THE PAINTER OF HIS OWN DISHONOUR
A monologue from the
play by Pedro
Calderón de la Barca
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Eight Dramas of Calderon. Trans. Edward Fitzgerald.
London: Macmillan & Co., 1906. |
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- ALVARO: He is resolved. And Serafina,
- To whose divinity I offer'd up
- My heart of hearts, a purer sacrifice
- Than ever yet on pagan altar blazed,
- Has play'd me false, is married to another,
- And now will fly away on winds and seas,
- As fleeting as herself.
- Then what remains but that I die? My death
- The necessary shadow of that marriage!
- Comfort!--what boots it looking after that
- Which never can be found? The worst is come,
- Which 'twere a blind and childish waste of hope
- To front with any visage but despair.
- Ev'n that one single solace, were there one,
- Of ringing my despair into her ears,
- Fails me. Time presses; the accursed breeze
- Blows foully fair. The vessel flaps her sails
- That is to bear her from me. Look, she comes--
- And from before her dawning beauty all
- I had to say fades from my swimming brain,
- And chokes upon my tongue.
MORE MONOLOGUES BY CALDERÓN |
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