself made me,
- Himself, I say, the savage he fore-read
- Fate somehow should be charged with; nipp'd the growth
- Of better nature in constraint and sloth,
- That only bring to bear the seed of wrong
- And turn'd the stream to fury whose out-burst
- Had kept his lawful channel uncoerced,
- And fertilized the land he flow'd along.
- Then like to some unskilful duellist,
- Who having over-reached himself pushing too hard
- His foe, or but a moment off his guard--
- What odds, when Fate is one's antagonist!--
- Nay, more, this royal father, self-dismay'd
- At having Fate against himself array'd,
- Upon himself the very sword he knew
- Should wound him, down upon his bosom drew,
- That might well handled, well have wrought; or, kept
- Undrawn, have harmless in the scabbard slept.
- But Fate shall not by human force be broke,
- Nor foil'd by human feint; the Secret learn'd
- Against the scholar by that master turn'd
- Who to himself reserves the master-stroke.
- Witness whereof this venerable Age,
- Thrice crown'd as Sire, and Sovereign, and Sage,
- Down to the very dust dishonour'd by
- The very means he tempted to defy
- The irresistible. And shall not I,
- Till now the mere dumb instrument that wrought
- The battle Fate has with my father fought,
- Now the mere mouth-piece of its victory--
- Oh, shall not I, the champion's sword laid down,
- Be yet more shamed to wear the teacher's gown,
- And, blushing at the part I had to play,
- Down where the honour'd head I was to lay
- By this more just submission of my own,
- The treason Fate has forced on me atone?
- You stare upon me all, amazed to hear
- The word of civil justice from such lips
- As never yet seem'd tuned to such discourse.
- But listen--In that same enchanted tower,
- Not long ago I learn'd it from a dream
- Expounded by this ancient prophet here;
- And which he told me, should it come again,
- How I should bear myself beneath it; not
- As then with angry passion all on fire,
- Arguing and making a distemper'd soul;
- But ev'n with justice, mercy, self-control,
- As if the dream I walk'd in were no dream,
- And conscience one day to account for it.
- A dream it was in which I thought myself,
- And you that hail'd me now then hail'd me King,
- In a brave palace that was all my own,
- Within, and all without it, mine; until,
- Drunk with excess of majesty and pride,
- Methought I tower'd so high and swell'd so wide,
- That of myself I burst the glittering bubble,
- That my ambition had about me blown,
- And all again was darkness. Such a dream
- As this in which I may be walking now;
- Dispensing solemn justice to you shadows,
- Who make believe to listen; but anon,
- With all your glittering arms and equipage,
- King, princes, captains, warriors, plume and steel,
- Ay, ev'n with all your airy theatre,
- May flit into the air you seem to rend
- With acclamation, leaving me to wake
- In the dark tower; or dreaming that I wake
- From this that waking is; or this and that
- Both waking or both dreaming; such a doubt
- Confounds and clouds our mortal life about.
- And, whether wake or dreaming, this I know,
- How dream-wise human glories come and go;
- Whose momentary tenure not to break,
- Walking as one who knows he soon may wake
- So fairly carry the full cup, so well
- Disorder'd insolence and passion quell,
- That there be nothing after to upbraid
- Dreamer or doer in the part he play'd,
- Whether To-morrow's dawn shall break the spell,
- Or the Last Trumpet of the eternal Day,
- When Dreaming with the Night shall pass away.
Credits: Reprinted from Eight Dramas of Calderon. Trans. Edward Fitzgerald. London: Macmillan & Co., 1906.
