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    Catiline, His Conspiracy
    Catiline, His Conspiracy
    Catiline, His Conspiracy
    Ebook151 pages1 hour

    Catiline, His Conspiracy

    By Ben Jonson

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    Benjamin Jonson (1572-1637) was a Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor, known best for his satirical plays and lyric poems. His career began in 1597 when he held a fixed engagement in the "Admiral's Men", and although he was unsuccessful as an actor, his literary talent was apparent and he began writing original plays for the troupe. Jonson's work was primarily in comedies for the public theatres, and although none of his earliest tragedies survived, "Catiline, His Conspiracy" was one of two later tragedies that did. Jonson drew on the works of historians like Plutarch, Dio Cassius and Marcus Tullius Cicero to write the play, which recounts the story of Lucius Sergius Catilina, the Roman politician and conspirator of the 1st century B.C. It was written in the tradition of a Senecan closet drama, relying more on language than on action or violence, which made it less popular than Jonson's satirical and comical works.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781420941913
    Catiline, His Conspiracy
    Author

    Ben Jonson

    Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637 was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone, or The Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare.

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      Book preview

      Catiline, His Conspiracy - Ben Jonson

      CATILINE

      HIS CONSPIRACY.

      A TRAGEDY.

      BY BEN JONSON

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4082-4

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4191-3

      This edition copyright © 2012

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      DEDICATION

      TO THE READER IN ORDINARY.

      TO THE READER EXTRAORDINARY.

      CATILINE.

      ACT I

      ACT II.

      ACT III.

      ACT IV.

      ACT V.

      DEDICATION

      HORAT.

      ——His non plebecula gaudet:

      Verum equitis quoque, iam migravit ab aure voluptas

      Omnis, ad incertos oculos, & gaudia vana.

      TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE OF

      HONOUR AND VIRTUE

      THE MOST NOBLE

      WILLIAM

      EARL OF PEMBROKE,

      LORD CHAMBERLAIN, &C.

      My Lord,

      In so thick and dark an ignorance, as now almost covers the age, I crave leave to stand near your light, and by that to be read. Posterity may pay your benefit the honour and thanks, when it shall know, that you dare, in these jig-given times, to countenance a legitimate poem. I must call it so, against all noise of opinion: from whose crude and airy reports, I appeal to that great and singular faculty of judgment in your lordship, able to vindicate truth from error. It is the first (of this race) that ever I dedicated to any person; and had I not thought it the best, it should have been taught a less ambition. Now it approacheth your censure cheerfully, and with the same assurance that innocency would appear before a magistrate.

      Your Lordship's most faithful honourer,

      BEN. JONSON.

      TO THE READER IN ORDINARY.

      The Muses forbid that I should restrain your meddling, whom I see already busy with the title, and tricking over the leaves: it is your own. I departed with my right, when I let it first abroad; and now, so secure an interpreter I am of my chance, that neither praise nor dispraise from you can affect me. Though you commend the two first acts, with the people, because they are the worst; and dislike the oration of Cicero, in regard you read some pieces of it at school, and understand them not yet: I shall find the way to forgive you. Be anything you will be at your own charge. Would I had deserved but half so well of it in translation, as that ought to deserve of you in judgment, if you have any. I know you will pretend, whosoever you are, to have that, and more: but all pretensions are not just claims. The commendation of good things may fall within a many, the approbation but in a few; for the most commend out of affection, self-tickling, an easiness, or imitation: but men judge only out of knowledge. That is the trying faculty: and to those works that will bear a judge, nothing is more dangerous than a foolish praise. You will say, I shall not have yours therefore; but rather the contrary, all vexation of censure. If I were not above such molestations now, I had great cause to think unworthily of my studies, or they had so of me. But I leave you to your exercise. Begin.

      TO THE READER EXTRAORDINARY.

      You I would understand to be the better man, though places in court go otherwise: to you I submit myself and work. Farewell. Ben Jonson.

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      Sylla's ghost. Cicero.

      Catiline.  Antonius.

      Lentulus.  Cato.

      Cethegus.  Catulus.

      Curius. Crassus.

      Autronius.  Caesar.

      Vargunteius.  Quintus Cicero.

      Longinus.  Syllanus.

      Lecca.  Flaccus.

      Fulvius.  Pomtinius.

      Bestia.  Sanga.

      Gabinius.  Senators.

      Statilius.  Allobroges.

      Ceparius.  Petreius.

      Cornelius.  Soldiers.

      Volturtius.  Porter.

      Aurelia.  Lictors.

      Fulvia.  Servants.

      Sempronia.  Pages.

      Galla.  Chorus.

      The Scene:

      Rome.

      CATILINE.

      ACT I

      Catiline's House.

      [Enter Sylla's Ghost.]

      Dost thou not feel me, Rome? Not yet? Is night

      So heavy on thee, and my weight so light?

      Can Sylla's Ghost arise within thy walls

      Less threatening than an earthquake, the quick falls

      Of thee and thine? Shake not the frighted heads

      Of thy steep towers? Or shrink to their first beds?

      Or, as their ruin the large Tiber fills,

      Make that swell up, and drown thy seven proud hills?

      What sleep is this doth seize thee so like death,

      And is not it? Wake, feel her, in my breath:

      Behold I come, sent from the Stygian Sound,

      As a dire vapour that had cleft the ground,

      To engender with the night, and blast the day;

      Or like a pestilence that should display

      Infection through the world: which thus I do.

      [Discovers Catiline in his study.]

      Pluto be at thy counsels, and into

      Thy darker bosom enter Sylla's spirit:

      All that was mine, and bad, thy breast inherit.

      Alas how weak is that for Catiline!

      Did I but say (vain voice!) all that was mine?

      All that the Gracchi, Cinna, Marius would;

      What now, had I a body again, I could,

      Coming from hell; what fiends would wish should be;

      And Hannibal could not have wished to see:

      Think thou, and practice. Let the long-hid seeds

      Of treason in thee, now shoot forth in deeds

      Ranker than horror; and thy former facts

      Not fall in mention, but to urge new acts:

      Conscience of them provoke thee on to more.

      Be still thy incests, murders, rapes before

      Thy sense; thy forcing first a Vestal nun;

      Thy parricide, late, on thine own only son,

      After his mother; to make empty way

      For thy last wicked nuptials; worse than they

      That blaze that act of thy incestuous life,

      Which got thee at once a daughter and a wife.

      I leave the slaughters that thou didst for me

      Of senators; for which, I hid for thee

      Thy murder of thy brother, (being so bribed)

      And writ him in the list of my proscribed

      After thy fact, to save thy little shame:

      Thy incest with thy sister, I not name.

      These are too light. Fate will have thee pursue

      Deeds, after which no mischief can be new;

      The ruin of thy country: thou wert built

      For such a work, and born for no less guilt.

      What though defeated once thou'st been, and known,

      Tempt it again: That is thy act, or none.

      What all the several ills that visit earth,

      (Brought forth by night, with a sinister birth)

      Plagues, famine, fire, could not reach unto,

      The sword, nor surfeits; let thy fury do:

      Make all past, present, future ill thine own;

      And conquer all example in thy one.

      Nor let thy thought find any vacant time

      To hate an old, but still a fresher crime

      Drown the remembrance: let not mischief cease,

      But while it is in punishing, increase.

      Conscience and care die in thee; and be free

      Not heaven itself, from thy impiety:

      Let night grow blacker with thy plots, and day,

      At showing but thy head forth, start away

      From this half-sphere: and leave Rome's blinded walls

      To embrace lusts, hatreds, slaughters, funerals,

      And not recover sight till their own flames

      Do light them to their ruins. All the names

      Of thy confederates too, be no less great

      In hell than here: that when we would repeat

      Our strengths in muster, we may name you all,

      And furies upon you for furies call.

      Whilst what you do may strike them into fears,

      Or make them grieve, and wish your mischief theirs. [Exit]

      CATILINE. [Coming forward] It is decreed. Nor shall thy Fate, O Rome,

      Resist my vow. Though hills were set on hills,

      And seas met seas to guard thee, I would through:

      I plough up rocks, steep as the Alps, in dust;

      And lave the Tyrrhene waters into clouds;

      But I would reach thy head, thy head, proud city.

      The ills that I have done cannot be safe

      But by attempting greater; and I feel

      A spirit within me chides my sluggish hands,

      And says, they have been innocent too long.

      Was I a man bred great as Rome herself?

      One, formed for all her honours, all her glories?

      Equal to all her titles? That could stand

      Close up with Atlas, and sustain her name

      As strong as he doth heaven? And was I,

      Of all her brood, marked out for the repulse

      By her no voice, when I stood candidate,

      To be commander in the Pontic war?

      I will hereafter call her step-dame ever!

      If she can lose her nature, I can lose

      My piety; and in her stony entrails

      Dig me a seat: where I will live again,

      The labour of her womb, and be a burden

      Weightier than all the prodigies and monsters

      That she hath teemed with, since she first knew Mars.

      Who's there?

      AURELIA. [Within] 'Tis I.

      CATILINE. Aurelia?

      AURELIA. Yes.

      CATILINE. Appear,

      And break like day, my beauty, to this circle:

      Upbraid thy Phoebus, that he is so long

      In mounting to that point, which should give thee

      Thy proper splendour.

      [Enter Aurelia Orestilla]

      Wherefore frowns my sweet?

      Have I too long been absent from these lips,

      This cheek, these eyes? [He kisseth them.]What is my trespass? Speak.

      AURELIA. It seems you know, that can accuse yourself.

      CATILINE. I will redeem it.

      AURELIA. Still you say so. When?

      CATILINE. When Orestilla, by her bearing well

      These my retirements, and stolen times for thought,

      Shall give their effects leave to call her queen

      Of all the world, in place of humbled Rome.

      AURELIA. You court me now.

      CATILINE.

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