Chapter 36

The people in crowds gathered round the grated gates of the Ducal Palace, which are shut._

_First Citizen_. I have gained the Gate, and can discern the Ten, Robed in their gowns of state, ranged round the Doge.

_Second Cit_. I cannot reach thee with mine utmost effort. How is it? let us hear at least, since sight Is thus prohibited unto the people, Except the occupiers of those bars.

_First Cit_. One has approached the Doge, and now they strip The ducal bonnet from his head--and now He raises his keen eyes to Heaven; I see Them glitter, and his lips move--Hush! hush!--no, 10 'Twas but a murmur--Curse upon the distance! His words are inarticulate, but the voice Swells up like muttered thunder; would we could But gather a sole sentence!

_Second Cit_. Hush! we perhaps may catch the sound.

_First Cit_. 'Tis vain. I cannot hear him.--How his hoary hair Streams on the wind like foam upon the wave! Now--now--he kneels--and now they form a circle Round him, and all is hidden--but I see The lifted sword in air----Ah! hark! it falls! 20

[_The people murmur._

_Third Cit_. Then they have murdered him who would have freed us.

_Fourth Cit_. He was a kind man to the commons ever.

_Fifth Cit_. Wisely they did to keep their portals barred. Would we had known the work they were preparing Ere we were summoned here--we would have brought Weapons, and forced them!

_Sixth Cit_. Are you sure he's dead?

_First Cit_. I saw the sword fall--Lo! what have we here?

_Enter on the Balcony of the Palace which fronts St. Mark's Place a_ CHIEF OF THE TEN,[480] _with a bloody sword. He waves it thrice before the People, and exclaims,_

"Justice hath dealt upon the mighty Traitor!"

[_The gates are opened; the populace rush in towards the The foremost of them exclaims to those behind,_

"The gory head rolls down the Giants' Steps!"[fy][481] [_The curtain falls_.[482]

FOOTNOTES:

[359] {331}[Marin Faliero was not in command of the land forces at the siege of Zara in 1346. According to contemporary documents, he held a naval command under Civran, who was in charge of the fleet. Byron was misled by an error in Morelli's Italian version of the _Chronica iadratina seu historia obsidionis Jaderæ_, p. xi. (See _Marino faliero avanti il Dogado_, by Vittorio Lazzarino, published in _Nuovo Archivio Veneto_, 1893, vol. v. pt. i. p. 132, note 4.)]

[360] [For the siege of Alesia (Alise in Côte d'Or), which resulted in the defeat of the Gauls and the surrender of Vercingetorix, see _De Bella Gallico_, vii. 68-90. Belgrade fell to Prince Eugene, August 18, 1717.]

[361] {332}[If this event ever took place, it must have been in 1346, when the future Doge was between sixty and seventy years of age. The story appears for the first time in the chronicle of Bartolomeo Zuccato, notajo e cancelliere of the Comune di Treviso, which belongs to the first half of the sixteenth century. The Venetian chroniclers who were Faliero's contemporaries, and Anonimo Torriano, a Trevisan, who wrote before Zuccato, are silent. See _Marino Faliero, La Congiura_, by Vittorio Lazzarino.--_Nuovo Archivio Veneto_, 1897, vol. xiii. pt. i. p. 29.]

[362] ["Square talked in a very different strain.... In pronouncing these [sentences from the _Tusculan Questions, etc_.] he was one day so eager that he unfortunately bit his tongue ... this accident gave Thwackum, who was present, and who held all such doctrines to be heathenish and atheistical, an opportunity to clap a judgment on his back."--_The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling_, Bk. V. chap. ii. 1768, i. 234. See, too, Letter to Murray, November 23, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 142; _Life_, p. 570.]

[363] [[_Principj di storia civile della Repubblica di Venezia_. Scritti da Vettor Sandi, 1755, Part II. tom. i. pp. 127, 128.]

[364] [_Storia della Republica Veneziana_. Scritta da Andrea Navagiero, _apud_ Muratori, _Italic. Rerum, Scriptores_, 1733, xxiii. p. 924, _sq_.]

[365] [_Istoria dell' assedio e della Ricupera di Zara, Fatta da' Veneziani nell' anno_ 1346. Scritta da auctore contemporaneo, pp. i.-xxxviii.]

[366] {333}[Michele Steno was not, as Sanudo and others state, one of the Capi of the Quarantia in 1355, but twenty years later, in 1375. When Faliero was elected to the Dogeship, Steno was a youth of twenty, and a man under thirty years of age was not eligible for the Quarantia.--_La Congiura,_ etc., p. 64.]

[367] [History does not bear out the tradition of her youth. Aluica Gradenigo was born in the first decade of the fourteenth century, and became Dogaressa when she was more than forty-five years of age.--_La Congiura,_ p. 69.]

[368] [See _A View of the Society and Manners in Italy,_ by John Moore, M.D., 1781, i. 144-152. The "stale jest" is thus worded: "This lady imagined she had been affronted by a young Venetian nobleman at a public ball, and she complained bitterly ... to her husband. The old Doge, who had all the desire imaginable to please his wife, determined, in this matter, at least, to give her ample satisfaction."]

[369] {334}[For Frederick's verse, "Evitez de Bernis la stérile abondance," see _La Bibliographie Universelle_, art. "Bernis"; and for his jest, "Je ne la connais pas," see _History of Frederick the Great_, by Thomas Carlyle, 1898, vi. 14.]

[370] [For the story of the abduction of Dervorgilla, wife of Tiernan O'Ruarc, by Dermot Mac-Murchad, King of Leinster, in 1153, see Moore's _History of Ireland_, 1837, ii. 200.]

[371] {335}[_Istoria della Repubblica di Venezia_, del Sig. Abate Laugier, Tradotta del Francese. Venice, 1778, iv. 30.]

[372] {336}[The marble staircase on which Faliero took the ducal oath, and on which he was afterwards beheaded, led into the courtyard of the palace. It was erected by a decree of the Senate in 1340, and was pulled down to make room for Rizzo's façade, which was erected in 1484. The "Scala dei Giganti" (built by Antonio Rizzo, circ. 1483) does not occupy the site of the older staircase.]

[373] [On the north side of the Campo, in front of the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (better known as San Zanipolo), stands the Scuola di San Marco. Attached to the lower hall of the Scuola is the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pace, in which the sarcophagus containing the bones of Marino Faliero was discovered in 1815.]

[374] [In the Campo in front of the church is the equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, designed by Andrea Veroccio, and cast in 1496 by Alessandro Leopardi.--_Handbook: Northern Italy_, p. 374.]

[375] {337}[See _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 317, note 1.]

[376] [See _Letters_, 1898, ii. 79, note 3.]

[ct] _It is like being at the whole process of a woman's toilet--it disenchants._--[MS. M.]

[cu] _Any man of common independence._--[MS. M. erased.]

[377] {338}While I was in the sub-committee of Drury Lane Theatre, I can vouch for my colleagues, and I hope for myself, that we did our best to bring back the legitimate drama. I tried what I could to get _De Montford_ revived, but in vain, and equally in vain in favour of Sotheby's _Ivan_, which was thought an acting play; and I endeavoured also to wake Mr. Coleridge to write us a tragedy[A]. Those who are not in the secret will hardly believe that the _School for Scandal_ is the play which has brought the _least money_, averaging the number of times it has been acted since its production; so Manager Dibdin assured me. Of what has occurred since Maturin's _Bertram_ I am not aware[B]; so that I may be traducing, through ignorance, some excellent new writers; if so, I beg their pardon. I have been absent from England nearly five years, and, till last year, I never read an English newspaper since my departure, and am now only aware of theatrical matters through the medium of the _Parisian Gazette_ of Galignani, and only for the last twelve months. Let me, then, deprecate all offence to tragic or comic writers, to whom I wish well, and of whom I know nothing. The long complaints of the actual state of the drama arise, however, from no fault of the performers. I can conceive nothing better than Kemble, Cooke, and Kean, in their very different manners, or than Elliston in _Gentleman's_ comedy, and in some parts of tragedy. Miss O'Neill[C] I never saw, having made and kept a determination to see nothing which should divide or disturb my recollection of Siddons. Siddons and Kemble were the _ideal_ of tragic action; I never saw anything at all resembling them, even in _person_; for this reason, we shall never see again Coriolanus or Macbeth. When Kean is blamed for want of dignity, we should remember that it is a grace, not an art, and not to be attained by study. In all, _not_ super-natural parts, he is perfect; even his very defects belong, or seem to belong, to the parts themselves, and appear truer to nature. But of Kemble we may say, with reference to his acting, what the Cardinal de Retz said of the Marquis of Montrose, "that he was the only man he ever saw who reminded him of the heroes of Plutarch."[D]

[A] [See letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, March 31, 1815, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 190; letter to Moore, October 28, 1815, and note 1 (with quotation from unpublished letter of Coleridge), and passages from Byron's _Detached Thoughts_ (1821) ... _ibid_., pp. 230, 233-238.]

[B] [Maturin's _Bertram_ was played for the first time at Drury Lane, May 9, 1816. (See _Detached Thoughts_ (1821), _Letters_, 1899, iii. 233, and letter to Murray, October 12, 1817, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 171.)]

[C] [Elizabeth O'Neill (1791-1872), afterwards Lady Becher, made her _début_ in 1814, and retired from the stage in 1819. Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) made her final appearance on the stage June 9, 1818, and her brother John Philip Kemble (1757-1823) appeared for the last time in _Coriolanus_, June 23, 1817. Of the other actors mentioned in this note, George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812) had long been dead; Edmund Kean (1787-1833) had just returned from a successful tour in the United States; and Robert William Elliston (1774-1831) (_vide ante_, p. 328) had, not long before (1819), become lessee of Drury Lane Theatre.]

[D]["Le comte de Montross, Écossais et chef de la maison de Graham, le seul homme du monde qui m'ait jamais rappelé l'idée de certains héros que l'on ne voit plus que dans les vies de Plutarque, avail soutenu le parti du roi d'Angleterre dans son pays, avec une grandeur d'àme qui rien avait point de pareille en ce siècle."--_Mémoires du Cardinal de Retz_, 1820, ii. 88.]

[378] {339}[This appreciation of the _Mysterious Mother_, which he seems to have read in Lord Dover's preface to Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann, provoked Coleridge to an angry remonstrance. "I venture to remark, first, that I do not believe that Lord Byron spoke sincerely; for I suspect that he made a tacit exception of himself at least.... Thirdly, that the _Mysterious Mother_ is the most disgusting, vile, detestable composition that ever came from the hand of man. No one with a spark of true manliness, of which Horace Walpole had none, could have written it."--_Table Talk_, March 20, 1834. Croker took a very different view, and maintained "that the good old English blank verse, the force of character expressed in the wretched mother ... argue a strength of conception, and vigour of expression capable of great things," etc. Over and above the reasonable hope and expectation that this provocative eulogy of Walpole's play would annoy the "Cockneys" and the "Lakers," Byron was no doubt influenced in its favour by the audacity of the plot, which not only put _septentrional_ prejudices at defiance, but was an instance in point that love ought not "to make a tragic subject unless it is love furious, criminal, and hopeless" (Letter to Murray, January 4, 1821). He would, too, be deeply and genuinely moved by such verse as this--

"Consult a holy man! inquire of him! --Good father, wherefore? what should I inquire? Must I be taught of him that guilt is woe? That innocence alone is happiness-- That martyrdom itself shall leave the villain The villain that it found him? Must I learn That minutes stamped with crime are past recall? That joys are momentary; and remorse Eternal?... Nor could one risen from the dead proclaim This truth in deeper sounds to my conviction; We want no preacher to distinguish vice From virtue. At our birth the God revealed All conscience needs to know. No codicil To duty's rubric here and there was placed In some Saint's casual custody."