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Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot The Tyrant

A

DY IN

WO

Translated from the Original Doric  'Choose Reform or Civil War,

When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,

A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs,

Riding on the

AN

IS

Tyrant Swellfoot,

King of Thebes.

Iona Taurina, his Queen.

Mammon,

Arch-Priest of Famine.

Purganax Wizard,

Minister of Swellfoot.

Dakry Wizard,

Minister of Swellfoot.

Laoctonos Wizard,

Minister of Swellfoot.

The Gadfly.

The Leech.

The Rat.

Moses, the Sow-gelder.

Solomon, the Porkman.

Zephaniah,

Pig-butcher.

The Minotaur.

Chorus of the Swinish Multitude.

Guards,

Attendants,

Priests, etc., etc.

CT I.

Scene I.-- A magnificent Temple, built of thigh-bones and death's-heads, and tiled with scalps.

Over the Altar the statue of Famine, veiled; a number of Boars,

Sows, and Sucking-Pigs, crowned with thistle, shamrock, and oak, sitting on the steps, and clinging round the Altar of the Temple.

Enter Swellfoot, in his Royal robes, without perceiving the Pigs.

Swellfoot.

Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power

These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array [He contemplates himself with satisfaction.

Of gold and purple, and this kingly

Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze,

And these most sacred nether

Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and

Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt's pyramid,(Nor with less toil were their foundations laid)[1],

Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain,

That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing!

Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors,

Radical-butchers,

Paper-money-millers,

Bishops and Deacons, and the entire

Of those fat martyrs to the

Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils,

Offer their secret vows!

Thou plenteous

Of their Eleusis, hail!

The Swine.                        Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh!

Swellfoot.                                                  Ha! what are ye,

Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies,

Cling round this sacred shrine?

Swine.                                  Aigh! aigh! aigh!

Swellfoot.                                                    What! ye that

The very beasts that, offered at her

With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards,

Ever propitiate her reluctant

When taxes are withheld?

Swine.                          Ugh! ugh! ugh!

Swellfoot.                                          What! ye who

With filthy snouts my red potatoes

In Allan's rushy bog?

Who eat the

Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?

Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks

From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather,

Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you?

The Swine.—Semichorus I.

The same, alas! the same;

Though only now the name  Of Pig remains to me.

Semichorus II.

If 'twere your kingly

Us wretched Swine to kill,  What should we yield to thee?

Swellfoot.

Why, skin and bones, and some few hairs for mortar.

Chorus of Swine.  I have heard your Laureate sing,  That pity was a royal thing;

Under your mighty ancestors, we

Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs,

Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew,

And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too;

But now our sties are fallen in, we catch  The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch;

Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch,  And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;

Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga,

Has yet been ours since your reign begun.

First Sow.

My Pigs, 'tis in vain to tug.

Second Sow.

I could almost eat my litter.

First Pig.

I suck, but no milk will come from the dug.

Second Pig.

Our skin and our bones would be bitter.

The Boars.

We fight for this rag of greasy rug,  Though a trough of wash would be fitter.

Semichorus.    Happier Swine were they than we,    Drowned in the Gadarean sea—I wish that pity would drive out the devils,

Which in your royal bosom hold their revels,

And sink us in the waves of thy compassion!

Alas! the Pigs are an unhappy nation!

Now if your Majesty would have our bristles  To bind your mortar with, or fill our

With rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles,  In policy—ask else your royal Solons—You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw,

And sties well thatched; besides it is the law!

Swellfoot.

This is sedition, and rank blasphemy!

Ho! there, my guards!

Enter a Guard.

Guard.                      Your sacred Majesty.

Swellfoot.

Call in the Jews,

Solomon the court porkman,

Moses the sow-gelder, and

The hog-butcher.

Guard.                  They are in waiting,

Sire.

Enter Solomon,

Moses, and Zephaniah.

Swellfoot.

Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those Sows [The Pigs run about in consternation.

That load the earth with Pigs; cut close and deep.

Moral restraint I see has no effect,

Nor prostitution, nor our own example,

Starvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison—This was the art which the arch-priest of

Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy—Cut close and deep, good Moses.

Moses.                                  Let your

Keep the Boars quiet, else—Swellfoot.                              Zephaniah,

That fat Hog's throat, the brute seems overfed;

Seditious hunks! to whine for want of grains.

Zephaniah.

Your sacred Majesty, he has the dropsy;—We shall find pints of hydatids in's liver,

He has not half an inch of wholesome

Upon his carious ribs—Swellfoot.                        'Tis all the same,

He'll serve instead of riot money,

Our murmuring troops bivouac in Thebes' streets;

And January winds, after a

Of butchering, will make them relish carrion.

Now,

Solomon,

I'll sell you in a

The whole kit of them.

Solomon.                        Why, your Majesty,

I could not give—Swellfoot.                    Kill them out of the way,

That shall be price enough, and let me

Their everlasting grunts and whines no more![Exeunt, driving in the Swine.

Enter Mammon, the Arch-Priest; and Purganax,

Chief of the Council of Wizards.

Purganax.

The future looks as black as death, a cloud,

Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it—The troops grow mutinous—the revenue fails—There's something rotten in us—for the

Of the State slopes, its very bases topple,

The boldest turn their backs upon themselves!

Mammon.

Why what's the matter, my dear fellow, now?

Do the troops mutiny?—decimate some regiments;

Does money fail?—come to my mint—coin paper,

Till gold be at a discount, and

To show his bilious face, go purge himself,

In emulation of her vestal whiteness.

Purganax.

Oh, would that this were all!

The oracle!!

Mammon.

Why it was I who spoke that oracle,

And whether I was dead drunk or inspired,

I cannot well remember; nor, in truth,

The oracle itself!

Purganax.                    The words went thus:—'Boeotia, choose reform or civil war!

When through the streets, instead of hare with dogs,

A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs,

Riding on the Ionian Minotaur.'Mammon.

Now if the oracle had ne'er

This sad alternative, it must arrive,

Or not, and so it must now that it has;

And whether I was urged by grace

Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words,

Which must, as all words must, be false or true,

It matters not: for the same Power made all,

Oracle, wine, and me and you—or none—'Tis the same thing.

If you knew as

Of oracles as I do—Purganax.                      You

Believe in nothing; if you were to

Of a particular number in the Lottery,

You would not buy the ticket?

Mammon.                                Yet our

Are seldom blanks.

But what steps have you taken?

For prophecies, when once they get abroad,

Like liars who tell the truth to serve their ends,

Or hypocrites who, from assuming virtue,

Do the same actions that the virtuous do,

Contrive their own fulfilment.

This Iona—Well—you know what the chaste Pasiphae did,

Wife to that most religious King of Crete,

And still how popular the tale is here;

And these dull Swine of Thebes boast their

From the free Minotaur.

You know they

Call themselves Bulls, though thus degenerate,

And everything relating to a

Is popular and respectable in Thebes.

Their arms are seven Bulls in a field gules;

They think their strength consists in eating beef,—Now there were danger in the

If Queen Iona—Purganax.                I have taken good

That shall not be.

I struck the crust o' the

With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare!

And from a cavern full of ugly shapesI chose a Leech, a Gadfly, and a Rat.

The Gadfly was the same which Juno

To agitate Io[2], and which Ezekiel[3]

That the Lord whistled for out of the

Of utmost Aethiopia, to

Mesopotamian Babylon.

The

Has a loud trumpet like the scarabee,

His crookèd tail is barbed with many stings,

Each able to make a thousand wounds, and

Immedicable; from his convex

He sees fair things in many hideous shapes,

And trumpets all his falsehood to the world.

Like other beetles he is fed on dung—He has eleven feet with which he crawls,

Trailing a blistering slime, and this foul

Has tracked Iona from the Theban limits,

From isle to isle, from city unto city,

Urging her flight from the far

To fabulous Solyma, and the Aetnean Isle,

Ortygia,

Melite, and Calypso's Rock,

And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez,

Aeolia and Elysium, and thy shores,

Parthenope, which now, alas! are free!

And through the fortunate Saturnian land,

Into the darkness of the West.

Mammon.                                But

This Gadfly should drive Iona hither?

Purganax.

Gods! what an if! but there is my gray Rat:

So thin with want, he can crawl in and

Of any narrow chink and filthy hole,

And he shall creep into her dressing-room,

And—Mammon.      My dear friend, where are your wits? as

She does not always toast a piece of

And bait the trap? and rats, when lean

To crawl through such chinks—Purganax.                                But my Leech—a

Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings,

Capaciously expatiative, which

His little body like a red balloon,

As full of blood as that of hydrogen,

Sucked from men's hearts; insatiably he

And clings and pulls—a horse-leech, whose deep

The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill,

And who, till full, will cling for ever.

Mammon.

For Queen Iona would suffice, and less;

But 'tis the Swinish multitude I fear,

And in that fear I have—Purganax.                            Done what?

Mammon.

My eldest son Chrysaor, because

Attended public meetings, and would

Stand prating there of commerce, public faith,

Economy, and unadulterate coin,

And other topics, ultra-radical;

And have entailed my estate, called the Fool's Paradise,

And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills,

Upon my accomplished daughter Banknotina,

And married her to the gallows[4].

Purganax.                                    A good match!

Mammon.

A high connexion,

Purganax.

The

Is of a very ancient family,

Of Hounslow Heath,

Tyburn, and the New Drop,

And has great influence in both Houses;—oh!

He makes the fondest husband; nay, too fond,—New-married people should not kiss in public;

But the poor souls love one another so!

And then my little grandchildren, the gibbets,

Promising children as you ever saw,—The young playing at hanging, the elder

How to hold radicals.

They are well taught too,

For every gibbet says its

And reads a select chapter in the

Before it goes to play.[A most tremendous humming is heard.

Purganax.                        Ha! what do I hear?

Enter the Gadfly.

Mammon.

Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding.

Gadfly.    Hum! hum! hum!

From the lakes of the Alps, and the cold gray scalps  Of the mountains,

I come!    Hum! hum! hum!

From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces  Of golden Byzantium;

From the temples divine of old Palestine,  From Athens and Rome,  With a ha! and a hum!  I come!

I come!  All inn-doors and windows    Were open to me:  I saw all that sin does,    Which lamps hardly

That burn in the night by the curtained bed,—The impudent lamps! for they blushed not red,  Dinging and singing,  From slumber I rung her,

Loud as the clank of an ironmonger;      Hum! hum! hum!  Far, far, far!

With the trump of my lips, and the sting at my hips,  I drove her—afar!  Far, far, far!

From city to city, abandoned of pity,  A ship without needle or star;—Homeless she passed, like a cloud on the blast,  Seeking peace, finding war;—  She is here in her car,  From afar, and afar;—    Hum! hum!  I have stung her and wrung her,    The venom is working;—  And if you had hung her    With canting and quirking,

She could not be deader than she will be soon;—I have driven her close to you, under the moon,  Night and day, hum! hum! ha!

I have hummed her and drummed

From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her,      Hum! hum! hum!

Enter the Leech and the Rat.

Leech.  I will suck  Blood or muck!

The disease of the state is a plethory,

Who so fit to reduce it as I?

Rat.  I'll slily seize and  Let blood from her weasand,—Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny,

With my snaky tail, and my sides so scranny.

Purganax.

Aroint ye! thou unprofitable worm! [To the Leech.

And thou, dull beetle, get thee back to hell! [To the Gadfly.

To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings,

And the ox-headed Io—Swine(within).                        Ugh, ugh, ugh!

Hail!

Iona the divine,

We will be no longer Swine,

But Bulls with horns and dewlaps.

Rat.                                    For,

You know, my lord, the Minotaur—Purganax(fiercely).

Be silent! get to hell! or I will

The cat out of the kitchen.

Well,

Lord Mammon,

This is a pretty business.[Exit the Rat.

Mammon.                            I will

And spell some scheme to make it ugly then.—[Exit.

Enter Swellfoot.

Swellfoot.

She is returned!

Taurina is in Thebes,

When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell!

Oh,

Hymen, clothed in yellow jealousy,

And waving o'er the couch of wedded

The torch of Discord with its fiery hair;

This is thy work, thou patron saint of queens!

Swellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea,

The very name of wife had conjugal rights;

Her cursèd image ate, drank, slept with me,

And in the arms of Adiposa

Her memory has received a husband's—[A loud tumult, and cries of 'Iona for ever!—No Swellfoot!'!                                        Hark!

How the Swine cry Iona Taurina;

I suffer the real presence;

Purganax,

Off with her head!

Purganax.                    But I must first impanelA jury of the Pigs.

Swellfoot.                    Pack them then.

Purganax.

Or fattening some few in two separate sties,

And giving them clean straw, tying some

Of ribbon round their legs—giving their

Some tawdry lace, and bits of lustre glass,

And their young Boars white and red rags, and

Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking

Between the ears of the old ones; and

They are persuaded, that by the inherent

Of these things, they are all imperial Pigs,

Good Lord! they'd rip each other's bellies up,

Not to say, help us in destroying her.

Swellfoot.

This plan might be tried too;—where's

Laoctonos?

Enter Laoctonos and Dakry.          It is my royal

That you,

Lord General, bring the head and body,

If separate it would please me better,

Of Queen Iona.

Laoctonos.              That pleasure I well knew,

And made a charge with those battalions bold,

Called, from their dress and grin, the royal apes,

Upon the Swine, who in a hollow

Enclosed her, and received the first

Like so many rhinoceroses, and

Retreating in good order, with bare

And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe,

Bore her in triumph to the public sty.

What is still worse, some Sows upon the

Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin,

And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry,'Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!'Purganax.                                          Hark!

The Swine(without).

Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!

Dakry.

Went to the garret of the swineherd's tower,

Which overlooks the sty, and made a

Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine,

Of delicacy, mercy, judgement, law,

Morals, and precedents, and purity,

Adultery, destitution, and divorce,

Piety, faith, and state necessity,

And how I loved the Queen!—and then I

With the pathos of my own eloquence,

And every tear turned to a mill-stone,

Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was madeA slough of blood and brains upon the place,

Greased with the pounded bacon; round and

The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up,

And hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air,

With dust and stones.—Enter Mammon.

Mammon.                        I wonder that gray

Like you should be so beardless in their schemes;

It had been but a point of

To keep Iona and the Swine apart.

Divide and rule! but ye have made a

Between two parties who will govern

But for my art.—Behold this

AG! it

The poison

AG of that Green Spider huge,

On which our spies skulked in ovation

The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead:

A bane so much the deadlier fills it

As calumny is worse than death,—for

The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled,

Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech,

In due proportion, and black ratsbane,

That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant,

Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;—All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud,

Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor,

And over it the Primate of all

Murmured this pious baptism:—'Be thou

The

EN

AG; and this power and grace be thine:

That thy contents, on whomsoever poured,

Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest

To savage, foul, and fierce deformity.

Let all baptized by thy infernal

Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch!

No name left out which orthodoxy loves,

Court Journal or legitimate Review!—Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton,

Of other wives and husbands than their own—The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps!

Wither they to a ghastly

Of what was human!—let not man or

Behold their face with unaverted eyes!

Or hear their names with ears that tingle

With blood of indignation, rage, and shame!'—This is a perilous liquor;—good my Lords.— [Swellfoot approaches to touch the

EN

AG.

Beware! for God's sake, beware!—if you should

The seal, and touch the fatal liquor—Purganax.                                          There,

Give it to me.

I have been used to

All sorts of poisons.

His dread

Only desires to see the colour of it.

Mammon.

Now, with a little common sense, my Lords,

Only undoing all that has been done(Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it),

Our victory is assured.

We must

Her Majesty from the sty, and make the

Believe that the contents of the

EN

Are the true test of guilt or innocence.

And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform

To manifest deformity like guilt.

If innocent, she will become

Into an angel, such as they say she is;

And they will see her flying through the air,

So bright that she will dim the noonday sun;

Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits.

This, trust a priest, is just the sort of

Swine will believe.

I'll wager you will see

Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties,

With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her

Among the clouds, and some will hold the

Of one another's ears between their teeth,

To catch the coming hail of comfits in.

You,

Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab,

Make them a solemn speech to this effect:

I go to put in readiness the

Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine,

Where, for more glory, let the

Take place of the uglification of the Queen.

Dakry(to Swellfoot).

I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience,

Humbly remind your Majesty that the

Of your high office, as

To red Bellona, should not be deferred.

Purganax.

All part, in happier plight to meet again.[Exeunt.

ND OF

HE

ST

CT.

CT

Scene I.—The Public Sty.

The Boars in full Assembly.

Enter Purganax.

Purganax.

Grant me your patience,

Gentlemen and Boars,

Ye, by whose patience under public

The glorious constitution of these

Subsists, and shall subsist.

The Lean-Pig

Grow with the growing populace of Swine,

The taxes, that true source of Piggishness(How can I find a more appropriate

To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty,

And all that fit Boeotia as a

To teach the other nations how to live?),

Increase with Piggishness itself; and

Does the revenue, that great spring of

The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments,

Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes,

Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps,

All the land's produce will be merged in taxes,

And the revenue will amount to—nothing!

The failure of a foreign market

Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings,

And such home manufactures, is but partial;

And, that the population of the Pigs,

Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on

And water, is a fact which is—you know—That is—it is a state-necessity—Temporary, of course.

Those impious Pigs,

Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared

The settled Swellfoot system, or to

Irreverent mockery of the

Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been

Into a loyal and an orthodox whine.

Things being in this happy state, the

Iona—[A loud cry from the Pigs.      She is innocent! most innocent!

Purganax.

That is the very thing that I was saying,

Gentlemen Swine; the Queen Iona

Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes,

And the lean Sows and Boars collect about her,

Wishing to make her think that we believe(I mean those more substantial Pigs, who

Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw)That she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig

Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has

Your immemorial right, and which I

Maintain you in to the last drop of—A Boar(interrupting him).

Does any one accuse her of?

Purganax.                              Why, no

Makes any positive

There were hints dropped, and so the privy

Conceived that it became them to

His Majesty to investigate their truth;—Not for his own sake; he could be

To let his wife play any pranks she pleased,

If, by that sufferance, he could please the Pigs;

But then he fears the morals of the Swine,

The Sows especially, and what

It might produce upon the purity

Religion of the rising

Of Sucking-Pigs, if it could be

That Queen Iona—[A pause.

First Boar.                  Well, go on; we

To hear what she can possibly have done.

Purganax.

Why, it is hinted, that a certain Bull—Thus much is known:—the milk-white Bulls that

Beside Clitumnus and the crystal

Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh

Of lotus-grass and blossoming

Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet

Loading the morning winds until they

With living fragrance, are so beautiful!—Well,

I say nothing;—but Europa

On such a one from Asia into Crete,

And the enamoured sea grew calm

His gliding beauty.

And Pasiphae,

Iona's grandmother,—but she is innocent!

And that both you and I, and all assert.

First Boar.

Most innocent!

Purganax.              Behold this

AG; a bag—Second Boar.

Oh! no

EN

GS!!

Jealousy's eyes are green,

Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, and efts,

And verdigris, and—Purganax.                      Honourable Swine,

In Piggish souls can prepossessions reign?

Allow me to remind you, grass is green—All flesh is grass;—no bacon but is flesh—Ye are but bacon.

This divining

AG(Which is not green, but only bacon colour)Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'erA woman guilty of—we all know what—Makes her so hideous, till she finds one

She never can commit the like again.

If innocent, she will turn into an angel,

And rain down blessings in the shape of

As she flies up to heaven.

Now, my

Is to convert her sacred

Into an angel (as I am sure we shall do),

By pouring on her head this mystic water.[Showing the Bag.

I know that she is innocent;

I

Only to prove her so to all the world.

First Boar.

Excellent, just, and noble Purganax.

Second Boar.

How glorious it will be to see her

Flying above our heads, her

Streaming like—like—like—Third Boar.                              Anything.

Purganax.                                        Oh no!

But like a standard of an admiral's ship,

Or like the banner of a conquering host,

Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day,

Unravelled on the blast from a white mountain;

Or like a meteor, or a war-steed's mane,

Or waterfall from a dizzy

Scattered upon the wind.

First Boar.                          Or a cow's tail.

Second Boar.

Or anything, as the learned Boar observed.

Purganax.

Gentlemen Boars,

I move a resolution,

That her most sacred Majesty should

Invited to attend the feast of Famine,

And to receive upon her chaste white

Dews of Apotheosis from this

AG.[A great confusion is heard of the Pigs out of Doors, which communicates itself to those within.

During the first Strophe, the doors of the Sty are staved in, and a number of exceedingly

Pigs and Sows and Boars rush in.

Semichorus I.

No!

Yes!

Semichorus II.

Yes!

No!

Semichorus I.

A law!

Semichorus II.

A flaw!

Semichorus I.

Porkers, we shall lose our wash,  Or must share it with the Lean-Pigs!

First Boar.

Order! order! be not rash!  Was there ever such a scene,

Pigs!

An old Sow(rushing in).

I never saw so fine a dash  Since I first began to wean Pigs.

Second Boar(solemnly).

The Queen will be an angel time enough.  I vote, in form of an amendment,

Purganax rub a little of that stuff  Upon his face.

Purganax(his heart is seen to beat through his waistcoat).                  Gods!

What would ye be at?

Semichorus I.

Purganax has plainly shown a  Cloven foot and jackdaw feather.

Semichorus II.

I vote Swellfoot and Iona  Try the magic test together;

Whenever royal spouses bicker,

Both should try the magic liquor.

An old Boar(aside).  A miserable state is that of Pigs,  For if their drivers would tear caps and wigs,

The Swine must bite each other's ear therefore.

An old Sow(aside).  A wretched lot Jove has assigned to Swine,  Squabbling makes Pig-herds hungry, and they

On bacon, and whip Sucking-Pigs the more.

Chorus.    Hog-wash has been ta'en away:      If the Bull-Queen is divested,    We shall be in every way      Hunted, stripped, exposed, molested;    Let us do whate'er we may,      That she shall not be arrested.

Queen, we entrench you with walls of brawn,  And palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayonet:

Place your most sacred person here.

We pawn  Our lives that none a finger dare to lay on it.    Those who wrong you, wrong us;    Those who hate you, hate us;    Those who sting you, sting us;    Those who bait you, bait us;

The oracle is now about to

Fulfilled by circumvolving destiny;

Which says: 'Thebes, choose reform or civil war,  When through your streets, instead of hare with dogs,  A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs,

Riding upon the

AN

UR.'Enter Iona Taurina.

Iona Taurina(coming forward).

Gentlemen Swine, and gentle Lady-Pigs,

The tender heart of every Boar

Their Queen, of any act

With native Piggishness, and she,

With confidence upon the grunting nation,

Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all,

Her innocence, into their Hoggish arms;

Nor has the expectation been

Of finding shelter there.

Yet know, great Boars,(For such whoever lives among you finds you,

And so do I), the innocent are proud!

I have accepted your protection

In compliment of your kind love and care,

Not for necessity.

The

Are safest there where trials and dangers wait;

Innocent Queens o'er white-hot ploughshares

Unsinged, and ladies,

Erin's laureate sings it[5],

Decked with rare gems, and beauty rarer still,

Walked from Killarney to the Giant's Causeway,

Through rebels, smugglers, troops of yeomanry,

White-boys and Orange-boys, and constables,

Tithe-proctors, and excise people, uninjured!

Thus I!—Lord Purganax,

I do commit

Into your custody, and am

To stand the test, whatever it may be!

Purganax.

This magnanimity in your sacred

Must please the Pigs.

You cannot fail of beingA heavenly angel.

Smoke your bits of glass,

Ye loyal Swine, or her

Will blind your wondering eyes.

An old Boar(aside).                                  Take care, my Lord,

They do not smoke you first.

Purganax.                              At the approaching

Of Famine, let the expiation be.

Swine.

Content! content!

Iona Taurina(aside).                  I, most content of all,

Know that my foes even thus prepare their fall![Exeunt omnes.

Scene II.—The interior of the Temple of Famine.

The statue of the Goddess, a skeleton clothed in parti-coloured rags, seated upon a heap of skulls and loaves intermingled.

A number of exceedingly fat Priests in black garments arrayed on each side, with marrow-bones and cleavers in their hands. [Solomon, the Court Porkman.] A flourish of trumpets.

Enter Mammon as arch-priest,

Swellfoot,

Dakry,

Purganax,

Laoctonos, followed by Iona Taurina guarded.

On the other side enter the Swine.

Chorus of Priests, accompanied by the Court Porkman on marrow-bones and cleavers.    Goddess bare, and gaunt, and pale,    Empress of the world, all hail!    What though Cretans old called thee    City-crested Cybele?      We call thee Famine!

Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cramming!

Through thee, for emperors, kings, and priests and lords,

Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words,  The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits,  Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots—Those who consume these fruits through thee grow fat,  Those who produce these fruits through thee grow lean,

Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that!  And let things be as they have ever been;    At least while we remain thy priests,    And proclaim thy fasts and feasts.

Through thee the sacred Swellfoot

Is based upon a rock amid that

Whose waves are Swine—so let it ever be![Swellfoot, etc., seat themselves at a table magnificently covered at the upper end of the Temple.

Attendants pass over the stage with hog-wash in pails.

A number of Pigs, exceedingly lean, follow them licking up the wash.

Mammon.

I fear your sacred Majesty has

The appetite which you were used to have.

Allow me now to recommend this dish—A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook,

Such as is served at the great King's second table.

The price and pains which its ingredients

Might have maintained some dozen familiesA winter or two—not more—so plain a

Could scarcely disagree.—Swellfoot.                            After the trial,

And these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhapsI may recover my lost appetite,—I feel the gout flying about my stomach—Give me a glass of Maraschino punch.

Purganax(filling his glass, and standing up).

The glorious Constitution of the Pigs!

All.

A toast! a toast! stand up, and three times three!

Dakry.

No heel-taps—darken daylights!—Laoctonos.                                    Claret, somehow,

Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret!

Swellfoot.

Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment,

But 'tis his due.

Yes, you have drunk more wine,

And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes. [To Purganax.

For God's sake stop the grunting of those Pigs!

Purganax.

We dare not,

Sire, 'tis Famine's privilege.

Chorus of Swine.

Hail to thee, hail to thee,

Famine!  Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags;

Thou devil which livest on damning;  Saint of new churches, and cant, and

EN

GS,

Till in pity and terror thou risest,

Confounding the schemes of the wisest;

When thou liftest thy skeleton form,  When the loaves and the skulls roll about,

We will greet thee—the voice of a storm  Would be lost in our terrible shout!

Then hail to thee, hail to thee,

Famine!  Hail to thee,

Empress of Earth!

When thou risest, dividing possessions;

When thou risest, uprooting oppressions,  In the pride of thy ghastly mirth;

Over palaces, temples, and graves,

We will rush as thy minister-slaves,

Trampling behind in thy train,

Till all be made level again!

Mammon.

I hear a crackling of the giant

Of the dread image, and in the black

Which once were eyes,

I see two livid flames.

These prodigies are oracular, and

The presence of the unseen Deity.

Mighty events are hastening to their doom!

Swellfoot.

I only hear the lean and mutinous

Grunting about the temple.

Dakry.                            In a

Of such exceeding delicacy,

I

We ought to put her Majesty, the Queen,

Upon her trial without delay.

Mammon.

HE

Is here.

Purganax.        I have rehearsed the entire

With an ox-bladder and some ditchwater,

On Lady P—-; it cannot fail. (Taking up the Bag.)Your Majesty [To Swellfoot.

In such a filthy business had

Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you.

A spot or two on me would do no harm,

Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad

Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell,

Upon my brow—which would stain all its seas,

But which those seas could never wash away!

Iona Taurina.

My Lord,

I am ready—nay,

I am

To undergo the test. [A graceful figure in a semi-transparent veil passes unnoticed through the Temple; the word

TY is seen through the veil, as if it were written in fire upon its forehead.

Its words are almost drowned in the furious grunting of the Pigs, and the business of the trial.

She kneels on the steps of the Altar, and speaks in tones at first faint and low, but which ever become louder and louder.    Mighty Empress!

Death's white wife!    Ghastly mother-in-law of Life!    By the God who made thee such,    By the magic of thy touch,    By the starving and the

Of fasts and feasts! by thy dread self,

O Famine!

I charge thee! when thou wake the multitude,

Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood.

The earth did never mean her

For those who crown life's cup with

Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge—  But for those radiant spirits, who are

The standard-bearers in the van of Change.  Be they th'appointed stewards, to

The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age!—Remit,

O Queen! thy accustomed rage!

Be what thou art not!

In voice faint and

Freedom calls Famine,—her eternal foe,

To brief alliance, hollow truce.—Rise now![Whilst the Veiled Figure has been chanting this strophe,

Mammon,

Dakry,

Laoctonos, and Swellfoot, have surrounded Iona Taurina, who, with her hands folded on her breast, and her eyes lifted to Heaven, stands, as with saint-like resignation, to wait the issue of the business, in perfect confidence of her innocence.[Purganax, after unsealing the Green Bag, is gravely about to pour the liquor upon her head, when suddenly the whole expression of her figure and countenance changes; she snatches it from his hand with a loud laugh of triumph, and empties it over Swellfoot and his whole Court, who are instantly changed into a number of filthy and ugly animals, and rush out of the Temple.

The image of Famine then arises with a tremendous sound, the Pigs begin scrambling for the loaves, and are tripped up by the skulls; all those who eat the loaves are turned into Bulls, and arrange themselves quietly behind the altar.

The image of Famine sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a Minotaur rises.

Minotaur.

I am the Ionian Minotaur, the

Of all Europa's taurine progeny—I am the old traditional Man-Bull;

And from my ancestors having been Ionian,

I am called Ion, which, by interpretation,

Is John; in plain Theban, that is to say,

My name's John Bull;

I am a famous hunter,

And can leap any gate in all Boeotia,

Even the palings of the royal park,

Or double ditch about the new enclosures;

And if your Majesty will deign to mount me,

At least till you have hunted down your game,

I will not throw you.

Iona Taurina.(During this speech she has been putting on boots and spurs, and a hunting-cap, buckishly cocked on one side, and tucking up her hair, she leaps nimbly on his back.)                      Hoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho!

Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down,

These stinking foxes, these devouring otters,

These hares, these wolves, these anything but men.

Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal Pigs,

Now let your noses be as keen as beagles',

Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your

More dulcet and symphonious than the

Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday;

Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music.

Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood?)But such as they gave you.

Tallyho! ho!

Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert,

Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!

Full Chorus of Iona and the Swine.  Tallyho! tallyho!

Through rain, hail, and snow,

Through brake, gorse, and briar,

Through fen, flood, and mire,  We go! we go!  Tallyho! tallyho!

Through pond, ditch, and slough,

Wind them, and find them,

Like the Devil behind them,  Tallyho! tallyho![Exeunt, in full cry;

Iona driving on the Swine, with the empty Green Bag.

HE

ND'Begun at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa,

August 24, 1819; published anonymously by J.

Johnston,

Cheapside (imprint C.

F.

Seyfang,) 1820.

On a threat of prosecution the publisher surrendered the whole impression, seven copies -- the total number sold -- excepted.

Oedipus does not appear in the first edition of the Poetical Works, 1839, but it was included by Mrs.

Shelley in the second edition of that year.' ~ Hutchinson's Poetical Works of Percy Shelley, 1905.

Note by Mrs.

Shelley: 'In the brief journal I kept in those days,

I find it recorded, in August, 1820,

Shelley ''begins Swellfoot the Tyrant, suggested by the pigs at the fair of San Giuliano.'' This was the period of Queen Caroline's landing in England, and the struggles made by George IV. to get rid of her claims; which failing,

Lord Castlereagh placed the 'Green Bag' on the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King's name that an inquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct.

These circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English.

We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano.

A friend came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows:

Shelley read to us his Ode to Liberty; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair.

He compared it to the 'chorus of frogs' in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a political-satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus -- and Swellfoot was begun.

When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn.

The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside.'

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (/bɪʃ/ (About this soundlisten) BISH;[1][2] 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets, widel…
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