Two Voltairean Plays: The Triumvirate and Comedy at Ferney. Voltaire

      BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY FRANK J. MORLOCK

      The Chevalier d’Éon and Other Short Farces from the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Theatre (Editor)

      Chuzzlewit

      Congreve’s Comedy of Manners

      Crime and Punishment

      Falstaff (with William Shakespeare, John Dennis, and William Kendrick)

      Fathers and Sons

      The Idiot

      Jurgen

      Justine

      Lord Jim

      Notes from the Underground

      Oblomov

      Outrageous Women: Lady Macbeth and Other French Plays (editor and translator)

      Peter and Alexis

      The Princess Casamassima

      A Raw Youth

      The Stendhal Hamlet Scenarios and Other Shakespearean Shorts from the French (editor and translator)

      Two Voltairean Plays: The Triumvirate and Comedy at Ferney (editor)

      The Widow’s Husband; and, Porthos in Search of an Outfit: Two Dumasian Comedies (editor and translator)

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1991, 2004, 2006, 2013 by Frank J. Morlock

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      To my dear friend, Michael Lidsky

      THE TRIUMVIRATE; OR, AFTER CAESAR’S DEATH: A PLAY IN FIVE ACTS

      BY VOLTAIRE

      Translated and Adapted by Frank J. Morlock

      CAST OF CHARACTERS

      OCTAVIAN

      MARK ANTHONY

      SEXTUS POMPEY

      JULIA, daughter of Lucius Caesar

      FULVIA, wife of Mark Anthony

      ALBINA, Fulvia’s servant

      AUFIDIUS, Military Tribune

      Tribunes, Centurions, Lictors, Soldiers

      ACT I

      The action takes place on an island in the River Reno, near modern Bologna.

      The Triumvirs are carrying out proscriptions and dividing the world. It is dark. Lightning flashes and the sound of thunder. There are rocks, precipices and tents in the distance.

      FULVIA

      What a frightful night. How celestial wrath

      Explodes with justice over this funereal isle.

      ALBINA

      These sudden quakes, these overturned rocks,

      These infernal volcanoes hurling to the heaven,

      This river erected, rolling its waves over us,

      Have made humans fear the end of the world.

      Thunder has devoured this detestable bronze,

      These tables of vengeance where fatal engravings,

      Shock our eyes with a list of crimes,

      With the order for carnage and the names of victims—

      You see, indeed, that our proscriptions

      Are the horror of heaven as well as Nature.

      FULVIA

      Let this wild thunder fall on our tyrants,

      Which, vainly striking an abhorred earth,

      Has destroyed in the hands of our cruel master

      The instruments of crime and not the criminals!

      I would have seen this isle annihilated,

      With the unworthy affronts with which they load Fulvia.

      What are our three tyrants doing in this horrid disorder?

      What remorse, at least, have they drawn to themselves?

      ALBINA

      In this island trembling at lightning bursts

      Calmly in their tent as they are sharing the world

      Of Senate and people they rule the fate

      And into bloody Rome they are sending death.

      FULVIA

      Anthony is giving it to me, o day of ignominy,

      He’s leaving me, kicking me out, marrying Octavia.

      In an odious divorce, I await the infamous writing

      I am repudiated; it’s me they are proscribing.

      ALBINA

      He braves you to this degree?

      He’s doing you this injury?

      FULVIA

      Is the murderer of Romans perjuring himself?

      I have served him too well—

      All barbarians are ingrates

      He pretends toward me the consideration of state

      But this great consideration is only that of a traitor

      That clever Octavian is deceiving him with, perhaps.

      ALBINA

      Octavian loves you—is it probable that today

      Your misfortunes are coming from him?

      FULVIA

      Who can know Octavian? And how different his character

      In every respect from the great heart of his father.

      I’ve seen, in the error of his distraction

      Pass even Anthony in his passionate outbursts.

      I have seen pleasures in search of mad intoxication

      I have seen Catos pretend wisdom

      After having offered me a criminal love

      This Proteus has escaped my chain without return.

      Sometimes willful, sometimes bloodthirsty,

      Adoring Julia, he proscribes her father;

      He hates, he fears Anthony, and is giving him his sister.

      Anthony is wild, but Octavian is deceitful.

      These are the heroes who rule the earth,

      Playing with peace and war,

      From whose voluptuous breasts that enchain us

      To what masters, great god, do you deliver the universe?

      Albina, lions emerging from carnage, Roaring, follow their savage mates.

      Tigers make love with ferocity:

      Such are the Triumvirs. Embloodied Anthony,

      Prepares the detestable marriage feast.

      Octavia, has of Julia undertaken the conquest;

      And on their day of blood, of sadness, of horror

      Love on all sides is mixed with furor:

      Julia abhors Octavian, she is only

      Concerned with giving her heart to the son of great Pompey.

      If