QUEEN: But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the deluge are gone, and can return no more.
ARCHY: Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies. — The rainbow hung over the city with all its shops,…and churches, from north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the masonry of heaven — like a balance in which the angel that distributes the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the meanest feet. 424
QUEEN:
Who taught you this trash, sirrah?
ARCHY: A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt. — But for the rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and…until the top of the Tower…of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard treasures were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set off, and at the Tower — But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.
KING:
Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience. 435
ARCHY: Then conscience is a fool. — I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.
QUEEN:
Archy is shrewd and bitter.
ARCHY: Like the season, 440 So blow the winds. — But at the other end of the rainbow, where the gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what think you that I found instead of a mitre?
KING:
Vane’s wits perhaps. 445
ARCHY: Something as vain. I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken dishes — the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of this ass. 451
QUEEN:
Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane
She place my lute, together with the music
Mari received last week from Italy,
In my boudoir, and —
[EXIT ARCHY.]
KING:
I’ll go in.
QUEEN:
MY beloved lord, 455
Have you not noted that the Fool of late
Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words
Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?
What can it mean? I should be loth to think
Some factious slave had tutored him.
KING:
Oh, no! 460
He is but Occasion’s pupil. Partly ‘tis
That our minds piece the vacant intervals
Of his wild words with their own fashioning, —
As in the imagery of summer clouds,
Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find 465
The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:
And partly, that the terrors of the time
Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;
And in the lightest and the least, may best
Be seen the current of the coming wind. 470
QUEEN:
Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.
Come, I will sing to you; let us go try
These airs from Italy; and, as we pass
The gallery, we’ll decide where that Correggio
Shall hang — the Virgin Mother 475
With her child, born the King of heaven and earth,
Whose reign is men’s salvation. And you shall see
A cradled miniature of yourself asleep,
Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;
Liker than any Vandyke ever made, 480
A pattern to the unborn age of thee,
Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy
A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow,
Did I not think that after we were dead
Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that 485
The cares we waste upon our heavy crown
Would make it light and glorious as a wreath
Of Heaven’s beams for his dear innocent brow.
KING:
Dear Henrietta!
SCENE 3
THE STAR CHAMBER. LAUD, JUXON, STRAFFORD, AND OTHERS, AS JUDGES. PRYNNE AS A PRISONER, AND THEN BASTWICK.
LAUD:
Bring forth the prisoner Bastwick: let the clerk
Recite his sentence.
CLERK:
‘That he pay five thousand
Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded
With red-hot iron on the cheek and forehead,
And be imprisoned within Lancaster Castle 5
During the pleasure of the Court.’
LAUD:
Prisoner,
If you have aught to say wherefore this sentence
Should not be put into effect, now speak.
JUXON:
If you have aught to plead in mitigation,
Speak.
BASTWICK:
Thus, my lords. If, like the prelates, I 10
Were an invader of the royal power
A public scorner of the word of God,
Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious,
Impious in heart and in tyrannic act,
Void of wit, honesty, and temperance; 15
If Satan were my lord, as theirs, — our God
Pattern of all I should avoid to do;
Were I an enemy of my God and King
And of good men, as ye are; — I should merit
Your fearful state and gilt prosperity, 20
Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn
To cowls and robes of everlasting fire.
But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not
The only earthly favour ye can yield,
Or I think worth acceptance at your hands, — 25
Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment.
even as my Master did,
Until Heaven’s kingdom shall descend on earth,
Or earth be like a shadow in the light
Of Heaven absorbed — some few tumultuous years 30
Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes
His will whose will is power.
LAUD:
Officer, take the prisoner from the bar,
And be his tongue slit for his insolence.
BASTWICK:
While this hand holds a pen —
LAUD:
Be his hands —
JUXON:
Stop! 35
Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak
No terror, would interpret, being dumb,
Heaven’s thunder to our harm;…
And hands, which now write only their own shame,
With bleeding stumps might sign our blood away. 40
LAUD:
Much more such ‘mercy’ among men would be,
Did all the ministers of Heaven’s revenge
Flinch thus from earthly retribution. I
Could suffer what I would inflict.
[EXIT BASTWICK GUARDED.]
Bring up
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln. —
[TO STRATFORD.]
Know you not 45
That, in distraining for ten thousand pounds
Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln,
Were found these scandalous and seditious letters
Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled?
I speak it not as touching this poor person; 50
But of the office which should make it holy,
Were it as vile as it was ever spotless.
Mark too, my lord, that this expression strikes<
br />
His Majesty, if I misinterpret not.
[ENTER BISHOP WILLIAMS GUARDED.]
STRAFFORD:
‘Twere politic and just that Williams taste 55
The bitter fruit of his connection with
The schismatics. But you, my Lord Archbishop,
Who owed your first promotion to his favour,
Who grew beneath his smile —
LAUD:
Would therefore beg
The office of his judge from this High Court, — 60
That it shall seem, even as it is, that I,
In my assumption of this sacred robe,
Have put aside all worldly preference,
All sense of all distinction of all persons,
All thoughts but of the service of the Church. — 65
Bishop of Lincoln!
WILLIAMS:
Peace, proud hierarch!
I know my sentence, and I own it just.
Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve,
In stretching to the utmost
…
Scene 3. 1-69 Bring…utmost 1870; omitted 1824.
SCENE 4
HAMPDEN, PYM, CROMWELL, HIS DAUGHTER, AND YOUNG SIR HARRY VANE.
HAMPDEN:
England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle,
Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave!
I held what I inherited in thee
As pawn for that inheritance of freedom
Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler’s smile: 5
How can I call thee England, or my country? —
Does the wind hold?
VANE:
The vanes sit steady
Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings
Of the evening star, spite of the city’s smoke,
Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air. 10
Mark too that flock of fleecy-winged clouds
Sailing athwart St. Margaret’s.
HAMPDEN:
Hail, fleet herald
Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide
Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,
Beyond the shot of tyranny, 15
Beyond the webs of that swoln spider…
Beyond the curses, calumnies, and [lies?]
Of atheist priests! … And thou
Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,
Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm, 20
Bright as the path to a beloved home
Oh, light us to the isles of the evening land!
Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years
Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions, 25
Where Power’s poor dupes and victims yet have never
Propitiated the savage fear of kings
With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew
Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake
To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns; 30
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo
Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites
Wrest man’s free worship, from the God who loves,
To the poor worm who envies us His love!
Receive, thou young … of Paradise. 35
These exiles from the old and sinful world!
…
This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through their veil
Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth; 40
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,
Presses upon me like a dungeon’s grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall. 45
The boundless universe
Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul
That owns no master; while the loathliest ward
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest
Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops, — 50
To which the eagle spirits of the free,
Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm
Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,
Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die
And cannot be repelled. 55
Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time,
They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop
Through palaces and temples thunderproof.
SCENE 5
ARCHY: I’ll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the tears shed on its old [roots?] as the [wind?] plays the song of
‘A widow bird sate mourning
Upon a wintry bough.’ 5
[SINGS]
Heigho! the lark and the owl!
One flies the morning, and one lulls the night: —
Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
Sings like the fool through darkness and light.
‘A widow bird sate mourning for her love 10
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare.
No flower upon the ground, 15
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel’s sound.’
Scene 5. 1-9 I’ll…light 1870; omitted 1824.
The Novels
University College, Oxford, where Shelley enrolled in 1810. Legend has it that the poet attended only one lecture while at Oxford, though he often read for sixteen hours a day.
ZASTROZZI
Being Shelley’s first published prose work, this short gothic novel was first published in 1810 in London by George Wilkie and John Robinson, displaying only the initials of the author’s name. The novel outlines Shelley’s atheistic worldview through the villain Zastrozzi, expressing the author’s earliest thoughts on irresponsible self-indulgence and violent revenge. Shelley wrote Zastrozzi at the age of seventeen, whilst attending his last year at Eton College, though it was not published until he was attending Oxford University.
The Gentleman’s Magazine, regarded as the first literary magazine of the time, published a favourable review of the novel in 1810: “A short, but well-told tale of horror, and, if we do not mistake, not from an ordinary pen. The story is so artfully conducted that the reader cannot easily anticipate the denouement.” The Critical Review, a conservative journal, on the other hand, called the main character Zastrozzi “one of the most savage and improbable demons that ever issued from a diseased brain.” The reviewer dismissed the novel: “We know not when we have felt so much indignation as in the perusal of this execrable production. The author of it cannot be too severely reprobated. Not all his ‘scintillated eyes,’ his ‘battling emotions,’ his ‘frigorific torpidity of despair’... ought to save him from infamy, and his volume from the flames.”
The 1810 title page
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER I.
— That their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works — This would surpass
Common revenge.
— Paradise Lost.
Torn from the society of all he held dear on earth, the victim of secret enemies, and exiled from happiness, was the wretched Verezzi!
All was quiet; a pitchy darkness in volved the face of
things, when, urged by fiercest revenge, placed himself at the door of the inn where, undisturbed, Verezzi slept.
Loudly he called the landlord. The landlord, to whom the bare name of was terrible, trembling obeyed the summons.
“Thou knowest Verezzi the Italian? he lodges here.” “He does,” answered the landlord.
“Him, then, have I devoted to destruction,” exclaimed . “Let Ugo and Bernardo follow you to his apartment; I will be with you to prevent mischief.”
Cautiously they ascended — successfully they executed their revengeful purpose, and bore the sleeping Verezzi to the place, where a chariot waited to convey the vindictive ‘s prey to the place of its destination.
Ugo and Bernardo lifted the still sleeping Verezzi into the chariot. Rapidly they travelled onwards for several hours. Verezzi was still wrapped in deep sleep, from which all the movements he had undergone had been insufficient to rouse him.
and Ugo were masked, as was Bernardo, who acted as postition.
It was still dark, when they stopped at a small inn, on a remote and desolate heath; and waiting but to change horses, again advanced. At last day appeared — still the slumbers of Verezzi remained unbroken.
Ugo fearfully questioned as to the cause of his extraordinary sleep. Zastrozzi, who, however, was well acquainted with it, gloomily answered, “I know not.”
Swiftly they travelled during the whole of the day, over which nature seemed to have drawn her most gloomy curtain. — They stopped occasionally at inns to change horses and obtain refreshments.
Night came on — they forsook the beaten track, and, entering an immense forest, made their way slowly through the rugged underwood.
At last they stopped — they lifted their victim from the chariot, and bore him to a cavern, which yawned in a dell close by.
Not long did the hapless victim of unmerited persecution enjoy an oblivion which deprived him of a knowledge of his horrible situation. He awoke — and overcome by excess of terror, started violently from the ruffians’ arms.
They had now entered the cavern — Verezzi supported himself against a fragment of rock which jutted out.
“Resistance is useless,” exclaimed ; “following us in submissive silence can alone procure the slightest mitigation of your punishment.”
Verezzi followed as fast as his frame, weakened by unnatural sleep, and enfeebled by recent illness, would permit; yet, scarcely believing that he was awake, and not thoroughly convinced of the reality of the scene before him, he viewed every thing with that kind of inexplicable horror, which a terrible dream is wont to excite.
Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 126