Marino Faliero monologue from the play by Lord Byron Essay Thesis Example For Students

Marino Faliero monologue from the play by Lord Byron Essay Thesis A monologue from the play by Lord Byron NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Lord Byron: Six Plays. Lord Byron. Los Angeles: Black Box Press, 2007. ANGIOLINA: Sage Benintende, now chief Judge of Venice, I speak to thee in answer to yon Signor. Inform the ribald Steno, that his words Ne\er weighed in mind with Loredano\s daughter, Further than to create a moment\s pity For such as he is: would that others had Despised him as I pity! I prefer My honour to a thousand lives, could such Be multiplied in mine, but would not have A single life of others lost for that Which nothing human can impugn—the sense Of Virtue, looking not to what is called A good name for reward, but to itself. To me the scorner\s words were as the wind Unto the rock: but as there are—alas! Spirits more sensitive, on which such things Light as the Whirlwind on the waters; souls To whom Dishonour\s shadow is a substance More terrible than Death, here and hereafter; Men whose vice is to start at Vice\s scoffing, And who, though proof against all blandishments Of pleasure, and all pangs of Pain, are feeble When the proud name on which they pinnacled Their hopes is breathed on, jealous as the eagle Of her high aiery; let what we now Behold, and feel, and suffer, be a lesson To wretches how they tamper in their spleen With beings of a higher order. Insects Have made the lion mad ere now; a shaft I\ the heel o\erthrew the bravest of the brave; A wife\s Dishonour was the bane of Troy; A wife\s Dishonour unkinged Rome for ever; An injured husband brought the Gauls to Clusium, And thence to Rome, which perished for a time; An obscene gesture cost Caligula His life, while Earth yet bore his cruelties; A virgin\s wrong made Spain a Moorish province; And Steno\s lie, couched in two worthless lines, Hath decimated Venice, put in peril A Senate which hath stood eight hundred years, Discrowned a Prince, cut off his crownless head, And forged new fetters for a groaning people! Let the poor wretch, like to the courtesan Who fired Persepolis, be proud of this, If it so please him—\twere a pride fit for him! But let him not insult the last hours of Him, who, whate\er he now is, was a Hero, By the intrusion of his very prayers; Nothing of good can come from such a source, Nor would we aught with him, nor now, nor ever: We leave him to himself, that lowest depth Of human baseness. Pardon is for men, And not for reptiles—we have none for Steno, And no resentment: things like him must sting, And higher beings suffer; \tis the charter Of Life. The man who dies by the adder\s fang May have the crawler crushed, but feels no anger: \Twas the worm\s nature; and some men are worms In soul, more than the living things of tombs.