Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated) (17 page)

LORD JUSTICE
My liege, the law.

DUCHESS
He shall not speak, but, with gags in his mouth,
Shall climb the ladder to the bloody block.

LORD JUSTICE
The law, my liege.

DUCHESS
We are not bound by law,
But with it we bind others.

MORANZONE
My Lord Justice,
Thou wilt not suffer this injustice here.

LORD JUSTICE
The Court needs not thy voice, Lord Moranzone.
Madam, it were a precedent most evil
To wrest the law from its appointed course,
For, though the cause be just, yet anarchy
Might on this licence touch these golden scales
And unjust causes unjust victories gain.

COUNT BARDI
I do not think your Grace can stay the law.

DUCHESS
Ay, it is well to preach and prate of law:
Methinks, my haughty lords of Padua,
If ye are hurt in pocket or estate,
So much as makes your monstrous revenues
Less by the value of one ferry toll,
Ye do not wait the tedious law’s delay
With such sweet patience as ye counsel me.

COUNT BARDI
Madam, I think you wrong our nobles here.

DUCHESS
I think I wrong them not.  Which of you all
Finding a thief within his house at night,
With some poor chattel thrust into his rags,
Will stop and parley with him? do ye not
Give him unto the officer and his hook
To be dragged gaolwards straightway?
And so now,
Had ye been men, finding this fellow here,
With my Lord’s life still hot upon his hands,
Ye would have haled him out into the court,
And struck his head off with an axe.

GUIDO
O God!

DUCHESS
Speak, my Lord Justice.

LORD JUSTICE
Your Grace, it cannot be:
The laws of Padua are most certain here:
And by those laws the common murderer even
May with his own lips plead, and make defence.

DUCHESS
This is no common murderer, Lord Justice,
But a great outlaw, and a most vile traitor,
Taken in open arms against the state.
For he who slays the man who rules a state
Slays the state also, widows every wife,
And makes each child an orphan, and no less
Is to be held a public enemy,
Than if he came with mighty ordonnance,
And all the spears of Venice at his back,
To beat and batter at our city gates -
Nay, is more dangerous to our commonwealth,
For walls and gates, bastions and forts, and things
Whose common elements are wood and stone
May be raised up, but who can raise again
The ruined body of my murdered lord,
And bid it live and laugh?

MAFFIO
Now by Saint Paul
I do not think that they will let him speak.

JEPPO VITELLOZZO
There is much in this, listen.

DUCHESS
Wherefore now,
Throw ashes on the head of Padua,
With sable banners hang each silent street,
Let every man be clad in solemn black;
But ere we turn to these sad rites of mourning
Let us bethink us of the desperate hand
Which wrought and brought this ruin on our state,
And straightway pack him to that narrow house,
Where no voice is, but with a little dust
Death fills right up the lying mouths of men.

GUIDO
Unhand me, knaves!  I tell thee, my Lord Justice,
Thou mightst as well bid the untrammelled ocean,
The winter whirlwind, or the Alpine storm,
Not roar their will, as bid me hold my peace!
Ay! though ye put your knives into my throat,
Each grim and gaping wound shall find a tongue,
And cry against you.

LORD JUSTICE
Sir, this violence
Avails you nothing; for save the tribunal
Give thee a lawful right to open speech,
Naught that thou sayest can be credited.
[The DUCHESS smiles and GUIDO falls back with a gesture of despair.]
Madam, myself, and these wise Justices,
Will with your Grace’s sanction now retire
Into another chamber, to decide
Upon this difficult matter of the law,
And search the statutes and the precedents.

DUCHESS
Go, my Lord Justice, search the statutes well,
Nor let this brawling traitor have his way.

MORANZONE
Go, my Lord Justice, search thy conscience well,
Nor let a man be sent to death unheard.
[Exit the LORD JUSTICE and the Judges.]

DUCHESS
Silence, thou evil genius of my life!
Thou com’st between us two a second time;
This time, my lord, I think the turn is mine.

GUIDO
I shall not die till I have uttered voice.

DUCHESS
Thou shalt die silent, and thy secret with thee.

GUIDO
Art thou that Beatrice, Duchess of Padua?

DUCHESS
I am what thou hast made me; look at me well,
I am thy handiwork.

MAFFIO
See, is she not
Like that white tigress which we saw at Venice,
Sent by some Indian soldan to the Doge?

JEPPO
Hush! she may hear thy chatter.

HEADSMAN
My young fellow,
I do not know why thou shouldst care to speak,
Seeing my axe is close upon thy neck,
And words of thine will never blunt its edge.
But if thou art so bent upon it, why
Thou mightest plead unto the Churchman yonder:
The common people call him kindly here,
Indeed I know he has a kindly soul.

GUIDO
This man, whose trade is death, hath courtesies
More than the others.

HEADSMAN
Why, God love you, sir,
I’ll do you your last service on this earth.

GUIDO
My good Lord Cardinal, in a Christian land,
With Lord Christ’s face of mercy looking down
From the high seat of Judgment, shall a man
Die unabsolved, unshrived?  And if not so,
May I not tell this dreadful tale of sin,
If any sin there be upon my soul?

DUCHESS
Thou dost but waste thy time.

CARDINAL
Alack, my son,
I have no power with the secular arm.
My task begins when justice has been done,
To urge the wavering sinner to repent
And to confess to Holy Church’s ear
The dreadful secrets of a sinful mind.

DUCHESS
Thou mayest speak to the confessional
Until thy lips grow weary of their tale,
But here thou shalt not speak.

GUIDO
My reverend father,
You bring me but cold comfort.

CARDINAL
Nay, my son,
For the great power of our mother Church,
Ends not with this poor bubble of a world,
Of which we are but dust, as Jerome saith,
For if the sinner doth repentant die,
Our prayers and holy masses much avail
To bring the guilty soul from purgatory.

DUCHESS
And when in purgatory thou seest my Lord
With that red star of blood upon his heart,
Tell him I sent thee hither.

GUIDO
O dear God!

MORANZONE
This is the woman, is it, whom you loved?

CARDINAL
Your Grace is very cruel to this man.

DUCHESS
No more than he was cruel to her Grace.

CARDINAL
Yet mercy is the sovereign right of princes.

DUCHESS
I got no mercy, and I give it not.
He hath changed my heart into a heart of stone,
He hath sown rank nettles in a goodly field,
He hath poisoned the wells of pity in my breast,
He hath withered up all kindness at the root;
My life is as some famine murdered land,
Whence all good things have perished utterly:
I am what he hath made me.
[The DUCHESS weeps.]

JEPPO
Is it not strange
That she should so have loved the wicked Duke?

MAFFIO
It is most strange when women love their lords,
And when they love them not it is most strange.

JEPPO
What a philosopher thou art, Petrucci!

MAFFIO
Ay!  I can bear the ills of other men,
Which is philosophy.

DUCHESS
They tarry long,
These greybeards and their council; bid them come;
Bid them come quickly, else I think my heart
Will beat itself to bursting: not indeed,
That I here care to live; God knows my life
Is not so full of joy, yet, for all that,
I would not die companionless, or go
Lonely to Hell.
Look, my Lord Cardinal,
Canst thou not see across my forehead here,
In scarlet letters writ, the word Revenge?
Fetch me some water, I will wash it off:
’Twas branded there last night, but in the day-time
I need not wear it, need I, my Lord Cardinal?
Oh, how it sears and burns into my brain:
Give me a knife; not that one, but another,
And I will cut it out.

CARDINAL
It is most natural
To be incensed against the murderous hand
That treacherously stabbed your sleeping lord.

DUCHESS
I would, old Cardinal, I could burn that hand;
But it will burn hereafter.

CARDINAL
Nay, the Church
Ordains us to forgive our enemies.

DUCHESS
Forgiveness? what is that?  I never got it.
They come at last: well, my Lord Justice, well.
[Enter the LORD JUSTICE.]

LORD JUSTICE
Most gracious Lady, and our sovereign Liege,
We have long pondered on the point at issue,
And much considered of your Grace’s wisdom,
And never wisdom spake from fairer lips -

DUCHESS
Proceed, sir, without compliment.

LORD JUSTICE
We find,
As your own Grace did rightly signify,
That any citizen, who by force or craft
Conspires against the person of the Liege,
Is
ipso facto
outlaw, void of rights
Such as pertain to other citizens,
Is traitor, and a public enemy,
Who may by any casual sword be slain
Without the slayer’s danger; nay, if brought
Into the presence of the tribunal,
Must with dumb lips and silence reverent
Listen unto his well-deserved doom,
Nor has the privilege of open speech.

DUCHESS
I thank thee, my Lord Justice, heartily;
I like your law: and now I pray dispatch
This public outlaw to his righteous doom;
What is there more?

LORD JUSTICE
Ay, there is more, your Grace.
This man being alien born, not Paduan,
Nor by allegiance bound unto the Duke,
Save such as common nature doth lay down,
Hath, though accused of treasons manifold,
Whose slightest penalty is certain death,
Yet still the right of public utterance
Before the people and the open court;
Nay, shall be much entreated by the Court,
To make some formal pleading for his life,
Lest his own city, righteously incensed,
Should with an unjust trial tax our state,
And wars spring up against the commonwealth:
So merciful are the laws of Padua
Unto the stranger living in her gates.

DUCHESS
Being of my Lord’s household, is he stranger here?

LORD JUSTICE
Ay, until seven years of service spent
He cannot be a Paduan citizen.

GUIDO
I thank thee, my Lord Justice, heartily;
I like your law.

SECOND CITIZEN
I like no law at all:
Were there no law there’d be no law-breakers,
So all men would be virtuous.

FIRST CITIZEN
So they would;
’Tis a wise saying that, and brings you far.

TIPSTAFF
Ay! to the gallows, knave.

DUCHESS
Is this the law?

LORD JUSTICE
It is the law most certainly, my liege.

DUCHESS
Show me the book: ’tis written in blood-red.

JEPPO
Look at the Duchess.

DUCHESS
Thou accursed law,
I would that I could tear thee from the state
As easy as I tear thee from this book.
[Tears out the page.]
Come here, Count Bardi: are you honourable?
Get a horse ready for me at my house,
For I must ride to Venice instantly.

BARDI
To Venice, Madam?

DUCHESS
Not a word of this,
Go, go at once. 
[Exit COUNT BARDI.]
A moment, my Lord Justice.
If, as thou sayest it, this is the law -
Nay, nay, I doubt not that thou sayest right,
Though right be wrong in such a case as this -
May I not by the virtue of mine office
Adjourn this court until another day?

LORD JUSTICE
Madam, you cannot stay a trial for blood.

DUCHESS
I will not tarry then to hear this man
Rail with rude tongue against our sacred person.
Come, gentlemen.

LORD JUSTICE
My liege,
You cannot leave this court until the prisoner
Be purged or guilty of this dread offence.

DUCHESS
Cannot, Lord Justice?  By what right do you
Set barriers in my path where I should go?
Am I not Duchess here in Padua,
And the state’s regent?