by Lord Byron
[Exit into the turret, closing the door after him.
Scene II. — The Interior of the Turret.
Gabor and Siegendorf.
Gab. Who calls?
Sieg. I — Siegendorf! Take these and fly!
Lose not a moment!
[Tears off a diamond star and other jewels, and thrusts them into Gabor’s hand.
Gab. What am I to do
With these?
Sieg. Whate’er you will: sell them, or hoard,
And prosper; but delay not, or you are lost!
Gab. You pledged your honour for my safety!
Sieg. And
Must thus redeem it. Fly! I am not master,
It seems, of my own castle — of my own
Retainers — nay, even of these very walls,
Or I would bid them fall and crush me! Fly!
Or you will be slain by — —
Gab. Is it even so? 10
Farewell, then! Recollect, however, Count,
You sought this fatal interview!
Sieg. I did:
Let it not be more fatal still! — Begone!
Gab. By the same path I entered?
Sieg. Yes; that’s safe still;
But loiter not in Prague; — you do not know
With whom you have to deal.
Gab. I know too well —
And knew it ere yourself, unhappy Sire! [Exit Gabor.
Farewell!
Sieg. (solus and listening).
He hath cleared the staircase. Ah! I hear
The door sound loud behind him! He is safe!
Safe! — Oh, my father’s spirit! — I am faint — 20
[He leans down upon a stone seat, near the wall of the tower, in a drooping posture.
Enter Ulric with others armed, and with weapons drawn.
Ulr. Despatch! — he’s there!
Lud. The Count, my Lord!
Ulr. (recognizing Siegendorf).You here, sir!
Sieg. Yes: if you want another victim, strike!
Ulr. (seeing him stript of his jewels).
Where is the ruffian who hath plundered you?
Vassals, despatch in search of him! You see
‘Twas as I said — the wretch hath stript my father
Of jewels which might form a Prince’s heir-loom!
Away! I’ll follow you forthwith.
[Exeunt all but Siegendorf and Ulric.
What’s this?
Where is the villain?
Sieg. There are two, sir: which
Are you in quest of?
Ulr. Let us hear no more
Of this: he must be found. You have not let him 30
Escape?
Sieg. He’s gone.
Ulr. With your connivance?
Sieg. With
My fullest, freest aid.
Ulr. Then fare you well!
[Ulric is going.
Sieg. Stop! I command — entreat — implore! Oh, Ulric!
Will you then leave me?
Ulr. What! remain to be
Denounced — dragged, it may be, in chains; and all
By your inherent weakness, half-humanity,
Selfish remorse, and temporizing pity,
That sacrifices your whole race to save
A wretch to profit by our ruin! No, Count,
Henceforth you have no son!
Sieg. I never had one; 40
And would you ne’er had borne the useless name!
Where will you go? I would not send you forth
Without protection.
Ulr. Leave that unto me.
I am not alone; nor merely the vain heir
Of your domains; a thousand, aye, ten thousand
Swords, hearts, and hands are mine.
Sieg. The foresters!
With whom the Hungarian found you first at Frankfort!
Ulr. Yes — men — who are worthy of the name! Go tell
Your Senators that they look well to Prague;
Their Feast of Peace was early for the times; 50
There are more spirits abroad than have been laid
With Wallenstein!
Enter Josephine and Ida.
Jos. What is’t we hear? My Siegendorf!
Thank Heaven, I see you safe!
Sieg. Safe!
Ida. Yes, dear father!
Sieg. No, no; I have no children: never more
Call me by that worst name of parent.
Jos. What
Means my good Lord?
Sieg. That you have given birth
To a demon!
Ida (taking Ulric’s hand). Who shall dare say this of Ulric?
Sieg. Ida, beware! there’s blood upon that hand.
Ida (stooping to kiss it). I’d kiss it off, though it were mine.
Sieg. It is so!
Ulr. Away! it is your father’s![Exit Ulric.
Ida. Oh, great God! 60
And I have loved this man!
[Ida falls senseless — Josephine stands speechless with horror.
Sieg. The wretch hath slain
Them both! — My Josephine! we are now alone!
Would we had ever been so! — All is over
For me! — Now open wide, my sire, thy grave;
Thy curse hath dug it deeper for thy son
In mine! — The race of Siegendorf is past.
The end of the fifth act and the Drama.
B. P. Jy 20, 1822.
THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED
A DRAMA.
INTRODUCTION
The date of the original MS. of The Deformed Transformed is “Pisa, 1822.” There is nothing to show in what month it was written, but it may be conjectured that it was begun and finished within the period which elapsed between the death of Allegra, April 20, and the death of Shelley, July 8, 1822. According to Medwin (Conversations, 1824, p. 227), an unfavourable criticism of Shelley’s (“It is a bad imitation of Faust”), together with a discovery that “two entire lines” of Southey’s —
“And water shall see thee,
And fear thee, and flee thee” —
were imbedded in one of his “Songs,” touched Byron so deeply that he “threw the poem into the fire,” and concealed the existence of a second copy for more than two years. It is a fact that Byron’s correspondence does not contain the remotest allusion to The Deformed Transformed; but, with regard to the plagiarism from Southey, in the play as written in 1822 there is neither Song nor Incantation which could have contained two lines from The Curse of Kehama.
As a dramatist, Byron’s function, or métier, was twofold. In Manfred, in Cain, in Heaven and Earth, he is concerned with the analysis and evolution of metaphysical or ethical notions; in Marino Faliero, in Sardanapalus, and The Two Foscari, he set himself “to dramatize striking passages of history;” in The Deformed Transformed he sought to combine the solution of a metaphysical puzzle or problem, the relation of personality to individuality, with the scenic rendering of a striking historical episode, the Sack of Rome in 1527.
In the note or advertisement prefixed to the drama, Byron acknowledges that “the production” is founded partly on the story of a forgotten novel, The Three Brothers, and partly on “the Faust of the great Goethe.”
Arnaud, or Julian, the hero of The Three Brothers (by Joshua Pickersgill, jun., 4 vols., 1803), “sells his soul to the Devil, and becomes an arch-fiend in order to avenge himself for the taunts of strangers on the deformity of his person” (see Gent. Mag., November, 1804, vol. 74, p. 1047; and post, pp. 473-479). The idea of an escape from natural bonds or disabilities by supernatural means and at the price of the soul or will, the un-Christlike surrender to the tempter, which is the grund-stoff of the Faust-legend, was brought home to Byron, in the first instance, not by Goethe, or Calderon, or Marlowe, but by Joshua Pickersgill. A fellow-feeling lent an intimate and peculiar interest to the theme. He had suffe
red all his life from a painful and inconvenient defect, which his proud and sensitive spirit had magnified into a deformity. He had been stung to the quick by his mother’s taunts and his sweetheart’s ridicule, by the jeers of the base and thoughtless, by slanderous and brutal paragraphs in newspapers. He could not forget that he was lame. If his enemies had but possessed the wit, they might have given him “the sobriquet of Le Diable Boiteux” (letter to Moore, April 2, 1823, Letters, 1901, vi. 179). It was no wonder that so poignant, so persistent a calamity should be “reproduced in his poetry” (Life, p. 13), or that his passionate impatience of such a “thorn in the flesh” should picture to itself a mysterious and unhallowed miracle of healing. It is true, as Moore says (Life, pp. 45, 306), that “the trifling deformity of his foot” was the embittering circumstance of his life, that it “haunted him like a curse;” but it by no means follows that he seriously regarded his physical peculiarity as a stamp of the Divine reprobation, that “he was possessed by an idée fixe that every blessing would be ‘turned into a curse’ to him” (letter of Lady Byron to H. C. Robinson, Diary, etc., 1869, in. 435, 436). No doubt he indulged himself in morbid fancies, played with the extravagances of a restless imagination, and wedded them to verse; but his intellect, “brooding like the day, a master o’er a slave,” kept guard. He would never have pleaded on his own behalf that the tyranny of an idée fixe, a delusion that he was predestined to evil, was an excuse for his short-comings or his sins.
Byron’s very considerable obligations to The Three Brothers might have escaped notice, but the resemblance between his “Stranger,” or “Cæsar,” and the Mephistopheles of “the great Goethe” was open and palpable.
If Medwin may be trusted (Conversations, 1824, p. 210), Byron had read “Faust in a sorry French translation,” and it is probable that Shelley’s inspired rendering of “May-day Night,” which was published in The Liberal (No. i., October 14, 1822, pp. 123-137), had been read to him, and had attracted his attention. The Deformed Transformed is “a Faustish kind of drama;” and Goethe, who maintained that Byron’s play as a whole was “no imitation,” but “new and original, close, genuine, and spirited,” could not fail to perceive that “his devil was suggested by my Mephistopheles” (Conversations, 1874, p. 174). The tempter who cannot resist the temptation of sneering at his own wiles, who mocks for mocking’s sake, is not Byron’s creation, but Goethe’s. Lucifer talked at the clergy, if he did not “talk like a clergyman;” but the “bitter hunchback,” even when he is solus, sneers as the river wanders, “at his own sweet will.” He is not a doctor, but a spirit of unbelief!
The second part of The Deformed Transformed represents, in three scenes, the Siege and Sack of Rome in 1527. Byron had read Robertson’s Charles the Fifth (ed. 1798, ii. 313-329) in his boyhood (Life, p. 47), but it is on record that he had studied, more or less closely, the narratives of contemporary authorities. A note to The Prophecy of Dante (Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 258) refers to the Sacco di Roma, descritto da Luigi Guicciardini, and the Ragguaglio Storico … sacco di Roma dell’ anno MDXXVII. of Jacopo Buonaparte; and it is evident that he was familiar with Cellini’s story of the marvellous gests and exploits quorum maxima pars fuit, which were wrought at “the walls by the Campo Santo,” or on the ramparts of the Castle of San Angelo.
The Sack of Rome was a great national calamity, and it was something more: it was a profanation and a sacrilege. The literature which it evoked was a cry of anguish, a prophetic burden of despair. “Chants populaires,” writes M. Emile Gebhart (De l’Italie, “Le Sac de Rome en 1527,” 1876, pp. 267, sq.), “Nouvelles de Giraldi Cintio, en forme de Décaméron … récits historiques … de César Grollier, Dialogues anonymes … poésies de Pasquin, toute une littérature se developpa sur ce thème douloureux…. Le Lamento di Roma, œuvre étrange, d’inspiration gibeline, rappelle les espérances politiques exprimées jadis par Dante … ‘Bien que César m’ait dépouille’e de liberté, nous avons toujours été d’accord dans une même volonté. Je ne me lamenterais pas si lui régnait; mais je crois qu’il est ressuscité, ou qu’il ressuscitera véritablement, car souvent un Ange m’a annoncé qu’un César viendrait me délivrer.’... Enfin, voici une chanson française que répétaient en repassant les monts les soldats du Marquis de Saluces: —
“Parlons de la déffaiete
De ces pouvres Rommains,
Aussi de la complainete
De notre père saint.
“‘O noble roy de France,
Regarde en pitié
L’Eglise en ballance …
Pour Dieu! ne tarde plus,
C’est ta mère, ta substance;
O fils, n’en faictz reffus.’“
“Le dernier monument,” adds M. Gebhart, in a footnote, “de cette littérature, est le singulier drame de Byron, The Deformed Transformed, dont Jules César est le héros, et le Sac de Rome le cadre.”
It is unlikely that Byron, who read everything he could lay his hands upon, and spared no trouble to master his “period,” had not, either at first or second hand, acquainted himself with specimens of this popular literature. (For La Presa e Lamento di Roma, Romæ Lamentatio, etc., see Lamenti Storici dei Secoli xiv., xv. (Medin e Fratri), Scelta di Curiosità, etc., 235, 236, 237, Bologna, 1890, vol. iii. See, too, for “Chanson sur la Mort du Connétable de Bourbon,” Recueil de Chants historiques français, par A. J. V. Le Roux de Lincy, 1842, ii. 99.)
The Deformed Transformed was published by John Hunt, February 20, 1824. A third edition appeared February 23, 1824.
It was reviewed, unfavourably, in the London Magazine, March, 1824, vol. 9, pp. 315-321; the Scots Magazine, March, 1824, N.S. vol. xiv. pp. 353-356; and in the Monthly Review, March, 1824, Enlarged Series, 103, pp. 321, 324. One reviewer, however (London Magazine), had the candour to admit that “Lord Byron may write below himself, but he can never write below us!”
For the unfinished third part, vide post, pp. -534.
ADVERTISEMENT
This production is founded partly on the story of a novel called “The Three Brothers,” published many years ago, from which M. G. Lewis’s “Wood Demon” was also taken; and partly on the “Faust” of the great Goethe. The present publication contains the two first Parts only, and the opening chorus of the third. The rest may perhaps appear hereafter.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Stranger, afterwards Cæsar
Arnold.
Bourbon.
Philibert.
Cellini.
Bertha.
Olimpia.
Spirits, Soldiers, Citizens of Rome, Priests, Peasants, etc.
THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED
PART I
Scene I. — A Forest.
Enter Arnold and his mother Bertha.
Bert. Out, Hunchback!
Arn. I was born so, Mother!
Bert. Out,
Thou incubus! Thou nightmare! Of seven sons,
The sole abortion!
Arn. Would that I had been so,
And never seen the light!
Bert. I would so, too!
But as thou hast — hence, hence — and do thy best!
That back of thine may bear its burthen; ‘tis
More high, if not so broad as that of others.
Arn. It bears its burthen; — but, my heart! Will it
Sustain that which you lay upon it, Mother?
I love, or, at the least, I loved you: nothing 10
Save You, in nature, can love aught like me.
You nursed me — do not kill me!
Bert. Yes — I nursed thee,
Because thou wert my first-born, and I knew not
If there would be another unlike thee,
That monstrous sport of Nature. But get hence,
And gather wood!
Arn. I will: but when I bring it,
Speak to me kindly. Though my brothers are
So beautiful and lusty, and as free
As the free chase they follow, do not spurn me:
Our milk has been the same.
Bert. As is the hedgehog’s, 20
Which sucks at midnight from the wholesome dam
Of the young bull, until the milkmaid finds
The nipple, next day, sore, and udder dry.
Call not thy brothers brethren! Call me not
Mother; for if I brought thee forth, it was
As foolish hens at times hatch vipers, by
Sitting upon strange eggs. Out, urchin, out!
[Exit Bertha.
Arn. (solus). Oh, mother! — — She is gone, and I must do
Her bidding; — wearily but willingly
I would fulfil it, could I only hope 30
A kind word in return. What shall I do?
[Arnold begins to cut wood: in doing this he wounds one of his hands.
My labour for the day is over now.
Accursed be this blood that flows so fast;
For double curses will be my meed now
At home — What home? I have no home, no kin,
No kind — not made like other creatures, or
To share their sports or pleasures. Must I bleed, too,
Like them? Oh, that each drop which falls to earth
Would rise a snake to sting them, as they have stung me!
Or that the Devil, to whom they liken me, 40
Would aid his likeness! If I must partake
His form, why not his power? Is it because
I have not his will too? For one kind word
From her who bore me would still reconcile me
Even to this hateful aspect. Let me wash
The wound.
[Arnold goes to a spring, and stoops to wash his hand: he starts back.
They are right; and Nature’s mirror shows me,
What she hath made me. I will not look on it
Again, and scarce dare think on’t. Hideous wretch
That I am! The very waters mock me with 50
My horrid shadow — like a demon placed
Deep in the fountain to scare back the cattle
From drinking therein.[He pauses.
And shall I live on,
A burden to the earth, myself, and shame
Unto what brought me into life? Thou blood,
Which flowest so freely from a scratch, let me
Try if thou wilt not, in a fuller stream,
Pour forth my woes for ever with thyself
On earth, to which I will restore, at once,