Go pad thy calves!
Thus mightst thou just conceivably with luck
Capture the fancy of some serving-wench.
This being too much for him, they part in the mood of revenge, and, after Lucrezia has made a desperate effort to force a poisoned ring on him, they both find themselves in gaol. When the curtain rises on Savonarola’s cell, he has been in prison three hours. “Imprisonment,” says the stage direction, “has left its mark on both of them. Savonarola’s hair has turned white. His whole aspect is that of a very old, old man. Lucrezia looks no older than before, but has gone mad.” How like nine-tenths of the prison scenes one has seen on the stage! But never on the stage has one heard a prison soliloquy half so fine as Savonarola’s, from its opening sentence:
Alas, how long ago this morning seems
This evening!—
down to its close:
What would my sire have said,
And what my dam, had anybody told them
The time would come when I should occupy