Let me seem Solomon for lore of words,
Samson for strength, for beauty Absalom.
Knights as my serfs be given;
And as I will, let music go and come,
Till, when I will, I will to enter Heaven.
As the singing ends, the curtain rises upon a corner of Balthazar Valori's garden near the northern border of Tuscany. The garden is walled. There is a shrine in the wall: the tortured figure upon the crucifix is conspicuous. To the right stands a rather high-backed stone bench: by mounting from the seat to the top of the bench it is possible to scale the wall. To the left a crimson pennant on a pole shows against the sky. The period is 1533, and a few miles southward the Florentines, after three years of formally recognizing Jesus Christ as the sole lord and king of Florence, have lately altered matters as profoundly as was possible by electing Alessandro de Medici to be their Duke.
GRACIOSA is seated upon the bench, with a lute. The girl is, to our modern taste, very quaintly dressed in gold-colored satin, with a short tight bodice, cut square and low at the neck, and with long full skirts. When she stands erect, her preposterous "flowing" sleeves, lined with sky blue, reach to the ground. Her blonde hair, of which she has a great deal, is braided, in the intricate early sixteenth fashion, under a jeweled cap and a veil the exact color of this hair.
There is a call. Smiling, GRACIOSA answers this call by striking her lute. She pats straight her hair and gown, and puts aside the instrument. GUIDO appears at the top of the wall. All you can see of the handsome young fellow, in this posture, is that he wears a green skull-cap and a dark blue smock, the slashed sleeves of which are lined with green.
GUIDO
Ah, madonna….
GRACIOSA
Welcome, Ser Guido. Your journey has been brief.
GUIDO
It has not seemed brief to me.
GRACIOSA Why, it was only three days ago you told me it would be a fortnight before you came this way again.
GUIDO
Yes, but I did not then know that each day spent apart from you, Madonna
Graciosa, would be a century in passing.