CHAMBERLAIN. My Lord!—
A LORD. His strength’s a lion’s—
VOICES WITHIN. The King! The King!—
[Enter KING]
A LORD. And on a sudden how he stands at gaze
As might a wolf just fasten’d on his prey,
Glaring at a suddenly encounter’d lion.
KING. And I that hither flew with open arms
To fold them round my son, must now return
To press them to an empty heart again!
[He sits on the throne.]
SEGISMUND. That is the King?—My father?—
(After a long pause.) I have heard
That sometimes some blind instinct has been known
To draw to mutual recognition those
Of the same blood, beyond all memory
Divided, or ev’n never met before.
I know not how this is—perhaps in brutes
That live by kindlier instincts—but I know
That looking now upon that head whose crown
Pronounces him a sovereign king, I feel
No setting of the current in my blood
Tow’rd him as sire. How is’t with you, old man,
Tow’rd him they call your son?—
KING. Alas! Alas!
SEGISMUND. Your sorrow, then?
KING. Beholding what I do.
SEGISMUND. Ay, but how know this sorrow that has grown
And moulded to this present shape of man,
As of your own creation?
KING. Ev’n from birth.
SEGISMUND. But from that hour to this, near, as I think,
Some twenty such renewals of the year
As trace themselves upon the barren rocks,
I never saw you, nor you me—unless,
Unless, indeed, through one of those dark masks
Through which a son might fail to recognize
The best of fathers.
KING. Be that as you will:
But, now we see each other face to face,
Know me as you I know; which did I not,
By whatsoever signs, assuredly
You were not here to prove it at my risk.
SEGISMUND. You are my father.
And is it true then, as Clotaldo swears,
‘Twas you that from the dawning birth of one
Yourself brought into being,—you, I say,
Who stole his very birthright; not alone
That secondary and peculiar right
Of sovereignty, but even that prime
Inheritance that all men share alike,
And chain’d him—chain’d him!—like a wild beast’s whelp.
Among as savage mountains, to this hour?
Answer if this be thus.
KING. Oh, Segismund,
In all that I have done that seems to you,
And, without further hearing, fairly seems,
Unnatural and cruel—‘twas not I,
But One who writes His order in the sky
I dared not misinterpret nor neglect,
Who knows with what reluctance—
SEGISMUND. Oh, those stars,
Those stars, that too far up from human blame
To clear themselves, or careless of the charge,
Still bear upon their shining shoulders all
The guilt men shift upon them!
KING. Nay, but think:
Not only on the common score of kind,
But that peculiar count of sovereignty—
If not behind the beast in brain as heart,
How should I thus deal with my innocent child,
Doubly desired, and doubly dear when come,
As that sweet second-self that all desire,
And princes more than all, to root themselves
By that succession in their people’s hearts,
Unless at that superior Will, to which
Not kings alone, but sovereign nature bows?
SEGISMUND. And what had those same stars to tell of me
That should compel a father and a king
So much against that double instinct?
KING. That,
Which I have brought you hither, at my peril,
Against their written warning, to disprove,
By justice, mercy, human kindliness.
SEGISMUND. And therefore made yourself their instrument
To make your son the savage and the brute
They only prophesied?—Are you not afear’d,
Lest, irrespective as such creatures are
Of such relationship, the brute you made
Revenge the man you marr’d—like sire, like son.
To do by you as you by me have done?
KING. You never had a savage heart from me;
I may appeal to Poland.
SEGISMUND. Then from whom?
If pure in fountain, poison’d by yourself
When scarce begun to flow.—To make a man
Not, as I see, degraded from the mould
I came from, nor compared to those about,
And then to throw your own flesh to the dogs!—
Why not at once, I say, if terrified
At the prophetic omens of my birth,
Have drown’d or stifled me, as they do whelps
Too costly or too dangerous to keep?
KING. That, living, you might learn to live, and rule
Yourself and Poland.
SEGISMUND. By the means you took
To spoil for either?
KING. Nay, but, Segismund!
You know not—cannot know—happily wanting
The sad experience on which knowledge grows,
How the too early consciousness of power
Spoils the best blood; nor whether for your long
Constrain’d disheritance (which, but for me,
Remember, and for my relenting love
Bursting the bond of fate, had been eternal)
You have not now a full indemnity;
Wearing the blossom of your youth unspent
In the voluptuous sunshine of a court,
That often, by too early blossoming,
Too soon deflowers the rose of royalty.
SEGISMUND. Ay, but what some precocious warmth may spill,
May not an early frost as surely kill?
KING. But, Segismund, my son, whose quick discourse
Proves I have not extinguish’d and destroy’d
The Man you charge me with extinguishing,
However it condemn me for the fault
Of keeping a good light so long eclipsed,
Reflect! This is the moment upon which
Those stars, whose eyes, although we see them not,
By day as well as night are on us still,
Hang watching up in the meridian heaven
Which way the balance turns; and if to you—
As by your dealing God decide it may,
To my confusion!—let me answer it
Unto yourself alone, who shall at once
Approve yourself to be your father’s judge,
And sovereign of Poland in his stead,
By justice, mercy, self-sobriety,
And all the reasonable attributes
Without which, impotent to rule himself,
Others one cannot, and one must not rule;
But which if you but show the blossom of—
All that is past we shall but look upon
As the first out-fling of a generous nature
Rioting in first liberty; and if
This blossom do but promise such a flower
As promises in turn its kindly fruit:
Forthwith upon your brows the royal crown,
That now weighs heavy on my aged brows,
I will devolve; and while I pass away
Into some cloister, with my Maker there
To make my peace in penitence and prayer,
Happily settle the disorder’d realm
That now cries l
oudly for a lineal heir.
SEGISMUND. And so—
When the crown falters on your shaking head,
And slips the sceptre from your palsied hand,
And Poland for her rightful heir cries out;
When not only your stol’n monopoly
Fails you of earthly power, but ‘cross the grave
The judgment-trumpet of another world
Calls you to count for your abuse of this;
Then, oh then, terrified by the double danger,
You drag me from my den—
Boast not of giving up at last the power
You can no longer hold, and never rightly
Held, but in fee for him you robb’d it from;
And be assured your Savage, once let loose,
Will not be caged again so quickly; not
By threat or adulation to be tamed,
Till he have had his quarrel out with those
Who made him what he is.
KING. Beware! Beware!
Subdue the kindled Tiger in your eye,
Nor dream that it was sheer necessity
Made me thus far relax the bond of fate,
And, with far more of terror than of hope
Threaten myself, my people, and the State.
Know that, if old, I yet have vigour left
To wield the sword as well as wear the crown;
And if my more immediate issue fail,
Not wanting scions of collateral blood,
Whose wholesome growth shall more than compensate
For all the loss of a distorted stem.
SEGISMUND. That will I straightway bring to trial—Oh,
After a revelation such as this,
The Last Day shall have little left to show
Of righted wrong and villainy requited!
Nay, Judgment now beginning upon earth,
Myself, methinks, in sight of all my wrongs,
Appointed heaven’s avenging minister,
Accuser, judge, and executioner
Sword in hand, cite the guilty—First, as worst,
The usurper of his son’s inheritance;
Him and his old accomplice, time and crime
Inveterate, and unable to repay
The golden years of life they stole away.
What, does he yet maintain his state, and keep
The throne he should be judged from? Down with him,
That I may trample on the false white head
So long has worn my crown! Where are my soldiers?
Of all my subjects and my vassals here
Not one to do my bidding? Hark! A trumpet!
The trumpet—
[He pauses as the trumpet sounds as in ACT I., and masked Soldiers gradually fill in behind the Throne.]
KING (rising before his throne). Ay, indeed, the trumpet blows
A memorable note, to summon those
Who, if forthwith you fall not at the feet
Of him whose head you threaten with the dust,
Forthwith shall draw the curtain of the Past
About you; and this momentary gleam
Of glory that you think to hold life-fast,
So coming, so shall vanish, as a dream.
SEGISMUND. He prophesies; the old man prophesies;
And, at his trumpet’s summons, from the tower
The leash-bound shadows loosen’d after me
My rising glory reach and over-lour—
But, reach not I my height, he shall not hold,
But with me back to his own darkness!
[He dashes toward the throne and is enclosed by the soldiers.]
Traitors!
Hold off! Unhand me!—Am not I your king?
And you would strangle him!—
But I am breaking with an inward Fire
Shall scorch you off, and wrap me on the wings
Of conflagration from a kindled pyre
Of lying prophecies and prophet-kings
Above the extinguish’d stars—Reach me the sword
He flung me—Fill me such a bowl of wine
As that you woke the day with—
KING. And shall close,—
But of the vintage that Clotaldo knows. [Exeunt.]
ACT III
SCENE I.—The Tower, etc., as in ACT I. SCENE I.
SEGISMUND, as at first, and CLOTALDO
CLOTALDO. Princes and princesses, and counsellors
Fluster’d to right and left—my life made at—
But that was nothing
Even the white-hair’d, venerable King
Seized on—Indeed, you made wild work of it;
And so discover’d in your outward action,
Flinging your arms about you in your sleep,
Grinding your teeth—and, as I now remember,
Woke mouthing out judgment and execution,
On those about you.
SEGISMUND. Ay, I did indeed.
CLOTALDO. Ev’n now your eyes stare wild; your hair stands up—
Your pulses throb and flutter, reeling still
Under the storm of such a dream—
SEGISMUND. A dream!
That seem’d as swearable reality
As what I wake in now.
CLOTALDO. Ay—wondrous how
Imagination in a sleeping brain
Out of the uncontingent senses draws
Sensations strong as from the real touch;
That we not only laugh aloud, and drench
With tears our pillow; but in the agony
Of some imaginary conflict, fight
And struggle—ev’n as you did; some, ‘tis thought,
Under the dreamt-of stroke of death have died.
SEGISMUND. And what so very strange too—In that world
Where place as well as people all was strange,
Ev’n I almost as strange unto myself,
You only, you, Clotaldo—you, as much
And palpably yourself as now you are,
Came in this very garb you ever wore,
By such a token of the past, you said,
To assure me of that seeming present.
CLOTALDO. Ay?
SEGISMUND. Ay; and even told me of the very stars
You tell me here of—how in spite of them,
I was enlarged to all that glory.
CLOTALDO. Ay,
By the false spirits’ nice contrivance thus
A little truth oft leavens all the false,
The better to delude us.
SEGISMUND. For you know
‘Tis nothing but a dream?
CLOTALDO. Nay, you yourself
Know best how lately you awoke from that
You know you went to sleep on?—
Why, have you never dreamt the like before?
SEGISMUND. Never, to such reality.
CLOTALDO. Such dreams
Are oftentimes the sleeping exhalations
Of that ambition that lies smouldering
Under the ashes of the lowest fortune;
By which, when reason slumbers, or has lost
The reins of sensible comparison,
We fly at something higher than we are—
Scarce ever dive to lower—to be kings,
Or conquerors, crown’d with laurel or with gold,
Nay, mounting heaven itself on eagle wings.
Which, by the way, now that I think of it,
May furnish us the key to this high flight
That royal Eagle we were watching, and
Talking of as you went to sleep last night.
SEGISMUND. Last night? Last night?
CLOTALDO. Ay, do you not remember
Envying his immunity of flight,
As, rising from his throne of rock, he sail’d
Above the mountains far into the West,
That burn’d about him, while with poising wings
He darkled in it as a burning brand
Is seen to smoulder in the fire it feeds?
Between that last night and this sad To-day!
CLOTALDO. And yet, perhaps,
Only some few dark moments, into which
Imagination, once lit up within
And unconditional of time and space,
Can pour infinities.
SEGISMUND. And I remember
How the old man they call’d the King, who wore
The crown of gold about his silver hair,
And a mysterious girdle round his waist,
Just when my rage was roaring at its height,
And after which it all was dark again,
Bid me beware lest all should be a dream.
CLOTALDO. Ay—there another specialty of dreams,
That once the dreamer ‘gins to dream he dreams,
His foot is on the very verge of waking.
SEGISMUND. Would it had been upon the verge of death
That knows no waking—
Lifting me up to glory, to fall back,
Stunn’d, crippled—wretcheder than ev’n before.
CLOTALDO. Yet not so glorious, Segismund, if you
Your visionary honour wore so ill
As to work murder and revenge on those
Who meant you well.
SEGISMUND. Who meant me!—me! their Prince Chain’d like a felon—
CLOTALDO. Stay, stay—Not so fast,
You dream’d the Prince, remember.
SEGISMUND. Then in dream
Revenged it only.
CLOTALDO. True. But as they say
Dreams are rough copies of the waking soul
Yet uncorrected of the higher Will,
So that men sometimes in their dreams confess
An unsuspected, or forgotten, self;
One must beware to check—ay, if one may,
Stifle ere born, such passion in ourselves
As makes, we see, such havoc with our sleep,
And ill reacts upon the waking day.
And, by the bye, for one test, Segismund,
Between such swearable realities—
Since Dreaming, Madness, Passion, are akin
In missing each that salutary rein
Of reason, and the guiding will of man:
One test, I think, of waking sanity
Shall be that conscious power of self-control,
To curb all passion, but much most of all
That evil and vindictive, that ill squares
With human, and with holy canon less,
Which bids us pardon ev’n our enemies,
And much more those who, out of no ill will,
Mistakenly have taken up the rod
Which heaven, they think, has put into their hands.
SEGISMUND. I think I soon shall have to try again—
Sleep has not yet done with me.
CLOTALDO. Such a sleep.
Take my advice—‘tis early yet—the sun
Scarce up above the mountain; go within,
Life Is a Dream_Pedro Calderon De La Barca Page 5