LITMIR.BIZ

      Rizzio (stung, staring).

      By … all the saints

      and fiends and incubi

      That ever infested night and nunneries!

      What frenzy now is biting at your brain!

      Is she your wife, so to concern your care?

      Porzia (who sees, and with Bianca comes quickly, winningly down).

      Heresy! heresy! truth and heresy!

      Are there no other words in all the world

      To pour as wine

      Upon a wedding-day! —

      Are these your ways, my newly wedded lord,

      To leave me, an hour's bride, away from home —

      From my dear uncle's home —

      With but a friend or two for comforting —

      And bandy words of other stars than those

      You swear to see when gazing in my eyes!

      Rizzio (responsively).

      My Porzia!

      Porzia.

      No, no! I'll not forgive you!

      For is it not ill boding to our bridals

      You quarrel over the heavens – and not me!

      My beauty, he says, this husband I have taken,

      Is life – and yet ere 'tis an hour his

      Forgets to live on it! – and Osio,

      The brother of him, —

      E'en Osio there —

      Rizzio (gay again).

      Who swears he will protect you!

      Porzia.

      Protect?

      Rizzio.

      Against the heresy of robes

      Of pagan fashion – and against your husband!

      Porzia.

      I do not understand – unless you jest,

      As oft – too oft you do!

      Or mean perchance Bianca … unto whom

      He was betrothed

      And whom he would, this breath,

      Be wooing again, were I, not words, your bride!

      But see, here is Marina! the dance awaits!

      Let us go in and give ourselves to Joy,

      For Misery is quick enough to take us,

      If first we do not wed us to her rival!

      Is it not so?

      Rizzio (with passion).

      Or sun has never shone!

      So in! the tarantelle! (as Tasso enters) And then a song

      From Messer Tasso, who would be divine,

      Did he love Venus as he fears the Church,

      Apollo as he shuns the Inquisition!

      In! – Osio, will you come?

      Osio.

      I will not.

      Rizzio.

      Then

      Dance with your own mad humors and delusions

      Here to Vesuvius and to the sea, —

      Or to Bianca plead your pardon!

      (To the rest) Come!

      For in this world there's but one heresy,

      Denial of the divinity of Joy!

      Osio (when their steps have died; in cold rage).

      You shall hear more of this, my pretty brother!

      Prater of pagan doubts!

      Whom – but that God may use it – I would curse

      For the resemblance that our mother gave us!

      For, by the living blood of San Gennaro,

      In yon Duomo, the scoffing siren song

      Of heresy that swells in you shall cease,

      Tho it shall take the sweat of the rack to hush it!

      You shall hear more!..

      Bianca (who has stood long indignant).

      And others shall hear more!

      Others who fix upon me this affront

      Of broken and humiliate betrothals!

      Yes! you have made of me a thing of shame

      Here in the eyes

      Of those who're alien to me!

      That you have loved me not – or love me less

      Than once you did, too well I came to know —

      I – with the blood in me of the Medici! —

      And now it is open prate!.. But do you think

      The women of my city want resentment,

      Or less than these sun-lusting ones of Naples

      Know how to cool their wrath?

      Osio.

      I think you mad —

      In a mad maze —

      And yield it no concern;

      Nor shall – (meaningly) until a thing you know is done.

      As to betrothals, give your memory breath:

      Ours was agreed to end as either willed.

      Bianca (as he returns).

      And you, weary of it, have utterly

      Chosen to end it?

      Osio.

      Have

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