SCENE III

The Court of the Ducal Palace: the outer gates are shut against the people. The DoGE enters in his ducal robes, in procession with the Council of Ten and other Patricians, attended by the Guards, till they arrive at the top of the Giants' Staircase' (where the Doges took the oaths); the Executioner is stationed there with his sword. On arriving, a Chief of the Ten takes off the ducal cap from the Doge's head.

Doge. So now the Doge is nothing, and at last

I am again Marino Faliero:

'Tis well to be so, though but for a moment. Here was I crown'd, and here, bear witness, Heaven!

700

With how much more contentment I resign
That shining mockery, the ducal bauble,
Than I received the fatal ornament.
One of the Ten. Thou tremblest, Faliero!
Doge.
'Tis with age, then.

Ben. Faliero! hast thou aught further to
commend,

Compatible with justice, to the senate? Doge. I would commend my nephew to their mercy,

My consort to their justice; for methinks My death, and such a death, might settle all Between the state and me.

Ben. They shall be cared for, Even notwithstanding thine unheard-of

SARDANAPALUS

A TRAGEDY

ΤΟ

THE ILLUSTRIOUS GOETHE

A STRANGER

PRESUMES TO OFFER THE HOMAGE

OF A LITERARY VASSAL TO HIS LIEge lord,
THE FIRST OF EXISTING WRITERS,
WHO HAS CREATED

THE LITERATURE OF HIS OWN COUNTRY,
AND ILLUSTRATED THAT OF EUROPE.

THE UNWORTHY PRODUCTION

WHICH THE AUTHOR VENTURES TO INSCRIBE TO

HIM

IS ENTITLED

SARDANAPALUS.

PREFACE

In publishing the following Tragedies 1 I have only to repeat, that they were not composed with the most remote view to the stage. On the attempt made by the Managers in a former instance, the public opinion has been already expressed. With regard to my own private feelings, as it seems that they are to stand for nothing, I shall say nothing.

For the historical foundation of the following compositions the reader is referred to the Notes. The Author has in one instance attempted to preserve, and in the other to approach, the 'unities;' conceiving that with any very distant departure from them, there may be poetry, but can be no drama. He is aware of the unpopularity of this notion in present English literature; but it is not a system of his own, being merely an opinion, which, not very long ago, was the law of literature throughout the world, and is still so in the more civilised part of it. But nous avons changé tout cela,' and are reaping the advantages of the change. The writer is far from conceiving that any thing he can adduce by personal precept or example can at all approach his regular, or even irregular predecessors; he is merely giving a reason why he preferred the more regular formation of a structure, however feeble, to an entire abandonment of all rules whatsoever. Where he has failed, the failure is in the architect, and not in the art.

[Sardanapalus originally appeared in the same volume with The Two Foscari and Cain.]

Salemenes (solus). He hath wrong'd his queen, but still he is her lord; He hath wrong'd my sister, still he is my brother;

He hath wrong'd his people, still he is their sovereign,

And I must be his friend as well as subject:
He must not perish thus. I will not see
The blood of Nimrod and Semiramis
Sink in the earth, and thirteen hundred years
Of empire ending like a shepherd's tale;
He must be roused. In his effeminate heart
There is a careless courage which corrup-
tion

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