Seneca Monologue from Nero

From Nero by Stephen Phillips

male · philosophical · 1:17 min

By me he has been taught, And I have watched him. True, the harp, the song, The theatre, delight this dreamer: true, He lives but in imaginations: yet Suppose this aesthete made omnipotent, Feeling there is no bar he cannot break, Knowing there is no bound he cannot pass; Might he not then despise the written page, A petty music, and a puny scene? Conceive a spectacle not witnessed yet, When he, an artist in omnipotence, Uses for colour this red blood of ours, Composes music out of dreadful cries, His orchestra our human agonies, His rhythms lamentations of the ruined, His poet's fire not circumscribed by words, But now translated into burning cities, His scenes the lives of men, their deaths a drama, His dream the desolation of mankind, And all this pulsing world his theatre. [ (Steps heard without.) The dead man's children startled from their sleep! Britannicus, Octavia, wondering.

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