MARINO FALIERO Analysis Essay Example For Students

MARINO FALIERO Analysis Essay 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. DOGE: Ye, though you know and feel our mutual massOf many wrongs, even ye are ignorantWhat fatal poison to the springs of Life,To human ties, and all thats good and dear,Lurks in the present institutes of Venice:All these men were my friends; I loved them, theyRequited honourably my regards;We served and fought; we smiled and wept in concert;We revelled or we sorrowed side by side;We made alliances of blood and marriage;We grew in years and honours fairly,—tillTheir own desire, not my ambition, madeThem choose me for their Prince, and then farewell!Farewell all social memory! all thoughtsIn common! and sweet bonds which link old friendships,When the survivors of long years and actions,Which now belong to history, soothe the daysWhich yet remain by treasuring each other,And never meet, but each beholds the mirrorOf half a century on his brothers brow,And sees a hundred beings, now in earth,Flit round them whispering of the days gone by,And seeming not all dead, as long as twoOf the brave, joyous, reckless, glorious band,Which once were one and many, still retainA breath to sigh for them, a tongue to speakOf deeds that else were silent, save on marble——From the hour they made me Doge, the Doge they made me—Farewell the past! I died to all that had been,Or rather they to me: no friends, no kindness,No privacy of life—all were cut off:They came not near me—such approach gave umbrage;They could not love me—such was not the law;They thwarted me—twas the states policy;They baffled me—twas a patricians duty;They wronged me, for such was to right the state;They could not right me—that would give suspicion;So that I was a slave to my own subjects;So that I was a foe to my own friends;Begirt with spies for guards, with robes for power,With pomp for freedom, gaolers for a council,Inquisitors for friends, and Hell for life!I had only one fount of quiet left,And that they poisoned! My pure household godsWe re shivered on my hearth, and oer their shrineSate grinning Ribaldry, and sneering Scorn.I had borne all—it hurt me, but I bore it—Till this last running over of the cupOf bitterness—until this last loud insult,Not only unredressed, but sanctioned; then,And thus, I cast all further feelings from me—The feelings which they crushed for me, long, longBefore, even in their oath of false allegiance!Even in that very hour and vow, they abjuredTheir friend and made a Sovereign, as boys makePlaythings, to do their pleasure—and be broken!I from that hour have seen but SenatorsIn dark suspicious conflict with the Doge,Brooding with him in mutual hate and fear;They dreading he should snatch the tyrannyFrom out their grasp, and he abhorring tyrants.To me, then, these men have no private life,Nor claim to ties they have cut off from others;As Senators for arbitrary actsAmenable, I look on them—as suchLet them be dealt upon.