The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts |
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Common terms and phrases
accusation Act V Scene Andrea art thou avenge BERNARDO blood brother Cardinal Camillo CENCI Act CENCI Act IV CENCI PALACE child cold Colonna Palace confess Count Cenci crime curse dare dark dead dear death deed despair doubt dread dreams earth Enter Beatrice Enter Lucretia eyes Farewell father fear feast gentle GIACOMO grave GUEST guilty hair HARVARD COLLEGE hate hear heart Heaven hell hide hope horrible horror III Scene innocent IV Scene IV JUDGE kill Lady Beatrice live look Lord Mother murdered never night pale parricide PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Petrella pity poison Pope Pope's pray remorse Rome Salamanca SAVELLA Scene I Enter Scene II Exit sister slave sleep smile soul speak spirit strange sufferings sweet sweet child talk tears thee thine thing thou art thou hast thought tortures truth twere weep whilst wife words worse wouldst wretch wrongs
Popular passages
Page 78 - What evil have we done thee ? I, alas ! Have lived but on this earth a few sad years ; And so my lot was ordered that a father First turned the moments of awakening life To drops each poisoning youth's sweet hope...
Page 11 - There is a fixed and pale composure upon the features : she seems sad and stricken down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound with folds of white drapery, from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape, and fall about her neck.
Page 10 - In a dramatic composition the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate one another, the former being reserved simply for the full developement and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion.
Page 10 - Religion coexists, as it were, in the mind of an Italian Catholic, with a faith in that of which all men have the most certain knowledge. It is interwoven with the whole fabric of life. It is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no necessary connection with any one virtue.
Page 36 - tis a trick of this same family To analyse their own and other minds. Such self-anatomy shall teach the will Dangerous secrets : for it tempts our powers, Knowing what must be thought, and may be done, Into the depth of darkest purposes...
Page 47 - Even as a wretched soul, hour after hour, Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans; And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag, Huge as despair, as if in weariness, The melancholy mountain yawns . . . below, You hear but see not an impetuous torrent Raging among the caverns, and a bridge Crosses the chasm; and high above...
Page 33 - The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear A busy stir of men about the streets ; I see the bright sky through the window panes: It is a garish, broad, and peering day; Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears, And every little corner, nook, and hole Is penetrated with the insolent light.
Page 5 - Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, honourable, innocent and brave; one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive, and how to confer a benefit though he must ever confer far more than he can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of purer life and manners...
Page 5 - I have hitherto published have been little else than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth and im patience ; they are dreams of what ought to be or may be.
Page 15 - HAT matter of the murder is hushed up If you consent to yield his Holiness Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.