Full Chorus of IONA and the SWINE.
Tallyho! tallyho!
130
Through rain, hail, and snow,
Through brake, gorse, and briar,
Through fen, flood, and mire,
We go! we go!
Tallyho! tallyho!
135
Through pond, ditch, and slough,
Wind them, and find them,
Like the Devil behind them,
Tallyho! tallyho!
[Exeunt, in full cry; IONA driving on the SWINE, with the empty GREEN BAG.
THE END.
NOTE ON OEDIPUS TYRANNUS, BY MRS. SHELLEY
IN the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded, in August, 1820, Shelley ‘begins Swellfoot the Tyrant, suggested by the pigs at the fair of San Giuliano.’ This was the period of Queen Caroline’s landing in England, and the struggles made by George IV to get rid of her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the ‘Green Bag’ on the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King’s name that an inquiry should be instituted into his wife’s conduct. These circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano. A friend came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows: Shelley read to us his Ode to Liberty; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the ‘chorus of frogs’ in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a political-satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus—and Swellfoot was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside.
Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my publishing it at first. But I cannot bring myself to keep back anything he ever wrote; for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human race, and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it does not live and thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of genius, who aspire to pluck bright truth
‘from the pale-faced moon;
Or dive into the bottom of the deep
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned’
truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in his slightest word than in the waters of Lethe which are so eagerly prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woe. This drama, however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name.
* * *
1 See Universal History for an account of the number of people who died, and the immense consumption of garlic by the wretched Egyptians, who made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their tyrants.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]
2 The Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]
3 And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out of Aethiopia, and for the bee of Egypt, etc.—EZEKIEL.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]
4 ‘If one should marry a gallows, and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone—CYMBELINE.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]
5 ‘Rich and rare were the gems she wore.’ See Moore’s Irish Melodies.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]
CHARLES THE FIRST
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, Citizens, Pursuivants, Marshalsmen, Law Students, Judges, Clerk.
SCENE I.—The Masque of the Inns of Court.
A Pursuivant. Place, for the Marshal of the Masque!
First Citizen. What thinkest thou of this quaint masque which turns,
Like morning from the shadow of the night,
The night to day, and London to a place
Of peace and joy?
5
Second Citizen. And Hell to Heaven.
Eight years are gone,
And they seem hours, since in this populous street
I trod on grass made green by summer’s rain,
For the red plague kept state within that palace
10
Where now that vanity reigns. In nine years more
The roots will be refreshed with civil blood;
And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven
That sin and wrongs wound, as an orphan’s cry,
The patience of the great Avenger’s ear.
15
A Youth. Yet, father, ’tis a happy sight to see,
Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden
By God or man;—’tis like the bright procession
Of skiey visions in a solemn dream
From which men wake as from a Paradise,
20
And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life.
If God be good, wherefore should this be evil?
And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw
Unseasonable poison from the flowers
Which bloom so rarely in this barren world?
25
Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present
Dark as the future!—
· · · · · · ·
When Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant Fear,
And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping
As on Hell’s threshold; and all gentle thoughts
30
Waken to worship Him who giveth joys
With His own gift.
Second Citizen. How young art thou in this old age of time!
How green in this gray world? Canst thou discern
The signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint
35
Of change in that stage-scene in which thou art
Not a spectator but an actor? or
Art thou a puppet moved by [enginery]?
The day that dawns in fire will die in storms,
Even though the noon be calm. My travel’s done,—
40
Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found
My inn of lasting rest; but thou must still
Be journeying on in this inclement air.
Wrap thy old cloak about thy back;
Nor leave the broad and plain and beaten road,
45
Although no flowers smile on the trodden dust,
For the violent paths of pleasure. This Charles the First
Rose like the equinoctial sun, …
By vapours, through whose threatening ominous veil
Darting his altered influence he has gained
50
This height of noon—from which he must decline
Amid the darkness of conflicting storms,
To dank extinction and to latest night …
There goes
The apostate Strafford; he whose titles
55
whispered aphorisms
From Machiavel and Bacon: and, if Judas
Had been as brazen and as bold as he—–
First Citizen. That
Is the Archbishop.
Second Citizen. Rather say the Pope:
London will be soon his Rome: he walks
60
As if he trod upon the heads of men:
He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold;—
Beside him moves the Babylonian
woman
Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow,
Mitred adulterer! he is joined in sin,
65
Which turns Heaven’s milk of mercy to revenge.
Third Citizen (lifting up his eyes). Good Lord! rain it down upon him! …
Amid her ladies walks the papist queen,
As if her nice feet scorned our English earth.
The Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be
70
A dog if I might tear her with my teeth!
There’s old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke,
Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry,
And others who make base their English breed
By vile participation of their honours
75
With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates.
When lawyers masque ’tis time for honest men
To strip the vizor from their purposes.
A seasonable time for masquers this!
When Englishmen and Protestants should sit
80
dust on their dishonoured heads,
To avert the wrath of Him whose scourge is felt
For the great sins which have drawn down from Heaven
and foreign overthrow.
The remnant of the martyred saints in Rochefort
85
Have been abandoned by their faithless allies
To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer
Lewis of France,—the Palatinate is lost—–
Enter LEIGHTON (who has been branded in the face) and BASTWICK.
Canst thou be—art thou—–?
Leighton. I was Leighton: what
I am thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes,
90
And with thy memory look on thy friend’s mind,
Which is unchanged, and where is written deep
The sentence of my judge.
Third Citizen. Are these the marks with which
Laud thinks to improve the image of his Maker
Stamped on the face of man? Curses upon him,
The impious tyrant!
95
Second Citizen. It is said besides
That lewd and papist drunkards may profane
The Sabbath with their
And has permitted that most heathenish custom
Of dancing round a pole dressed up with wreaths
100
On May-day.
A man who thus twice crucifies his God
May well his brother.—In my mind, friend,
The root of all this ill is prelacy.
I would cut up the root.
Third Citizen. And by what means?
105
Second Citizen. Smiting each Bishop under the fifth rib.
Third Citizen. You seem to know the vulnerable place
Of these same crocodiles.
Second Citizen. I learnt it in
Egyptian bondage, sir. Your worm of Nile
Betrays not with its flattering tears like they;
110
For, when they cannot kill, they whine and weep.
Nor is it half so greedy of men’s bodies
As they of soul and all; nor does it wallow
In slime as they in simony and lies
And close lusts of the flesh.
A Marshalsman. Give place, give place!
115
You torch-bearers, advance to the great gate,
And then attend the Marshal of the Masque
Into the Royal presence.
A Law Student. What thinkest thou
Of this quaint show of ours, my agèd friend?
Even now we see the redness of the torches
120
Inflame the night to the eastward, and the clarions
[Gasp?] to us on the wind’s wave. It comes!
And their sounds, floating hither round the pageant,
Rouse up the astonished air.
First Citizen. I will not think but that our country’s wounds
125
May yet be healed. The king is just and gracious,
Though wicked counsels now pervert his will:
These once cast off—
Second Citizen. As adders cast their skins
And keep their venom, so kings often change;
Councils and counsellors hang on one another,
130
Hiding the loathsome
Like the base patchwork of a leper’s rags.
The Youth. Oh, still those dissonant thoughts!—List how the music
Grows on the enchanted air! And see, the torches
Restlessly flashing, and the crowd divided
Like waves before an admiral’s prow!
135
A Marshalsman. Give place
To the Marshal of the Masque!
A Pursuivant. Room for the King!
The Youth. How glorious! See those thronging chariots
Rolling, like painted clouds before the wind,
Behind their solemn steeds: how some are shaped
140
Like curved sea-shells dyed by the azure depths
Of Indian seas; some like the new-born moon;
And some like cars in which the Romans climbed
(Canopied by Victory’s eagle-wings outspread)
The Capitolian—See how gloriously
145
The mettled horses in the torchlight stir
Their gallant riders, while they check their pride,
Like shapes of some diviner element
Than English air, and beings nobler than
The envious and admiring multitude.
150
Second Citizen. Ay, there they are—
Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees,
Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm,
On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows,
Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan,
155
Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart.
These are the lilies glorious as Solomon,
Who toil not, neither do they spin,—unless
It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal.
Here is the surfeit which to them who earn
160
The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves
The tithe that will support them till they crawl
Back to her cold hard bosom. Here is health
Followed by grim disease, glory by shame,
Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want,
165
And England’s sin by England’s punishment.
And, as the effect pursues the cause foregone,
Lo, giving substance to my words, behold
At once the sign and the thing signified—
A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts,
170
Horsed upon stumbling jades, carted with dung,
Dragged for a day from cellars and low cabins
And rotten hiding-holes, to point the moral
Of this presentment, and bring up the rear
Of painted pomp with misery!
The Youth. ’Tis but
175
The anti-masque, and serves as discords do
In sweetest music. Who would love May flowers
If they succeeded not to Winter’s flaw;
Or day unchanged by night; or joy itself
Without the touch of sorrow?
Second Citizen. I and thou—–
180
A Marshalsman. Place, give place!
SCENE II.—A Chamber in Whitehall. Enter the KING, QUEEN, LAUD, LORD STRAFFORD, LORD COTTINGTON, and other Lords; ARCHY; also ST. JOHN, with some Gentlemen of the Inns of Court.
King. Thanks, gentlemen. I heartily accept
This token of your service: your gay masque
Was performed gallantly. And it shows well
When subjects twine such flowers of [observance?]
/> 5
With the sharp thorns that deck the English crown.
A gentle heart enjoys what it confers,
Even as it suffers that which it inflicts,
Though Justice guides the stroke.
Accept my hearty thanks.
Queen. And gentlemen,
10
Call your poor Queen your debtor. Your quaint pageant
Rose on me like the figures of past years,
Treading their still path back to infancy,
More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer
The quiet cradle. I could have almost wept
15
To think I was in Paris, where these shows
Are well devised—such as I was ere yet
My young heart shared a portion of the burthen,
The careful weight of this great monarchy.
There, gentlemen, between the sovereign’s pleasure
20
And that which it regards, no clamour lifts
Its proud interposition.
In Paris ribald censurers dare not move
Their poisonous tongues against these sinless sports;
And his smile
25
Warms those who bask in it, as ours would do
If … Take my heart’s thanks: add them, gentlemen,
To those good words which, were he King of France,
My royal lord would turn to golden deeds.
St. John. Madam, the love of Englishmen can make
30
The lightest favour of their lawful king
Outweigh a despot’s.—We humbly take our leaves,
Enriched by smiles which France can never buy.
[Exeunt ST. JOHN and the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court.
King. My Lord Archbishop,
Mark you what spirit sits in St. John’s eyes?
35
Methinks it is too saucy for this presence.
Archy. Yes, pray your Grace look: for, like an unsophisticated [eye] sees everything upside down, you who are wise will discern the shadow of an idiot in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting springes to catch wood-cocks in haymaking time. Poor Archy, whose owl-eyes are tempered to the error of his age, and because he is a fool, and by special ordinance of God forbidden ever to see himself as he is, sees now in that deep eye a blindfold devil sitting on the ball, and weighing words out between king and subjects. One scale is full of promises, and the other full of protestations: and then another devil creeps behind the first out of the dark windings [of a] pregnant lawyer’s brain, and takes the bandage from the other’s eyes, and throws a sword into the left-hand scale, for all the world like my Lord Essex’s there.