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Front Page  Titles (by Subject) SCENE II - Cato: A Tragedy and Selected Essays
SCENE II - Joseph Addison, Cato: A Tragedy and Selected Essays [1710]Edition used:Cato: A Tragedy and Selected Essays, ed. by Christine Dunn Henderson and Mark E. Yellin, with a Foreword by Forrest McDonald (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004).
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- Foreword
- Introduction
- The Life of Joseph Addison
- Addison the Essayist
- Cato, a Tragedy
- Editors’ Note
- Acknowledgments
- Cato: a Tragedy
- Prologue By Mr. Pope 2
- Dramatis Personae
- Act I —
- Scene I
- Scene Ii
- Scene Iii
- Scene Iv
- Scene V
- Scene Vi
- Act Ii —
- Scene I
- Scene Ii
- Scene Iii
- Scene Iv
- Scene V
- Scene Vi
- Act Iii —
- Scene I
- Scene Ii
- Scene Iii
- Scene Iv
- Scene V
- Scene Vi
- Scene Vii
- Act Iv —
- Scene I
- Scene Ii
- Scene Iii
- Scene Iv —
- Act V —
- Scene I
- Scene Ii
- Scene Iii
- Scene Iv
- Epilogue By Dr. Garth. 1
- Selected Essays
- Tatler, No. 161
- Tatler, No. 162
- Whig Examiner, No. 5
- Spectator, No. 55
- Spectator, No. 125
- Spectator, No. 169
- Spectator, No. 215
- Spectator, No. 219
- Spectator, No. 231
- Spectator, No. 237
- Spectator, No. 243
- Spectator, No. 255
- Spectator, No. 256
- Spectator, No. 257
- Spectator, No. 287
- Spectator, No. 293
- Spectator, No. 349
- Spectator, No. 446
- Spectator, No. 557
- Guardian, No. 99
- Guardian, No. 161
- Freeholder, No. 1
- Freeholder, No. 2
- Freeholder, No. 5
- Freeholder, No. 10
- Freeholder, No. 12
- Freeholder, No. 13 1
- Freeholder, No. 16
- Freeholder, No. 29
- Freeholder, No. 34
- Freeholder, No. 39
- Freeholder, No. 51
- The Life and Character of M. Cato of Utica [ ]
SCENE II
Sempronius, solus.
Sempronius
- Conspiracies no sooner should be formed
- Than executed. What means Portius here?
- I like not that cold youth. I must dissemble,
- And speak a language foreign to my heart.
Sempronius, Portius.
- Good-morrow, Portius! let us once embrace,
- Once more embrace; whilst yet we both are free.
- To-morrow should we thus express our friendship,
- Each might receive a slave into his arms:
- This sun, perhaps, this morning sun’s the last,
- That e’er shall rise on Roman liberty.
Portius
- My father has this morning called together
- To this poor hall his little Roman senate,
- (The leavings of Pharsalia,) to consult
- If yet he can oppose the mighty torrent
- Thou bears down Rome, and all her gods, before it,
- Or must at length give up the world to Caesar.
Sempronius
- Not all the pomp and majesty of Rome
- Can raise her senate more than Cato’s presence.
- His virtues render our assembly awful,
- They strike with something like religious fear,
- And make ev’n Caesar tremble at the head
- Of armies flushed with conquest: O my Portius!
- Could I but call that wondrous man my father,
- Would but thy sister Marcia be propitious
- To thy friend’s vows, I might be blessed indeed!
Portius- Alas! Sempronius, wouldst thou talk of love
- To Marcia, whilst her father’s life’s in danger?
- Thou might’st as well court the pale trembling vestal,
- When she beholds the holy flame expiring.
Sempronius
- The more I see the wonders of thy race,
- The more I’m charmed. Thou must take heed, my Portius!
- The world has all its eyes on Cato’s son.
- Thy father’s merit sets thee up to view,
- And shows thee in the fairest point of light,
- To make thy virtues, or thy faults, conspicuous.
Portius
- Well dost thou seem to check my lingering here
- On this important hour!—I’ll straight away,
- And while the fathers of the senate meet
- In close debate to weigh the events of war,
- I’ll animate the soldiers’ drooping courage,
- With love of freedom, and contempt of life:
- I’ll thunder in their ears their country’s cause,
- And try to rouse up all that’s Roman in ’em.
- ’Tis not in mortals to command success,
- But we’ll do more, Sempronius; we’ll deserve it. [Exit.]
Sempronius, solus
- Curse on the stripling! how he apes his sire!
- Ambitiously sententious! —but I wonder
- Old Syphax comes not; his Numidian genius
- Is well disposed to mischief, were he prompt
- And eager on it; but he must be spurred,
- And every moment quickened to the course.
- —Cato has used me ill: he has refused
- His daughter Marcia to my ardent vows.
- Besides, his baffled arms, and ruined cause,
- Are bars to my ambition. Caesar’s favour,
- That showers down greatness on his friends, will raise me
- To Rome’s first honours. If I give up Cato,
- I claim in my reward his captive daughter.
- But Syphax comes!—
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