THE GREAT GALEOTO
A monologue from the
play by Jose
Echegaray
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Masterpieces of Modern Spanish Drama. Ed. Barrett
H. Clark. New York: Duffield & Co., 1917. |
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ERNESTO: If everyone else is talking now, why shouldn't
we talk, too? The whole town is a seething, boiling whirlpool
that sucks in and absorbs and devours and utterly destroys the
honor, the good name, the very being of three people, and carries
them away on the spray of laughter through the canal of human
misery to the social abyss of shame, and there drowns forever
the future, the fair name, and the memory, of these unhappy beings.
No, I will not speak lower. They aren't whispering; they're
shouting aloud. Why, the air fairly resounds! There isn't a person
who doesn't know the tragic story, but every one tells it his
own way. Wonder of wonders, people always know everything; but,
sad to say, never the truth. Some say that Teodora was surprised
by her husband in my house, and that I rushed at him, blind with
fury, and plunged my cowardly dagger into his breast; others,
my friends apparently, give me a higher rank than that of a vulgar
assassin: I killed him, but in an honorable fight, a properly
arranged duel. There are some, of course, who know more
of the details, and they say that Julian took my
place in the affair that had been arranged with Nebreda. . .
. I arrived too late . . . on purpose, or through cowardice,
or because I was in the arms of . . . No, the vile words burn
my lips; my brain is on fire! Think of the filthiest, the lowest,
the vilest, most infamous thing imaginable: dregs of the heart,
ashes of the soul, evil scourings of unclean minds; cast it to
the breezes blowing through the streets, salt all lips and tongues
with it, and you'll have the story, and you will learn then what
remains of two honorable men and a woman, when their reputations
are bandied about the town!
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MONOLOGUES BY JOSE ECHEGARAY |
