The Works of Lord Byron Volume V Part 31

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?