Four Tragedies and Octavia (29 page)

22
From the same:

Thou, Lucius, mak'st me proud, thou heav'st my mind:

But what? Shall I esteem a crown ought else

Than as a gorgeous crest of easeless helm,

Or as some brittle mould of glorious pomp,

Or glittering glass which, while it shines, it breaks?

All this a sudden chance may dash, and not

Perhaps with thirteen kings, or in nine years;

All may not find so slow and lingering fates.

(cf.
Troades
, 271–5)

23
From
Arden of Feversham
(anon, published 1592):

Well fares the man, howe'er his cates do taste,

That tables not with foul suspicion;

And he but pines amongst his delicates,

Whose troubled mind is stuff'd with discontent.

My golden time was when I had no gold;

Though then I wanted, yet I slept secure;

My daily toil begat me night's repose,

My night's repose made daylight fresh to me.

But since I climb'd the top bough of the tree

And sought to build my nest among the clouds,

Each gentle stary gale doth shake my bed,

And makes me dread my downfall to the earth.

(cf.
Thyestes
, 445 ff.)

24
From Marston's
Antonio and Mellida
(1599):

PIERO
: 'Tis just that subjects act commands of kings.

PANDULFO
: Command then just and honourable things.

PIERO
: Where only honest deeds to kings are free,

    It is no empire, but a beggary.

…

PIERO
: Tush, juiceless graybeard, 'tis immunity

    Proper to princes, that our state exacts;

    Our subjects not alone to bear, but praise our acts.

PANDULFO
: O but that prince, that worthful praise aspires,

    From hearts, and not from lips, applause desires.

PIERO
: Pish!… True praise the boon of common men doth ring,

    False only girts the temple of a king.

(cf.
Thyestes
, 205–18, and
Octavia
, 440–60)

25
From the same:

No matter whither, but from whence, we fall.

(cf.
Thyestes
, 925)

26
From Ben Jonson's
Sejanus
(acted 1603):

Thou lost thyself, child Drusus, when thou thoughtst

Thou couldst outskip my vengeance; or outstand

The power I had to crush thee into air.

Thy follies now shall taste what kind of man

They have provoked, and this thy father's house

Crack in the flame of my incensed rage,

Whose fury shall admit no shame or mean.

Adultery! It is the slightest ill

I will commit. A race of wicked acts

Shall flow out of my anger, and o'erspread

The world's wide face, which no posterity

Shall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent: things

That for their cunning, close, and cruel mark,

Thy father would wish his: and shall, perhaps,

Carry the empty name, but we the prize.

(cf.
Thyestes
, 44–8,192–5)

27
From the same:

TIBERIUS
: Long hate pursues such acts.

SEJANUS
:                                                  Whom hatred frights,

    Let him not dream of sovereignty.

TIBERIUS
:                                          Are rights

    Of faith, love, piety, to be trod down,

    Forgotten, and made vain?

SEJANUS
:                              All for a crown.

    The prince who shames a tyrant's name to bear,

    Shall never dare do anything, but fear;

    All the command of sceptres quite doth perish,

    If it begin religious thoughts to cherish:

    Whole empires fall, sway'd by those nice respects;

    It is the license of dark deeds protects

    Ev'n states most hated, when no laws resist

    The sword, but that it acteth what it list.
¹

28
From the same:

Still dost thou suffer, heaven! Will no flame,

No heat of sin, make thy just wrath to boil

In thy distemper'd bosom, and o'erflow

The pitchy blazes of impiety,

Kindled beneath thy throne! Still canst thou sleep,

Patient, while vice doth make an antick face

At thy dread power, and blow dust and smoke

Into thy nostrils! Jove! will nothing wake thee?

(cf.
Phaedra
, 671)

29
From Ben Jonson's
Catiline
(acted 1611):

GHOST OF SYLLA
: Dost thou not feel me, Rome? not yet; is night

    So heavy on thee, and my weight so light?

    Can Sylla's ghost arise within thy walls,

    Less threatening than an earthquake, the quick falls

    Of thee and thine?…

    What sleep is this doth seize thee so like death,

    And is not it? Wake, feel her in my breath:

    Behold, I come, sent from the Stygian sound,

    As a dire vapour that had cleft the ground,

    To ingender with the night, and blast the day;

    Or like a pestilence that should display

    Infection through the world; which thus I do –

        [
The curtain draws, and Catiline is discovered in his study
]

    Pluto be at thy counsels, and into

    Thy darker bosom enter Sylla's spirit!

    All that was mine, and bad, thy breast inherit…

    What all the several ills that visit earth,

    Brought forth by night with a sinister birth,

    Plagues, famine, fire, could not reach unto,

    The sword, nor surfeits; let thy fury do;

    Make all past, present, future ill thine own;

    And conquer all example in thy one.

(cf.
Thyestes
, Act I, and
Oedipus
, 591)

30
From the same:

Is there a heaven and gods? And can it be

They should so slowly hear, so slowly see?

Hath Jove no thunder?…

What will awake thee, heaven? What can excite

Thine anger, if this practise be too light?

(cf.
Phaedra
, 671)

31
From Chapman's
Conspiracy of Byron
(1608):

LA BROSSE
: Forbear to ask me, son;

    You bid me speak what fear bids me conceal.

BYRON
: You have no cause to fear, and therefore speak.

LA B
.: You'll rather wish you had been ignorant

    Than be instructed in a thing so ill.

BYR
.: Ignorance is an idle salve for ill;

    And therefore do not urge me to enforce

    What I would freely know; for, by the skill

    Shown in thy aged hairs, I'll lay thy brain

    Here scatter'd at my feet, and seek in that

    What safely thou mayst utter with thy tongue,

    If thou deny it.

LA B
.:                  Will you not allow me

    To hold my peace? What less can I desire?

    If not, be pleased with my constrained speech.

BYR
.: Was ever man yet punish'd for expressing

    What he was charged? Be free, and speak the worst.

(cf.
Oedipus
, 509–29)

1
We can carry nothing out
(
Ad Marciam
,
X
):

All the adventitious ornaments which surround us – our children, high positions, wealth, spacious apartments, corridors thronged with crowds of waiting clients, a distinguished high-born or beautiful wife – all these and other possessions, being dependent on the uncertain and changeable whim of chance, are only so much borrowed furniture. Not one of them has been given us outright. Our stage has been furnished with borrowed properties, due to be returned to their owners; some must go back tomorrow, some the day after, very few will remain in our hands till the end of our time. We are not therefore to regard ourselves as living among our own possessions; we have only been given the loan of them. We have the use of these things, but only for as long as the lender chooses. It is for us to see that we keep them in good order, since they are only ours for a limited time, and to hand them back, when called upon to do so, without complaint. It is only a bad debtor that finds fault with his creditor. It follows that our love for our relatives – both our juniors whom in the course of nature we should wish to survive us, and those who even by their own choice would wish to precede us to the grave – should be tempered by the reflection that we have been given no guarantee of their immortality, or even of their longevity. We need constantly to remind ourselves to bestow on them our love as upon possessions destined to vanish, or indeed already vanishing from our sight. Whatever gifts of Fortune you may be lucky enough to enjoy, you enjoy them only by the permission of their owner. Enjoy by all means the company of your children while you can, and in turn give them the enjoyment of your society; drain every source of pleasure while it lasts, and without procrastination. Tonight is not to be depended on; no, that is too great an allowance – this hour is not to be depended on. Make haste; you are being
pursued; this fellowship will soon be broken up; this happy companionship must come to an end, its noisy gaiety be silenced. Destruction is the universal law; do you not know, poor mortals, that life is a race to dissolution?

2
Consolations in exile
(
Ad Helviam matrem
,
VIII
):

Against the mere inconvenience of a change of residence – setting aside any other disadvantages of banishment – there is ample compensation (in the opinion of the learned Varro) in the fact that, wherever we go, the same natural world is open for our enjoyment. Marcus Brutus suggests a different consolation: for him it is enough that the exile can always take with him the strength of his own character. Either of these sentiments, taken separately, may seem insufficient consolation for the exile; but the force of both combined must be granted to be considerable. For how little, we should ask ourselves, have we lost, when we may take with us into any new place of residence our two most desirable possessions – our contact with universal nature, and our own character? It was, I am sure, the very intention of the creator of the world, whoever he was – whether the omnipotent God, or an incorporeal reason capable of an immense creative design, or a divine spirit of life breathing its purposes alike into all things great and small, or a blind necessity, an inevitable chain of linked causes and effects – it was the intention of the creator that none but a man's most worthless possessions should ever pass into the control of another man. All that is most valuable to a man lies beyond the reach of other men's power. Such possessions can neither be given nor taken away. The universe around us, that most grand and elaborate work of nature, and the mind which can contemplate and marvel at it (and which is itself a most wonderful part of it), are our own everlasting property and will remain ours as long as we ourselves remain alive. Let us therefore go on our way, wherever it may lead us, fearlessly, with eager and uplifted heart. Let us fare to whatever land we must; no place on the face of the earth can be a place of exile, for there is no place on earth that has nothing to say to man. Stand where we may, and raise our eyes
from the ground to the sky, the works of God will always be at the same distance from the works of man, no nearer and no farther. After all, as long as my eyes are not parted from that sight, of which they can never have enough; as long as I may look upon the sun and the moon, may gaze upon the other heavenly constellations, may ponder on their rising and setting and study the causes of their various motions fast or slow – how some are fixed, some not venturing far afield but turning in their own restricted orbits, some newly bursting into light, some drawing a trail of spent fire behind them, as though in a dying fall, or tracing a long arc of light across immense distances; as long as I can have these for my companions and thus share, so far as man may, in the life of the heavenly bodies, and as long as I still have a mind to devote to the contemplation of my fellow-beings on high – how can it matter what ground I tread under my feet?

3
Early influences
(
Ep
., 108):

I well remember that when I used to listen to Attalus [
one of his tutors
] inveighing against the follies and misfortunes of life, I would be filled with pity for the whole human race and look upon him as a man standing on a pinnacle of superhuman excellence. He did indeed describe himself as a king, but he seemed more than that to me, if he was able to criticize the conduct of kings. And when he set about commending poverty, and showing that whatever was for all practical purposes superfluous was only so much useless baggage and a burden to the bearer, I was ready to go straight out of the classroom to a life of poverty. If he castigated the pleasures of life, when he advocated bodily purity and simple living, and when he praised the conscience innocent not only of illicit delights but of all superfluous ones – I was at once ready to discipline my appetites. With the result that some of these disciplines remain with me to this day; I adopted all these precepts with great enthusiasm in the first place, and later, when I entered into public life, I retained a certain number of my good intentions. For instance, I have never touched oysters or mushrooms in the whole of my life (and
really, these things are not food but just titillations to make people eat when they have already eaten more than enough – beloved by gluttons and over-eaters – something that slips down easily, and as easily comes up again!). From the same source I derived my lifelong abstention from perfumes – the best smell a body can have is no smell; and from bathing – to stew and weaken the body by perspiration always seemed to me a harmful and effete habit. Some other indulgences which I rejected have now returned to me; but I can say that wherever I abandoned an abstinence I have preserved a moderation, almost amounting to abstinence – perhaps more difficult to achieve than abstinence; there are some things which it is easier to give up altogether than to use with moderation.…