Le Opere Italiane di Giordano Bruno

One could doubt everything: but regarding what was lately
said about the affection of love, we see the experience of it every 5

day. I will say no more of this Scaramuré’s mastery, of which I hear
truly marvelous things. Look, I see one of those who steal the cow Scaramuré is a character mentioned as a dealer in the occult or a magician.
and then donate the horns for the love | of God. A proverb about hypocrisy—specifically, someone who commits a great sin or theft and then makes a small, useless gesture of "piety" with the leftovers (the horns). Let us see what
news he brings.

Scene III. 10

Master Bonifacio and Master Bartolomeo converse; Pollula and Sanguino listen in hiding.

Bart. Cruel love, since your kingdom is so unjust and so violent,
why does it last so long? Why do you make the one whom I
prize and adore flee from me? Why is she not as 15

tightly bound to me as I am to her? Can this be imagined?
And yet it is true. What kind of snare is this? Of two people, it makes one chained to the other, while the other is freer and looser than the wind.
Bon. Perhaps I am alone? [sobbing] Uh, uh, uh. 20

Bart. What is the matter, my Master Bonifacio? Do you weep for my pain?
Bon. And for my own martyrdom as well. I see well that you are struck;
I see you | changed in color, I have just heard you lament, I understand
your ailment, and as a sharer of the same passion and perhaps worse,
I pity you. For many days I have seen you walking pensive 25

and distracted, stunned, lost (as I believe others see me),
deep sighs bursting from your chest, with wet eyes. "The Devil!" (said
I) "no relative, friend, or benefactor of his has died;
he has no lawsuit in court; he has all he needs; no evil threatens
him; everything goes well for him." I know he doesn't care much for 30

his sins: and yet here he is weeping and wailing, his brain seems to be
among clashing cymbals original: "in cimbalis male sonantibus"; a Latin phrase from the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:1) meaning "clanging cymbals," used here to suggest his mind is noisy, empty, or malfunctioning., while he is in love, while some
phlegmatic, or choleric, or sanguine, or melancholic humor The "four humors" were believed to control human health and temperament; Bonifacio is wondering which bodily fluid has caused this "love sickness." (I know not
which "Cupid-esque humor" this is) has gone to his head. Now | I 35

hear you utter these sweet words: I conclude more firmly that
your stomach is filled with that toxic honey.
Bart. Alas, I am too cruelly captured by her glances.
But I marvel at you, Master Bonifacio, not at myself, who am two or
three years younger; and I have a shrewish old wife who
is more than eight years my senior. You have a most beautiful wife,