‘Silence; oh well are Death and Sleep and thou’

The page following the fragment contains some prose lines to a correspondent describing a mountain journey, perhaps the crossing of the Apennines on 5 May. Silence; oh well are Death and Sleep and thou three brethren named, the guardians gloomy winged of one abyss where life and truth and joy are swallowed up-yet spare me, Spirit, o pity me. Like S/s drama, this fragment is in blank verse, and three cancelled words just above it suggest that it is a speech conceived as part of a dramatic exchange, possibly spoken by Tasso of Leonora d'Este's singing or by a listener of Tasso's own verses. The lines have close affinities in tone or phrasing with to Constantia' and with Tasso. The opening recollection of an episode in Ariosto, Tasso's great rival in fame, also supports a dramatic hypothesis. Mary S made at least four extant transcripts of lines.