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Read Ebook: The New Eldorado: A Summer Journey to Alaska by Ballou Maturin M Maturin Murray
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Ebook has 89 lines and 9894 words, and 2 pages
PORZIA
CALE YOUNG RICE
"A NIGHT IN AVIGNON," "YOLANDA OF CYPRUS," "CHARLES DI TOCCA," "DAVID," "MANY GODS," "NIRVANA DAYS," "FAR QUESTS," "THE IMMORTAL LURE," ETC.
GARDEN CITY
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
CALE YOUNG RICE
GILBERT MURRAY
PREFACE Some years ago while writing "A Night In Avignon" the thought came to me of framing two other plays that should deal respectively with the Renaissance spirit at its height and decadence, as that play had dealt with it at its beginning. For the great human upheaval that came intoxicatingly to Italy during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is so full of aesthetic contrast and glamor as to be peculiarly suitable for the doubly exacting purposes of poetic drama.
"Giorgione," the second of these plays to be written, was published in 1911 with three other plays in a volume entitled "The Immortal Lure," and like "A Night In Avignon" was received with such kindness as to encourage me to write the third, here presented under the name of "Porzia."
This last play, whose period is that of "decadent Humanism," or as Symonds prefers to call it, of "The Catholic Reaction," is laid in Naples, where the passions of men, more than freed from the long domination of the Church and the Hereafter, seemed to reach in their grasp at this life almost incredible heights and depths of excess. And yet from amid this excess, as from a rank and unweeded garden, were springing into flower many seeds of modern intellectual enfranchisement, as the achievements of Bruno and his contemporaries witness.
I need only add that I have sought to use materials that would be true to the time of this final portrayal, and that I therefore trust it may be understood as an organic member of the group to which it belongs.
C. Y. R.
Louisville, Kentucky, June, 1912.
ACT I
CHARACTERS
PORZIA
That were your ears not stopped with sophistries And Jesuitry you would adjudge divine!
We need but look, To learn that stars are worlds Swung out upon infinitudes of space. And as for earth-- Tho Christ shed blood upon it-- 'Tis but a pilgrim flame among them all.
Ai! to the flames with them, and with all fairness!
You hear it, Bruno?
Is she your wife, so to concern your care?
My beauty, he says, this husband I have taken, Is life--and yet ere 'tis an hour his Forgets to live on it!--and Osio, The brother of him,-- E'en Osio there--
But see, here is Marina! the dance awaits!
Let us go in and give ourselves to Joy, For Misery is quick enough to take us, If first we do not wed us to her rival! Is it not so?
Did he love Venus as he fears the Church, Apollo as he shuns the Inquisition! In!--Osio, will you come?
For in this world there's but one heresy, Denial of the divinity of Joy!
Others who fix upon me this affront Of broken and humiliate betrothals!
Yes! you have made of me a thing of shame Here in the eyes Of those who're alien to me! That you have loved me not--or love me less Than once you did, too well I came to know-- I--with the blood in me of the Medici!-- And now it is open prate!... But do you think The women of my city want resentment, Or less than these sun-lusting ones of Naples Know how to cool their wrath?
And yet--perchance it is as well they come Now ... while there yet is time for more withdrawals.
Not! but you leave the brunt to me alone?
That wind of infidelity from Hell He blows out of his lips do you call beauty! No!--and he with his poets and philosophers, His Platos And star-mad Copernicas, And that Dominican, Giordano Bruno, For whom the stake to flames will yet be lit, Shall learn you are too late in your relenting!
And dallying is the feebleness of fools.
We have been friends, Osio, long been friends, And, woman that I am, I would 'twere more, But in this I suspect--
I say enough.
Until I tell you now plain to your face, And to your heart Plunging toward this passion, That not alone a hate of heresy Is haunting you to it, but that the lips And eyes and brows and soul of--
Rizzio! Porzia! Rizzio!
Will you become a dagger, and not know, Stiletto that you are, what thing you stab!
Rizzio! Porzia! Tasso!
How? what? you called? what moves you?--Osio?
Was some one here? what is it? speak!... Bianca? What burns you?
And quickly! In, Rizzio, in, for they--!
Naples sins and Torre pays, Who fears the earthquake all her days! Who....
Who sits beneath Vesuvius And shrives the castaways of us! Naples sins and Torre pays,
On, on with it! Come Porzia!--On, on.
What, none of you? no heart of joy about me?
A dance, then! Again weave its delight!
For to your want mine is attuned, and what Is music to it shall o'ermaster me! And not alone my feet shall follow, but The Truth you fly to will I wing to attain!-- Tho stars seem to my simple sight but candles Upon the altar of God, I'll think them worlds, If to your soul they seem so; and for the rest--
I ask you at whose urgence this is done! This deed of churchly duty!... Yes, in justice I seek; for there has been Some traitor and perhaps a liar.--Osio? Bianca? half, half I believe 't was you!
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