MARINO FALIERO Argumentative Essay Example For Students

MARINO FALIERO Argumentative Essay A monologue from the play by Lord Byron NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Lord Byron: Six Plays. Lord Byron. Los Angeles: Black Box Press, 2007. ANGIOLINA: Sage Benintende, now chief Judge of Venice,I speak to thee in answer to yon Signor.Inform the ribald Steno, that his wordsNeer weighed in mind with Loredanos daughter,Further than to create a moments pityFor such as he is: would that others hadDespised him as I pity! I preferMy honour to a thousand lives, could suchBe multiplied in mine, but would not haveA single life of others lost for thatWhich nothing human can impugn—the senseOf Virtue, looking not to what is calledA good name for reward, but to itself.To me the scorners words were as the windUnto the rock: but as there are—alas!Spirits more sensitive, on which such thingsLight as the Whirlwind on the waters; soulsTo whom Dishonours shadow is a substanceMore terrible than Death, here and hereafter;Men whose vice is to start at Vices scoffing,And who, though proof against all blandishmentsOf pleasure, and all pangs of Pain, are feebleWhen the proud name on which they pinnacledTheir hopes is breathed on, j ealous as the eagleOf her high aiery; let what we nowBehold, and feel, and suffer, be a lessonTo wretches how they tamper in their spleenWith beings of a higher order. InsectsHave made the lion mad ere now; a shaftI the heel oerthrew the bravest of the brave;A wifes Dishonour was the bane of Troy;A wifes Dishonour unkinged Rome for ever;An injured husband brought the Gauls to Clusium,And thence to Rome, which perished for a time;An obscene gesture cost CaligulaHis life, while Earth yet bore his cruelties;A virgins wrong made Spain a Moorish province;And Stenos lie, couched in two worthless lines,Hath decimated Venice, put in perilA Senate which hath stood eight hundred years,Discrowned a Prince, cut off his crownless head,And forged new fetters for a groaning people!Let the poor wretch, like to the courtesanWho fired Persepolis, be proud of this,If it so please him—twere a pride fit for him!But let him not insult the last hours ofHim, who, whateer he now is, was a Hero,By the intrusion of his very prayers;Nothing of good can come from such a source,Nor would we aught with him, nor now, nor ever:We leave him to himself, that lowest depthOf human baseness. Pardon is for men,And not for reptiles—we have none for Steno,And no resentment: things like him must sting,And higher beings suffer; tis the charterOf Life. The man who dies by the adders fangMay have the crawler crushed, but feels no anger:Twas the worms nature; and some men are wormsIn soul, more than the living things of tombs.