line 21:

line 27: line 31:

line 45:

line 33:

line 33:

Another version of the same.

Have made me sad even until the tears arise-
In wretchedness, and that your teacher knows.
We read one day for pleasure-

Of Launcelot, how passion shook his frame.
We were alone all unsuspiciously.

But oft our eyes met and our cheeks the same,
Pale and discoloured by that reading were;
But one part only wholly overcame;
When we read the desiring smile of her
Who sought the kiss of such devoted lover;
He who from me can be divided ne'er

Kissed my mouth, trembling to that kiss all over !
Accursed was that book and he who wrote-
That day we did no further page uncover."
While thus-etc.

I swooned to death with sympathetic thought

[Another version.]

We were alone, and we suspected nought.

But oft our meeting eyes made pale our cheeks,
Urged by that reading for our ruin wrought;
But one point only wholly overcame :

When we read the desiring smile which sought
By such true lover to be kissed-the same
Who from my side can be divided ne'er
Kissed my mouth, trembling o'er all his frame !
Accurst the book, etc., etc.

[Another version.]

We were alone and-etc.

But one point only 'twas our ruin wrought.
When we read the desiring smile of her

Who to be kissed of such true lover sought;
He who for me, etc., etc.

MARINO FALIERO,

DOGE OF VENICE;

AN HISTORICAL TRAGEDY,

IN FIVE ACTS.

"Dux inquieti turbidus Adriæ."

Horace, [Od. III. c. iii. line 5].

[Marino Faliero was produced for the first time at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, April 25, 1821. Mr. Cooper played "The Doge;" Mrs. W. West, "Angiolina, wife of the Doge." The piece was repeated on April 30, May 1, 2, 3, 4, and 14, 1821.

A revival was attempted at Drury Lane, May 20, 21, 1842, when Macready appeared as "The Doge," and Helen Faucit as Angiolina" (see Life and Remains of E. L. Blanchard, 1891, i. 346-348).

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An adaptation of Byron's play, by W. Bayle Bernard, was produced at Drury Lane, November 2, 1867. It was played till December 17, 1867. Phelps took the part of "The Doge," and Mrs. Hermann of "Angiolina." In Germany an adaptation by Arthur Fitger was performed nineteen times by the "Meiningers," circ. 1887 (see Englische Studien, 1899, xxvii. 146).]

INTRODUCTION TO MARINO FALIERO.

BYRON had no sooner finished the first draft of Manfred than he began (February 25, 1817) to lay the foundation of another tragedy. Venice was new to him, and, on visiting the Doge's Palace, the veiled space intended for the portrait of Marin Falier, and the "Giants' Staircase," where, as he believed," he was once crowned and afterwards decapitated," had laid hold of his imagination, while the legend of the Congiura, "an old man jealous and conspiring against the state of which he was... Chief," promised a subject which the "devil himself” might have dramatized con amore.

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But other interests and ideas claimed his attention, and for more than three years the project slept. At length he slips into the postscript of a letter to Murray, dated, "Ravenna, April 9, 1820" (Letters, 1901, v. 7), an intimation that he had begun a tragedy on the subject of Marino Faliero, the Doge of Venice." The "Imitation of Dante, the Translation of Pulci, the Danticles," etc., were worked off, and, in prospecting for a new vein, a fresh lode of literary ore, he passed, by a natural transition, from Italian literature to Italian history, from the romantic and humorous epopee of Pulci and Berni, to the pseudo-classic drama of Alfieri and Monti.

Jealousy, as "Monk" Lewis had advised him (August, 1817), was an "exhausted passion" in the drama, and to lay the scene in Venice was to provoke comparison with Shakespeare and Otway; but the man himself, the fiery Doge, passionate but not jealous, a noble turned democrat pro hac vice, an old man 'greatly" finding "quarrel in a straw," afforded a theme historically time-honoured, and yet unappropriated by tragic art.

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There was, too, a living interest in the story. For history was repeating itself, and "politics were savage and uncertain." "Mischief was afoot," and the tradition of a conspiracy which failed might find an historic parallel in

a conspiracy which would succeed. There was "THAT brewing in Italy" which might, perhaps, inspire "a people to redress itself," "and with a cry of,' Up with the Republic!' 'Down with the Nobility!' send the Barbarians of all nations back to their own dens!" (Letters, 1901, v. 10, 12, 19.)

In taking the field as a dramatist, Byron sought to win distinction for himself-in the first place by historical accuracy, and, secondly, by artistic regularity-by a stricter attention to the dramatic "unities." "History is closely followed," he tells Murray, in a letter dated July 17, 1820; and, again, in the Preface (vide post, pp. 332-337), which is an expansion of the letter, he gives a list of the authorities which he had consulted, and claims to have "transferred into our language an historical fact worthy of commemoration." More than once in his letters to Murray he reverts to this profession of accuracy, and encloses some additional note, in which he points out and rectifies an occasional deviation from the historical record. In this respect, at any rate, he could contend on more than equal terms "with established writers," that is, with Shakespeare and Otway, and could present to his countrymen an exacter and, so, more lifelike picture of the Venetian Republic. It is plain, too, that he was bitten with the love of study for its own sake, with a premature passion for erudition, and that he sought and found relief from physical and intellectual excitement in the intricacies of research. If his history is at fault, it was not from any lack of diligence on his part, but because the materials at his disposal or within his cognizance were inaccurate and misleading. He makes no mention of the huge collection of Venetian archives which had recently been deposited in the Convent of the Frari, or of Doria's transcript of Sanudo's Diaries, bequeathed in 1816 to the Library of St. Mark; but he quotes as his authorities the Vita Ducum Venetorum, of Marin Sanudo (1466-1535), the Storia, etc., of Andrea Navagero (1483-1529), and the Principj di Storia, etc., of Vettor Sandi, which belongs to the latter half of the eighteenth century. Byron's chroniclers were ancient, but not ancient enough; and, though they "handed down the story" (see Medwin, Conversations, p. 173), they depart in numerous particulars from the facts recorded in contemporary documents. Unquestionably the legend, as it appears in Sanudo's perplexing and uncritical narrative (see, for the translation of an original version of the Italian, Appendix, pp. 462-467), is more dramatic than the "low beginnings" of the myth, which may be traced to the annalists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; but, like other legends, it is insusceptible of proof. Byron's Doge is almost, if not quite, as