Aye, Prince, you have a brother—­

    Orazio.  The Duke—­he’ll scourge you.

    Marcello.  Nay, the second, sir,
    Who, like an envious river, flows between
    Your footsteps and Ferrara’s throne....

Orazio.  Stood he before me there, By you, in you, as like as you’re unlike, Straight as you’re bowed, young as you are old, And many years nearer than him to Death, The falling brilliancy of whose white sword Your ancient locks so silverly reflect, I would deny, outswear, and overreach, And pass him with contempt, as I do you.  Jove!  How we waste the stars:  set on, my friends.

And so the revelling band pass onward, singing still, as they vanish down the darkened street: 

    Strike, you myrtle-crowned boys,
    Ivied maidens, strike together!...

and Marcello is left alone: 

          I went forth
    Joyfully, as the soul of one who closes
    His pillowed eyes beside an unseen murderer,
    And like its horrible return was mine,
    To find the heart, wherein I breathed and beat,
    Cold, gashed, and dead.  Let me forget to love,
    And take a heart of venom:  let me make
    A staircase of the frightened breasts of men,
    And climb into a lonely happiness! 
    And thou, who only art alone as I,
    Great solitary god of that one sun,
    I charge thee, by the likeness of our state,
    Undo these human veins that tie me close
    To other men, and let your servant griefs
    Unmilk me of my mother, and pour in
    Salt scorn and steaming hate!

A moment later he learnt that the duke has suddenly died, and that the dukedom is his.  The rest of the play affords an instance of Beddoes’ inability to trace out a story, clearly and forcibly, to an appointed end.  The succeeding acts are crowded with beautiful passages, with vivid situations, with surprising developments, but the central plot vanishes away into nothing, like a great river dissipating itself among a thousand streams.  It is, indeed, clear enough that Beddoes was embarrassed with his riches, that his fertile mind conceived too easily, and that he could never resist the temptation of giving life to his imaginations, even at the cost of killing his play.  His conception of Orazio, for instance, began by being that of a young Bacchus, as he appears in the opening scene.  But Beddoes could not leave him there; he must have a romantic wife, whom he has deserted; and the wife, once brought into being, must have an interview with her husband.  The interview is an exquisitely beautiful one, but it shatters Orazio’s character, for, in the course of it, he falls desperately in love with his wife; and meanwhile the wife herself has become so important and interesting a figure that she must be given a father, who in his turn becomes the central character in more than one exciting scene.