Life is a Dream – Act II
ACT II
SCENE I
A Throne-room in the Palace. Music within.
KING.
You, for a moment beckon’d from your office,
Tell me thus far how goes it. In due time
The potion left him?
LORD.
At the very hour
To which your Highness temper’d it. Yet not
So wholly but some lingering mist still hung
About his dawning senses—which to clear,
We fill’d and handed him a morning drink
With sleep’s specific antidote suffused;
And while with princely raiment we invested
What nature surely modell’d for a Prince—
All but the sword—as you directed—
KING.
Ay—
LORD.
If not too loudly, yet emphatically
Still with the title of a Prince address’d him.
KING.
How bore he that?
LORD.
With all the rest, my liege,
I will not say so like one in a dream
As one himself misdoubting that he dream’d.
KING.
So far so well, Clotaldo, either way,
And best of all if tow’rd the worse I dread.
But yet no violence?
LORD.
At most, impatience;
Wearied perhaps with importunities
We yet were bound to offer.
KING.
Oh, Clotaldo!
Though thus far well, yet would myself had drunk
The potion he revives from! such suspense
Crowds all the pulses of life’s residue
Into the present moment; and, I think,
Whichever way the trembling scale may turn,
Will leave the crown of Poland for some one
To wait no longer than the setting sun!
CLO.
Courage, my liege! The curtain is undrawn,
And each must play his part out manfully,
Leaving the rest to heaven.
KING.
Whose written words
If I should misinterpret or transgress!
But as you say—
(To the Lord, who exit.)
You, back to him at once;
Clotaldo, you, when he is somewhat used
To the new world of which they call him Prince,
Where place and face, and all, is strange to him,
With your known features and familiar garb
Shall then, as chorus to the scene, accost him,
And by such earnest of that old and too
Familiar world, assure him of the new.
Last in the strange procession, I myself
Will by one full and last development
Complete the plot for that catastrophe
That he must put to all; God grant it be
The crown of Poland on his brows!—Hark! hark!—
Was that his voice within!—Now louder—Oh,
Clotaldo, what! so soon begun to roar!—
Again! above the music—But betide
What may, until the moment, we must hide.
(Exeunt King and Clotaldo.)
SEGISMUND (within).
Forbear! I stifle with your perfume! Cease
Your crazy salutations! peace, I say
Begone, or let me go, ere I go mad
With all this babble, mummery, and glare,
For I am growing dangerous—Air! room! air!—
(He rushes in. Music ceases.)
Oh but to save the reeling brain from wreck
With its bewilder’d senses!
(He covers his eyes for a while.)
What! E’en now
That Babel left behind me, but my eyes
Pursued by the same glamour, that—unless
Alike bewitch’d too—the confederate sense
Vouches for palpable: bright-shining floors
That ring hard answer back to the stamp’d heel,
And shoot up airy columns marble-cold,
That, as they climb, break into golden leaf
And capital, till they embrace aloft
In clustering flower and fruita