Marino Faliero Monologue
| Marino Faliero Monologue by Lord Byron | |
| Character: | Doge |
| Gender: | Male |
| Age (range): | ? |
| Style: | Drama |
| Length: | < 3 minutes |
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- DOGE: Ye, though you know and feel our mutual mass
- Of many wrongs, even ye are ignorant
- What fatal poison to the springs of Life,
- To human ties, and all that's good and dear,
- Lurks in the present institutes of Venice:
- All these men were my friends; I loved them, they
- Requited honourably my regards;
- We served and fought; we smiled and wept in concert;
- We revelled or we sorrowed side by side;
- We made alliances of blood and marriage;
- We grew in years and honours fairly,—till
- Their own desire, not my ambition, made
- Them choose me for their Prince, and then farewell!
- Farewell all social memory! all thoughts
- In common! and sweet bonds which link old friendships,
- When the survivors of long years and actions,
- Which now belong to history, soothe the days
- Which yet remain by treasuring each other,
- And never meet, but each beholds the mirror
- Of half a century on his brother's brow,
- And sees a hundred beings, now in earth,
- Flit round them whispering of the days gone by,
- And seeming not all dead, as long as two
- Of the brave, joyous, reckless, glorious band,
- Which once were one and many, still retain
- A breath to sigh for them, a tongue to speak
- Of deeds that else were silent, save on marble——
- From the hour they made me Doge, the Doge they made me—
- Farewell the past! I died to all that had been,
- Or rather they to me: no friends, no kindness,
- No privacy of life—all were cut off:
- They came not near me—such approach gave umbrage;
- They could not love me—such was not the law;
- They thwarted me—'twas the state's policy;
- They baffled me—'twas a patrician's duty;
- They wronged me, for such was to right the state;
- They could not right me—that would give suspicion;
- So that I was a slave to my own subjects;
- So that I was a foe to my own friends;
- Begirt with spies for guards, with robes for power,
- With pomp for freedom, gaolers for a council,
- Inquisitors for friends, and Hell for life!
- I had only one fount of quiet left,
- And that they poisoned! My pure household gods
- Were shivered on my hearth, and o'er their shrine
- Sate grinning Ribaldry, and sneering Scorn.
- I had borne all—it hurt me, but I bore it—
- Till this last running over of the cup
- Of bitterness—until this last loud insult,
- Not only unredressed, but sanctioned; then,
- And thus, I cast all further feelings from me—
- The feelings which they crushed for me, long, long
- Before, even in their oath of false allegiance!
- Even in that very hour and vow, they abjured
- Their friend and made a Sovereign, as boys make
- Playthings, to do their pleasure—and be broken!
- I from that hour have seen but Senators
- In dark suspicious conflict with the Doge,
- Brooding with him in mutual hate and fear;
- They dreading he should snatch the tyranny
- From out their grasp, and he abhorring tyrants.
- To me, then, these men have no private life,
- Nor claim to ties they have cut off from others;
- As Senators for arbitrary acts
- Amenable, I look on them—as such
- Let them be dealt upon.
- Of many wrongs, even ye are ignorant
Credits: Reprinted from Lord Byron: Six Plays. Lord Byron. Los Angeles: Black Box Press, 2007.
