Salvador Monologue Analysis

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This fear-inducing speech is the audience’s first glimpse at what a twisted person Francesco really is. Francesco delights in the deaths of his children, and throws a celebratory party instead of planning their funerals. Actions like this are clear indicators of his unnatural and perverted ways. By throwing a banquet instead of mourning his sons, Francesco can be compared to government officials who send young boys off to war without any thought to their safety. To make things worse, he also admits to praying to God for his sons to die and believes God answered his prayers. In this instant, prayer is twisted into a weapon for Francesco to use. Shelley uses this passage to illustrate how people who follow any form of religion and use it for …show more content…

She plots with her mother, Lucretia, and two servants, Olimpio and Marzio. By this point in the play, Beatrice no longer fears the consequences of turning against her father and is determined to put a permanent end to her father’s abuse. The first attempt to murder Francesco is with a poison that Lucretia slipped into his drink. However, this plan fails and Beatrice has to come up with another way to kill him. It is decided that strangulation would be the easiest way to end him. She sends Olimpio and Marzio in to murder him, but the two have misgivings about committing murder. Beatrice taunts them multiple times throughout the scene by first calling them “conscience-stricken cravens” (4.2 39) and then telling them to “rock to rest your baby hearts” (4.2 40). She believes there is nothing for them to fear and that carrying out the plan should be a simple task. Olimpio states that he was unable to kill Francesco because of “the calm innocent sleep in which he lay” (4.3 12) overcame his desire to kill and forced him to retreat. Marzio came the closest to killing him as he had his knife to the “loose wrinkled throat” (4.3 17), but he too backed out when he claims he heard his own father’s voice speak through Francesco. Beatrice is irritated that they have not done what she asked and she berates

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