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Mordred and Hildebrand: A Book of Tragedies

Chapter 38: HILDEBRAND
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About This Book

A pair of tragic stage plays adapts Arthurian and heroic legend into five-act verse dramas that examine guilt, hereditary sin, and the collapse of honor. One play follows a tormented king who confesses a grievous violation and seeks penance while political rivalries and an illegitimate son intensify the kingdom’s unraveling. The companion drama stages comparable conflicts of loyalty, pride, and fate among warriors and courtiers, using formal speeches and ritualized scenes to probe moral responsibility and the tragic costs of ambition, betrayal, and doomed desires.

HILDEBRAND

AN HISTORICAL TRAGEDY.

FOUNDED ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER
OF
THE GREAT POPE GREGORY VII,

His Struggle for Supremacy with Henry IV of Germany, and His Enforcement of the Celibacy of the Clergy.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII.
Henry IV, of Germany.
Peter, Damiani, a monk (friend to Hildebrand).
Gerbhert, a married priest of Milan.
Ariald, a decretal preacher (lover of Margaret).
Arnulph, a decretal preacher.
Brunelli, a cardinal.
Bishop of Bamburg.
Wolf, Lord of Bamburg, a German Noble.
Two Burghers.
Brun, } two monks.
Wast,
An Abbot.
A Warder.
Queen of Germany.
Margaret, wife of Gerbhert and daughter of Hildebrand.
Catherine, mother of Margaret and former wife of Hildebrand.
Cardinals, Lords, Bishops, Soldiers, Monks, Burghers and Pages.