Porzia

Porzia
Cale Rice

Cale Young Rice

Porzia

To

GILBERT MURRAY

Poet, Dramatist, and Master-Interpreter of a greatliterature

PREFACE

Some years ago while writing "A Night In Avignon" the thought came to me of framing two other plays that should deal respectively with the Renaissance spirit at its height and decadence, as that play had dealt with it at its beginning. For the great human upheaval that came intoxicatingly to Italy during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is so full of æsthetic contrast and glamor as to be peculiarly suitable for the doubly exacting purposes of poetic drama.

"Giorgione," the second of these plays to be written, was published in 1911 with three other plays in a volume entitled "The Immortal Lure," and like "A Night In Avignon" was received with such kindness as to encourage me to write the third, here presented under the name of "Porzia."

This last play, whose period is that of "decadent Humanism," or as Symonds prefers to call it, of "The Catholic Reaction," is laid in Naples, where the passions of men, more than freed from the long domination of the Church and the Hereafter, seemed to reach in their grasp at this life almost incredible heights and depths of excess. And yet from amid this excess, as from a rank and unweeded garden, were springing into flower many seeds of modern intellectual enfranchisement, as the achievements of Bruno and his contemporaries witness.

I need only add that I have sought to use materials that would be true to the time of this final portrayal, and that I therefore trust it may be understood as an organic member of the group to which it belongs.

    C. Y. R.

Louisville, Kentucky, June, 1912.

ACT I

CHARACTERS

RIZZIO DI ROSSI A young Leader of the Literati at Naples, suspected of heresy

OSIO His Brother

PORZIA His Wife

ALOYSIUS Her Uncle, a Physician

BIANCA Her Cousin, a Florentine, once betrothed to Osio

GIORDANO BRUNO A young Dominican, also heretical

MONSIGNOR QUERIO An Officer of the Inquisition

TASSO A Poet

MARINA A Sicilian serving Porzia

MATTEO Serving Rizzio, later Osio

Dancers from Capri, Musicians, Guards of the Inquisition, etc.

TIME —About 1570

PORZIA

Scene: A portion of the house, terrace and garden of Rizzio on his wedding day at Naples. It is so situated as to command a view of the city, the blue Bay with Capri set like a topaz in it, the Vesuvian coast, and the Mountain itself – rising like a calm though unappeasable monitor against the land's too sensual enchantment.

The house, a white corner of which is visible along the right, has large doors toward the back giving upon the terrace. A vine-clad terrace wall, several feet above the level of the terrace, but much above that of the street without, runs across the rear to a cypress-set gate in the centre, and on into the lustrous Spring foliage of ilex, myrtle and orange.

A pedestaled image of the Virgin against the house, a statue of Pan before a bower opposite, and several stone seats forward, are decked with orange blossoms that glow in the light of late afternoon.

Music, reveling, and laughter are heard, muffled, within. Then amid a louder burst of them Osio strides angrily forth. He is followed in argumentative elation by Rizzio – clothed in Greek raiment, a book in his hand – and by Bruno.

Osio (as they come down).
Proof from the teeth of aliens and fools
And infidels that follow their own reason?
I want no proof! your books should burn in Hell!

Rizzio (gaily).
Because they glorify the stars in heaven?

Osio.
I say they are heresy!

Rizzio.
And I say truth!

[Uplifts volume.

That were your ears not stopped with sophistries
And Jesuitry you would adjudge divine!

[Tosses it down.

Bruno.
Ai, Signor Osio, there's no denying!

[Porzia appears anxiously at the door.

We need but look,
To learn that stars are worlds
Swung out upon infinitudes of space.
And as for earth —
Tho Christ shed blood upon it —
'Tis but a pilgrim flame among them all.

[Porzia leaves door.