Confessions of Aleister Crowley

420 Later in the summer, I set to work on a really large idea, a play of Old Venice in five acts. I kept my two main principles of composition; the use of colour and form to distinguish my characters and compose a visible symphony. MORTADELLO The Doge has white hair, and is seventy years of age. Mortadello has hair died dark auburn, and forty years of age. He is stout, tall and pompous. {669} Alessandro has rough hair of fiery red and is thirty years of age. Lorenzo has scanty ashen hair, and is twenty-eight years of age. Gabriele is a hunchbacked dwarf, very strongly built, with a large and intellectual head. He is bald, and is fifty years of age. Orlando is of a gigantic stature, a full Negro. He is forty years of age. The Legate is an old and venerable man of ascetic and noble type. Magdalena is a tall, robust and buxom woman of thirty-five years old. Her hair is black, but her complexion pale. Lucrezia is a tall, robust and buxom woman of thirty-five years old. Her hair is of fine gold, her eyes of pale blue and her complexion fair and rosy. Zelina is small and plump. her hair is brown, and her age nine and twenty, though she looks older. Monica is of medium height, very thin and serpent-like, her hair black and crisp; her features like Madonna's. Her eyes are extraordinarily black, keen and piercing. Her age is twenty. Her hands and feet are very small and white, her complexion like fine porcelain. The Abbess is a gigantic and burly woman of fifty years old. My other principle of internal rimes I made more difficult for myself than ever, by sticking throughout to the Alexandrine. No English writer has previously attempted to use this magnificent verse, no doubt, in part, because of the danger of monotony. This I avoided by introducing my internal rime at all parts of the line. I quote from my own explanation. 1. The Classical: Ay, to this end, indeed was marriage first ordained, And to this end today is by the Church sustained. 2. Idem, marked by a rime: Listen; in all good "faith", I gladly grant you much, Not prone to scoff, and scathe the scutcheon with a smutch. 3. After the second foot: Oh! but you're hurt! ........................Young man! she shall be tended, ........................................................................Well. No! take my shirt! Staunch the dear beast. ............................................................A miracle. 4. After the fourth foot: Serene, august, untroubled, cold, her prayers are worth More than our steel, more than our gold, that bind the earth. 5. After the first foot: Bow down to the Cross! His love purge thee! His Passion save thee! {670}