The Cenci : A Tragedy In Five Acts Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BAACDEAABFAG FH I IFC CJFKHLMNOHPQRFF FCSTFUCFVWGFUXYFZFFF U CFHA2B2NFC2FD2GFLFFO E2F2G2C2H2FI2F FC2UJ2K2GFL2M2N2 CD2 FFGO2QP2Q2R2A2FXS2FT 2U2V2HZW2X2F2C2FACT2 T2 CT2U FUY2FT2T2T2C2T2T2T2T 2FFFCFZ2GFA3B3T2FGX2 V2 CT2T2FT2 C3 C3C3L FB3D3 C3 CYFF C FFT2YE3FC3HD2F3FF N2R2FG3T2H3FC3 C3 C3T2 FGI3 T2 IA FE2T2T2T2J3W2T2 CF2 FT2H CV2FHX2K3| DRAMATIS PERSON | A |
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| Count Francesco Cenci | B |
| Giacomo his Son | A |
| Bernardo his Son | A |
| Cardinal Camillo | C |
| Orsino a Prelate | D |
| Savella the Pope's Legate | E |
| Olimpio Assassin | A |
| Marzio Assassin | A |
| Andrea Servant to Cenci | B |
| Nobles Judges Guards Servants | F |
| Lucretia Wife of Cenci and Step mother of his children | A |
| Beatrice his Daughter | G |
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| The Scene lies principally in Rome but changes during the Fourth Act to Petrella a castle among the Apulian Apennines | F |
| Time During the Pontificate of Clement VIII | H |
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| ACT I | I |
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| Scene I | I |
| An Apartment in the Cenci Palace | F |
| Enter Count Cenci and Cardinal Camillo | C |
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| Camillo | C |
| That matter of the murder is hushed up | J |
| If you consent to yield his Holiness | F |
| Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate | K |
| It needed all my interest in the conclave | H |
| To bend him to this point he said that you | L |
| Bought perilous impunity with your gold | M |
| That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded | N |
| Enriched the Church and respited from hell | O |
| An erring soul which might repent and live | H |
| But that the glory and the interest | P |
| Of the high throne he fills little consist | Q |
| With making it a daily mart of guilt | R |
| As manifold and hideous as the deeds | F |
| Which you scarce hide from men's revolted eyes | F |
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| Cenci | F |
| The third of my possessions let it go | C |
| Ay I once heard the nephew of the Pope | S |
| Had sent his architect to view the ground | T |
| Meaning to build a villa on my vines | F |
| The next time I compounded with his uncle | U |
| I little thought he should outwit me so | C |
| Henceforth no witness not the lamp shall see | F |
| That which the vassal threatened to divulge | V |
| Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward | W |
| The deed he saw could not have rated higher | G |
| Than his most worthless life it angers me | F |
| Respited me from Hell So may the Devil | U |
| Respite their souls from Heaven No doubt Pope Clement | X |
| And his most charitable nephews pray | Y |
| That the Apostle Peter and the Saints | F |
| Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy | Z |
| Strength wealth and pride and lust and length of days | F |
| Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards | F |
| Of their revenue But much yet remains | F |
| To which they show no title | U |
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| Camillo | C |
| Oh Count Cenci | F |
| So much that thou mightst honourably live | H |
| And reconcile thyself with thine own heart | A2 |
| And with thy God and with the offended world | B2 |
| How hideously look deeds of lust and blood | N |
| Through those snow white and venerable hairs | F |
| Your children should be sitting round you now | C2 |
| But that you fear to read upon their looks | F |
| The shame and misery you have written there | D2 |
| Where is your wife Where is your gentle daughter | G |
| Methinks her sweet looks which make all things else | F |
| Beauteous and glad might kill the fiend within you | L |
| Why is she barred from all society | F |
| But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs | F |
| Talk with me Count you know I mean you well | O |
| I stood beside your dark and fiery youth | E2 |
| Watching its bold and bad career as men | F2 |
| Watch meteors but it vanished not I marked | G2 |
| Your desperate and remorseless manhood now | C2 |
| Do I behold you in dishonoured age | H2 |
| Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes | F |
| Yet I have ever hoped you would amend | I2 |
| And in that hope have saved your life three times | F |
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| Cenci | F |
| For which Aldobrandino owes you now | C2 |
| My fief beyond the Pincian Cardinal | U |
| One thing I pray you recollect henceforth | J2 |
| And so we shall converse with less restraint | K2 |
| A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter | G |
| He was accustomed to frequent my house | F |
| So the next day his wife and daughter came | L2 |
| And asked if I had seen him and I smiled | M2 |
| I think they never saw him any more | N2 |
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| Camillo | C |
| Thou execrable man beware | D2 |
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| Cenci | F |
| Of thee | F |
| Nay this is idle We should know each other | G |
| As to my character for what men call crime | O2 |
| Seeing I please my senses as I list | Q |
| And vindicate that right with force or guile | P2 |
| It is a public matter and I care not | Q2 |
| If I discuss it with you I may speak | R2 |
| Alike to you and my own conscious heart | A2 |
| For you give out that you have half reformed me | F |
| Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent | X |
| If fear should not both will I do not doubt | S2 |
| All men delight in sensual luxury | F |
| All men enjoy revenge and most exult | T2 |
| Over the tortures they can never feel | U2 |
| Flattering their secret peace with others' pain | V2 |
| But I delight in nothing else I love | H |
| The sight of agony and the sense of joy | Z |
| When this shall be another's and that mine | W2 |
| And I have no remorse and little fear | X2 |
| Which are I think the checks of other men | F2 |
| This mood has grown upon me until now | C2 |
| Any design my captious fancy makes | F |
| The picture of its wish and it forms none | A |
| But such as men like you would start to know | C |
| Is as my natural food and rest debarred | T2 |
| Until it be accomplished | T2 |
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| Camillo | C |
| Art thou not | T2 |
| Most miserable | U |
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| Cenci | F |
| Why miserable | U |
| No I am what your theologians call | Y2 |
| Hardened which they must be in impudence | F |
| So to revile a man's peculiar taste | T2 |
| True I was happier than I am while yet | T2 |
| Manhood remained to act the thing I thought | T2 |
| While lust was sweeter than revenge and now | C2 |
| Invention palls Ay we must all grow old | T2 |
| And but that there yet remains a deed to act | T2 |
| Whose horror might make sharp an appetite | T2 |
| Duller than mine I'd do I know not what | T2 |
| When I was young I thought of nothing else | F |
| But pleasure and I fed on honey sweets | F |
| Men by St Thomas cannot live like bees | F |
| And I grew tired yet till I killed a foe | C |
| And heard his groans and heard his children's groans | F |
| Knew I not what delight was else on earth | Z2 |
| Which now delights me little I the rather | G |
| Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals | F |
| The dry fixed eyeball the pale quivering lip | A3 |
| Which tell me that the spirit weeps within | B3 |
| Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ | T2 |
| I rarely kill the body which preserves | F |
| Like a strong prison the soul within my power | G |
| Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear | X2 |
| For hourly pain | V2 |
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| Camillo | C |
| Hell's most abandoned fiend | T2 |
| Did never in the drunkenness of guilt | T2 |
| Speak to his heart as now you speak to me | F |
| I thank my God that I believe you not | T2 |
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| Enter Andrea | C3 |
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| Andrea | C3 |
| My Lord a gentleman from Salamanca | C3 |
| Would speak with you | L |
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| Cenci | F |
| Bid him attend me in | B3 |
| The grand saloon | D3 |
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| Exit Andrea | C3 |
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| Camillo | C |
| Farewell and I will pray | Y |
| Almighty God that thy false impious words | F |
| Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee | F |
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| Exit Camillo | C |
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| Cenci | F |
| The third of my possessions I must use | F |
| Close husbandry or gold the old man's sword | T2 |
| Falls from my withered hand But yesterday | Y |
| There came an order from the Pope to make | E3 |
| Fourfold provision for my curs d sons | F |
| Whom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca | C3 |
| Hoping some accident might cut them off | H |
| And meaning if I could to starve them there | D2 |
| I pray thee God send some quick death upon them | F3 |
| Bernardo and my wife could not be worse | F |
| If dead and damned then as to Beatrice Looking around him suspiciously | F |
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| I think they cannot hear me at that door | N2 |
| What if they should And yet I need not speak | R2 |
| Though the heart triumphs with itself in words | F |
| O thou most silent air that shalt not hear | G3 |
| What now I think Thou pavement which I tread | T2 |
| Towards her chamber let your echoes talk | H3 |
| Of my imperious step scorning surprise | F |
| But not of my intent Andrea | C3 |
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| Enter Andrea | C3 |
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| Andrea | C3 |
| My lord | T2 |
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| Cenci | F |
| Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber | G |
| This evening no at midnight and alone | I3 |
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| Exeunt | T2 |
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| Scene II | I |
| A Garden of the Cenci Palace EnterBeatrice and Orsino as in conversation | A |
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| Beatrice | F |
| Pervert not truth | E2 |
| Orsino You remember where we held | T2 |
| That conversation nay we see the spot | T2 |
| Even from this cypress two long years are past | T2 |
| Since on an April midnight underneath | J3 |
| The moonlight ruins of mount Palatine | W2 |
| I did confess to you my secret mind | T2 |
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| Orsino | C |
| You said you loved me then | F2 |
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| Beatrice | F |
| You are a Priest | T2 |
| Speak to me not of love | H |
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| Orsino | C |
| I may obtain | V2 |
| The dispensation of the Pope to marry | F |
| Because I am a Priest do you believe | H |
| Your image as the hunter some struck deer | X2 |
| Follows me not whether I wake or sleep | K3 |
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1)
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