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