ABSTRACT
First publ. with A Soul’s Tragedy, B & P viii (13 Apr. 1846); Luria was first in order. Neither the pamphlet nor the individual plays were separately repr.; both plays repr. 1849 (in the same order but not linked, and with the dedication to the whole pamphlet affixed to Luria alone: see below), 1863, 1868 (in reverse order), 1888 (A Soul’s Tragedy in vol. iii, Luria in vol. vi). Four passages from the play were extracted for 18632 : i 133–61 (headed ‘Braccio, Commissary of the Republic, speaks of Florence and her Generals’); i 290–331 (headed ‘The Moorish General in service of the Florentines anticipates peace’); iii 157–226 (headed ‘A country’s right to individual service and sacrifice’); and iv 164 (from ‘Take revenge!’) to the end of the act (headed ‘Luria, with Florence in his power, takes his revenge’). The text is intermediate between 1849 and 1863 and has a number of unique readings. Luria was heavily revised, esp. in 1849 (19 lines added, 4 deleted), 1865 (the revised reissue of 1863), and 1868 (the last two together have over 240 verbal revs.). The extent of revision is unusual for B., and contrasts with the light revision of A Soul’s Tragedy. Our text is 1846. The ‘Secretary’ is so called in Act I; in Acts III-V he is ‘Jacopo’. We have left this minor inconsistency unaltered.
