A monologue from the play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Eight Dramas of Calderon. Trans. Edward Fitzgerald. London: Macmillan & Co., 1906.
ALVARO
He is resolved. And Serafina,
To whose divinity I offer’d up
My heart of hearts, a purer sacrifice
Than ever yet on pagan altar blazed,
Has play’d me false, is married to another,
And now will fly away on winds and seas,
As fleeting as herself.
Then what remains but that I die? My death
The necessary shadow of that marriage!
Comfort!–what boots it looking after that
Which never can be found? The worst is come,
Which ’twere a blind and childish waste of hope
To front with any visage but despair.
Ev’n that one single solace, were there one,
Of ringing my despair into her ears,
Fails me. Time presses; the accursed breeze
Blows foully fair. The vessel flaps her sails
That is to bear her from me. Look, she comes–
And from before her dawning beauty all
I had to say fades from my swimming brain,
And chokes upon my tongue.
