A monologue from the perform by Pierre Corneille
TAKE NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from The Cid. Trans. Roscoe Mongan. Ny: Hinds Noble, 1896.
DON RODRIGO: Pierced even for the depth with a blow unexpected as well as fatal, pitiable avenger of a only quarrel and unfortunate target of an unjust severity, I actually remain motionless, and my dejected spirit yields towards the blow which can be slaying me. So around seeing my like requited! U heaven, the strange pang! In this offend my father is a person aggrieved, and the aggressor is the daddy of Chimene! What fierce conflicts I experience! My love is involved against my very own honor. I have to avenge a father and lose a mistress. The main one stimulates my courage, the other restrains my adjustable rate mortgage. Reduced to the sad choice of either betraying my love or perhaps of living as a degraded man, about both sides my own situation is definitely wretched. To heaven, the strange pang! Must I keep an insult unavenged? Should i punish the father of Chimene? Father, mistress, honor, lovenoble and extreme restrainta bondage still to be beloved, all my pleasures are dead, or perhaps my beauty is sullied. The one makes me unhappy, the different unworthy of life. Dear and inappropriate hope of a soul rspectable but still enamored, worthy opponent of my personal greatest joy, thou blade which causest my agonizing anxiety hast thou received to me to avenge my personal honor? Hast thou received to me to reduce Chimene? It is advisable to hurry to fatality. I must pay back to my personal mistress as well as to my father. I actually draw, in avenging personally, her hatred and her rage, My spouse and i draw upon my own self his contempt by simply not avenging myself. To my sweetest hope one renders myself unfaithful, and the other makes me unworthy of her. My bad luck increases by simply seeking an answer. Come in that case, my heart, and, since I must pass away, let us expire, at least, without offending Chimene! To die without obtaining satisfaction! To seek fatality so perilous to my fame! To endure that Spain should certainly impute to my recollection of having poorly maintained the respect of my home! To respect a appreciate of which my own distracted spirit already sees the certain loss! We will no more tune in to this subtle thought, which usually serves just to pain me. Come, acquire arm, let us save prize, at least, since, in the end, we must shed Chimene. Yes, my nature was robbed. I owe all to my father prior to my mistress. Whether My spouse and i die in the combat or die of sadness, I actually shall deliver up my blood pure as I have obtained it. I already accuse myself of too much neglectfulness, let us rush to vengeance, and quite ashamed of having wavered a great deal, let us no longer be in painful suspense, since to-day my dad has been insulted.
