Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Marino Falier Of the two great conspiracies which shook the state of Venice?the conspiracy of Bajamonte Tiepolo and the conspiracy of Marino Falier?the latter has attracted by far the larger share of attention, and has taken its place permanently as one of the stirring episodes in the annals of the Republic. This, no doubt, is largely due to the dramatic character of the story as currently told. The fiery old warrior doge, insulted in the honour of his wife by a ribald young noble, exasperated against the whole body of the Venetian aristocracy by the inadequate punishment meted out to his offender, conceived the idea of murderous revenge, and put himself at the head of a conspiracy?fomented chiefly among the middle and lower classes?to slaughter the entire governing caste. The plot was discovered only just in time, and the doge and his accomplices paid the penalty with their lives. The thrilling spectacle of the black veil over the place where the doge's portrait should be, in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, has helped to fix the attention and rouse the curiosity of thousands of tourists. Byron 1 fastened upon the story and made it the subject of his finest play, though he misreads the intention of the doge, painting him as a friend of liberty, anxious to free the people from the intolerable tyranny of the oligarchy, and importinginto his drama modern ideas quite foreign to the period. It happens therefore that the story of Marino Falier's conspiracy occupies a larger place in popular imagination than does the conspiracy of Tiepolo, though the one created the Council of Ten while the other merely demonstrated its supremacy. 1 Byron claims to have carefully studied the sources and maintains the historical value of his view; it is curious, however, to note that he could write...
Synopsis
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.