by Seneca
Mortals on earth, comes from a power above.
Lachesis measures out the portions
Spun from her distaff, and no other hand
Can turn the spindle back.
All creatures move on their appointed paths;
In their beginning is their end.
God cannot change these things; they must go on,
Cause and effect in one unbroken chain.
For each of us, the order of our life
Goes on; no prayer can alter it.
Fear of his fate is many a man’s undoing;
Many a man has come upon his fate
Just where he thought to hide from it.
OEDIPUS: All’s done – well done – my father is repaid.
This darkness is my peace. To what god’s mercy
Owe I this blackness that enshrouds my head?
By whose decree are all my sins forgiven?
Escaped from your accusing witness, day,
Thank not your own hand, slayer of your father;
Daylight itself has run away from you;
This face is the true face of Oedipus.
CHORUS: Here comes Jocasta, crazed… on hurrying feet…
Demented… like Agave in her madness
When she had torn her son’s head from his shoulders
And knew what she had done. She hesitates…
She wants to speak to her afflicted husband,
Yet is afraid to speak. She is appalled
But pity overcomes her shame.… She speaks,
But haltingly.
JOCASTA: What shall I call you? Son?
You shake your head. Surely you are my son.
Are you ashamed to hear it? Speak, my son.
Will you not speak? Why do you turn away
Your empty eyes?
OEDIPUS: Who is it that forbids me
Darkness, and who would give me eyes again?
That is my mother’s voice; it is my mother!
Then we have done our work in vain. We two
Must never meet again; we are accursed.
Let wide seas separate us, let the breadth
Of earth keep us apart; and if there be
Another earth below, where other stars
Look down, under a sun beyond our ken,
Be that the place for one of us.
JOCASTA: Blame Fate;
No man is blamed for what Fate does to him.
OEDIPUS: Peace, mother; spare my ears, I do beseech you
By the last remnant of this ruined body,
By the ill-fated offspring of my blood,
By all that in the union of our names
Was good or evil.
JOCASTA: Art thou dead, my soul?
As thou hast shared the guilt, canst thou not share
The punishment? Unclean, thou hast confounded
All that is noble in the state of man!
Die! Let a sword expel thy impious life!
Never could I, so curs’d in motherhood,
Pay the full forfeit for my sins – not though
The father of the gods who shakes the world
Should strike me with his fiery thunderbolts.
It must be death, and I must find a way.…
Come then, have you a hand to help your mother?
If you could kill your father… this remains
For you to do.… Then let me take his sword,
The sword that killed my husband – no, not husband,
Father-in-law.… Where shall I strike? My breast?
Where plant the weapon – in my naked throat?…
You know where you must strike – no need to choose –
Strike here, my hand, strike at this teeming womb
Which gave me sons and husband!…
CHORUS: She is dead.
Her hand dies where it struck, the sword falls out
Expelled by the strong rush of blood.
OEDIPUS: Now hear me,
Guardian and god of truth, Fate’s messenger!
One death, my father’s, did the fates demand;
But now I have slain twice; I am more guilty
Than I had feared to be; my crimes have brought
My mother to her death. Phoebus, you lied!
I have done more than was set down for me
By evil destiny.… Now set your feet
Upon the dark road faltering, step by step,
With cautious fingers feeling through the night.
Onward, away… foot after stumbling foot.…
Away, begone this instant!… But beware –
Not that way, lest you fall upon your mother.
See, I am going, I am leaving you;
Lift up your heads, you that are weak and worn
With sickness and have scarce the heart to live.
There will be brighter skies when I am gone;
All those who on their sickbeds still have life
To cling to, shall have purer air to breathe.
Go, friends, and bring relief to those laid low.
When I go from you, I shall take away
All the infections of mortality
That have consumed this land. Come, deadly Fates,
Come, all grim spectres of Disease, black Plague,
Corruption and intolerable Pain!
Come with me! I could want no better guides.
Exeunt
OCTAVIA
THE action takes place at Rome in the year A.D. 62 and extends over two days, during which the emperor Nero brings to a head his quarrel with his wife Octavia, condemns her to exile and death, and marries his mistress Poppaea. The play contains much retrospective reference to the misfortunes of Octavia’s family – she was the daughter of the emperor Claudius and his third wife Messalina – and to the previous crimes of Nero. In A.D. 48 Messalina, divorced, was put to death by the orders of Claudius; in A.D. 54 Claudius was poisoned, reputedly with the complicity of his fourth wife Agrippina, mother of Nero. In A.D. 55 Nero contrived the murder of Britannicus, the brother of Octavia and supplanted heir of Claudius; and in A.D. 59 he devised a plan to murder his mother, the principal obstacle to his divorce, by a prearranged shipwreck; this failing, she was dispatched by the sword of an assassin.
Seneca, who had been recalled from exile to be tutor to the young Nero and was now one of his principal advisers, appears as an ineffective counsellor of moderation; and the Ghost of Agrippina rises to threaten calamity upon the new marriage.
The sympathies of the Chorus lie mainly with Octavia, though a group, perhaps of women attending on Poppaea, at one point expresses admiration for the usurper.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
OCTAVIA, wife of Nero
OCTAVIA’S NURSE
SENECA, minister to Nero
NERO, Emperor of Rome
A PREFECT
POPPAEA, mistress and afterwards wife of Nero
POPPAEA’S NURSE
MESSENGER
CHORUS of Roman citizens
*
Scene: Rome, at the palace of Nero
OCTAVIA
OCTAVIA: Resplendent Dawn is driving from the sky
The wandering stars, the giant Sun
Lifts up his golden hair to bring
Bright day back to the universe.
And what must I do, overcome
By ills so many and so great,
But tell again the oft-told tale
Of my distresses, shed more tears
Than the sea-haunting Halcyons
Or the bird-daughters of Pandion?1
Greater than theirs my misery.
Hear me, my mother, for whose fate
My tears must ever fall, from whom
All my afflictions spring.
O mother, hear your daughter’s cry,
If in the house of death
Any perception still remains.
Would that the age-old spinner of my fate
Had cut my thread before that day
On whi
ch I wept to see
Your wounded side, your face besmeared with blood.
How hateful was the light of day,
Of every day thenceforth to this,
A light more dreaded than the darkest night;
While I have had to live
Under a vile stepmother’s rule,
To bear her spiteful enmity
And angry looks.
She was my vengeful Fury, she
Lighted my marriage chamber
With Stygian torches, she destroyed
My hapless father’s life;
Whom once the whole world, beyond Ocean’s bounds,
Obeyed; whose captains put to rout
The Britons, till that day unknown and free.
And thou art dead, my father,
Struck down by a wife’s wickedness,
Thy house and family a tyrant’s slaves,
A tyrant’s prisoners.
*
NURSE:1 Does any man in envious amazement
Gape at the specious glories and vain joys
Of hollow monarchy – here let him learn
How Fortune’s practised hand, that once upheld
And thrust into success, has now thrown down
The dynasty of Claudius; whose power
Ruled the whole world; at whose command the Ocean
Lost its long freedom and was forced to bear
His ships upon its tide. Here was the man
Who first made British necks to bow; whose fleets
In countless numbers covered unknown seas;
Who lived unharmed among barbaric tribes
And on tempestuous waters; and who died,
Slain by a wicked wife. As she too died
By malice of her son; whose brother2 died
By poison. Here his sister, and his wife –
For she is both – rails at her sorry lot
With rage that cannot let her grief be hid.
Her cruel husband’s private company
She loathes and shuns; he burns with equal fire
Of venomous hatred. Little consolation
Can all my duty and devotion bring
To her poor soul; her unremitting grief
Disdains my counsel; her proud indignation,
Beyond control of reason, grows the more
The more she suffers. Ah, what evil deeds
My fear foresees – which may the gods forbid!
OCTAVIA: No other fate can equal mine,
No other suffering compare,
Not though I should remember thine,
Ill-starred Electra; thy despair
For father slain was not forbidden;
Thou hadst a brother, whom thy care
And trustful love had saved and hidden,
To avenge the crime. I do not dare
To mourn two parents lost, nor pray
For brother dead; in whom the fair
Hope I might have of brighter day,
And comfort in my sorrow, were.
Alone I live to weep my heavy fate,
Last lingering shadow of a name so great,
NURSE: It is the voice of my unhappy child
That falls upon my ears.
Can these old feet forbear
To hurry to her room?…
OCTAVIA: Ah, let me weep upon your breast,
Dear nurse, my ever faithful confidant in grief.
NURSE: Poor soul, what day will ever bring
An end to so much sorrow?
OCTAVIA: Only the day
That sends me to the Stygian darkness.
NURSE: Far be that ominous day!
OCTAVIA: Not your desire, dear nurse, but Fate
Now rules my destiny.
NURSE: Your lot is hard, but God
In mercy yet will give
A brighter morrow to your darkness.
Will you not try to win your husband’s love
By gentleness and service?
OCTAVIA: ‘Twere easier to appease
A lion’s wrath, a tiger’s rage,
Than my imperious husband’s heart.
All sons of noble blood
He hates, all gods and men
He scorns alike; he knows not how to use
His own good fortune and the place he won
By his vile parent’s crimes;
For which – though he repudiate
The gift of empire so bestowed
By that fell mother, though he have rewarded
Her gift with death – yet after death
That woman till the end of time
Must bear that epitaph.
NURSE: Nay, check those angry words,
Speak not so rashly, child.
OCTAVIA: Ah, were these torments such as could be borne,
And were my patience strong enough to bear them,
Nothing but death could end my misery.
My mother and my father vilely slain,
My brother lost – now bowed beneath this weight
Of grief and bitterness and woe, I live
Under my husband’s hate, my servant’s scorn.
No day is joy to me, no hour not filled
With terror – not the fear of death alone,
But violent death. O Gods, let me not suffer
A criminal’s death, and I will gladly die.
Is it not penance worse than death, to see,
As I must see, the black and angry looks
Of my imperious master, to accept
My enemy’s kiss, to fear his lightest nod
Whose kindness would be pain unbearable
After the crime of my dear brother’s death,
When he, the perpetrator of that crime,
Now holds the sceptre that was rightly his,
Secure in Fortune’s favour? Many a time,
When sleep has come to soothe my weary limbs
And close these ever-weeping eyes, my brother’s
Spirit in woeful form has come before me.
Sometimes his helpless hands aim angry blows
With smoking torches at his brother’s face;
Sometimes he flees in panic to my chamber,
And while I cling to him, the enemy
Comes on, to thrust his sword through both our sides.
Terror and dread then shake me from my sleep
And start again the miseries and fears
That fill my wretched life. To add to this,
His haughty concubine goes proudly decked
In stolen riches of the royal house;
And for her sake it was that he, my husband,
Sent his own mother on a ship of death
To meet her death; but when she had outlived
The shipwreck and the peril of the sea,
He slew her with a sword – the ocean’s waves
Were not so cruel as this murderous son.
If such things can be done, what hope of life
Remains for me? Now in her victory
With hate inflamed my hated rival waits
To dispossess me of my marriage-bed;
And for the price of her adulterous love
Demands the head of Nero’s lawful wife.
O Father, hear my prayer! Come back from death
And save thy child! Or let the earth be rent
And Stygian gulfs laid open to receive me
Swiftly in their embrace.
NURSE: That prayer is vain.
In vain you seek your father’s spirit; now
In the grave he cares no longer for his own;
Else how could he have let another’s son1
Usurp his own son’s place? How could he stoop
To that unlawful lamentable marriage,
Taking his brother’s daughter2 for his wife?
That was the fount of all this wickedness,
This tale of murder and conspiracy,
Blind lust for power and savage thirst for blood.
When your betrothed Silanus3 paid the price,
Upon your father’s wedding day – struck down;
Lest to be husband of the prince’s daughter
Might give him too much power… what wickedness!
A young man sacrificed to please a woman!
Falsely condemned, compelled to spill his blood
In his own hearth-gods’ sight. Alas the day!
The enemy had gained possession now
And forced his entrance to our house; one stroke
Of your stepmother’s guile had made him son
And son-in-law – this infamous young man,
Master of every evil art, whose mother
Kindled the marriage torch to make you his
Unwilling timorous bride. One victory
Inflamed her lust for more; the holy seat
Of worldwide empire now she dared to covet.
What tongue could tell the many shapes of sin,
The impious hopes, the smooth conspiracies
Conceived in this one woman’s breast – a woman
Stepping from crime to crime to gain a throne.
Then pure Fidelity in terror fled
And left this palace empty for the feet
Of vengeful Fury, whose infernal fires
Ravaged this holy hearth, all nature’s laws
And human right remorselessly confounding.
A wife compounded poison for her husband,
And died thereafter by her son’s foul deed.
And thou, Britannicus, unhappy child,
Art dead and ever to be mourned, bright star
Of all the world, and of the royal house
The one strong pillar; now, alas, pale shadow
And dusty ash. His vile stepmother wept –
Ay, even she – when I gave up his corpse
To the cremating fire and when that face,
The likeness of the winged God himself,
And that fair body perished in the flames.
OCTAVIA: Let him destroy me too – or I shall kill him!
NURSE: You were not born with strength for such a thing.
OCTAVIA: My pain, my rage, my grief, my suffering,
My agony will give me strength enough.
NURSE: Rather, use gentleness to tame your husband.
OCTAVIA: To make him give me back my murdered brother?
NURSE: No, but to save your life, and to rebuild
With your own blood your father’s ruined house.
OCTAVIA: The royal house will soon receive new blood;
I share in my unhappy brother’s doom.
NURSE: Take courage from your faithful people’s love.
OCTAVIA: Comfort, not remedy, their love can give me.
NURSE: The people’s power is great.