The Works of Lord Byron - LightNovelsOnl.com
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DRAMATIS PERSONae
MEN.
FRANCIS FOSCARI, _Doge of Venice_.
JACOPO FOSCARI, _Son of the Doge_.
JAMES LOREDANO, _a Patrician_.
MARCO MEMMO, _a Chief of the Forty_.
BARBARIGO, _a Senator_.
_Other Senators, The Council of Ten, Guards, Attendants, etc., etc._
WOMAN.
MARINA, _Wife of young_ FOSCARI.
SCENE--The Ducal Palace, Venice.
THE TWO FOSCARI.
ACT I.
SCENE I.--_A Hall in the Ducal Palace_.
_Enter_ LOREDANO _and_ BARBARIGO, _meeting_.
_Lor._ WHERE is the prisoner?
_Bar._ Reposing from The Question.
_Lor._ The hour's past--fixed yesterday For the resumption of his trial.--Let us Rejoin our colleagues in the council, and Urge his recall.
_Bar._ Nay, let him profit by A few brief minutes for his tortured limbs; He was o'erwrought by the Question yesterday, And may die under it if now repeated.[at][37]
_Lor._ Well?
_Bar._ I yield not to you in love of justice, Or hate of the ambitious Foscari, 10 Father and son, and all their noxious race; But the poor wretch has suffered beyond Nature's Most stoical endurance.
_Lor._ Without owning His crime?
_Bar._ Perhaps without committing any.
But he avowed the letter to the Duke Of Milan, and his sufferings half atone for Such weakness.
_Lor._ We shall see.
_Bar._ You, Loredano, Pursue hereditary hate too far.
_Lor._ How far?
_Bar._ To extermination.
_Lor._ When they are Extinct, you may say this.--Let's in to council. 20
_Bar._ Yet pause--the number of our colleagues is not Complete yet; two are wanting ere we can Proceed.
_Lor._ And the chief judge, the Doge?
_Bar._ No--he, With more than Roman fort.i.tude, is ever First at the board in this unhappy process Against his last and only son.[38]
_Lor._ True--true-- His _last_.
_Bar._ Will nothing move you?
_Lor._ _Feels he_, think you?
_Bar._ He shows it not.
_Lor._ I have marked _that_--the wretch!
_Bar._ But yesterday, I hear, on his return To the ducal chambers, as he pa.s.sed the threshold 30 The old man fainted.
_Lor._ It begins to work, then.
_Bar._ The work is half your own.
_Lor._ And should be _all_ mine-- My father and my uncle are no more.
_Bar._ I have read their epitaph, which says they died By poison.[39]
_Lor._ When the Doge declared that he Should never deem himself a sovereign till The death of Peter Loredano, both The brothers sickened shortly:--he _is_ Sovereign.
_Bar._ A wretched one.
_Lor._ What should they be who make Orphans?
_Bar._ But _did_ the Doge make you so?
_Lor._ Yes. 40
_Bar._ What solid proofs?
