Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CATILINE. ACT I. Scene I. A Room in Catiline’s House. The Ghost of Sylla rises. OST thou not feel me, Rome? not yet! is night So heavy on thee, and my weight so lightf1 Can Sylla s ghost arise within thy walls, Less threatening than an earthquake, the quick falls Ofthee and thine ? Shake not the frighted heads Of thy steep towers, or shrink to their first beds ? 1 Dost thou not feel me, Rome ? not yet ! is night So heavy on thee, and my weight so light ?]
The poet opens his play with the ghost of Sylla. This is an imitation of Seneca’s Thyestes, in which the ghost of Tantalus appears, attended by the Furies. Perhaps this first scene ought rather to be considered as a prologue:
(no doubt of it.)
There are other instances in the ancient dramatic writers, where these shadowy beings are introduced in the beginning of a play. In the Hcciiba of Euripides, the ghost of Polydorus opens the tragedy. Whal. Oldham informs us that his
first satyr
(that on the Jesuits) was drawn by Sylla’s ghost in the great Jonson, which may be perceived (he adds) by some strokes and touches therein, however short they come of the original. Or, as their ruin the large Tyber fills, Make that swell up, and drown thy seven proud hills ? What sleep is this doth seize thee so like death, And is not it ? wake, feel her in my breath: Behold, I come, sent from the Stygian sound, As a dire vapour that had cleft the ground? To ingender with the night, and blast the day; Or like a pestilence that should display Infection through the world: which thus I do.? [The curtain draws, and Catiline is discovered in his study. Pluto be at thy counsels, and into Thy darker bosom enter Syllds spirit! All that was mine, and bad, thy breast inherit, Al…
