THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE

AN HISTORIC DRAMA

First Act by Coleridge
Second and Third by Southey
1794

From The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912 [1962]). Volume Two, pages 495-517. Adapted for hypertext by Melissa J. Sites.

The edition contains the following note: [ First published (as an octavo pamphlet) at Cambridge by Benjamin Flower in 1794: included in Literary Remains, 1836, i. (1)-32. First collected in P. and D. W., 1877-80, iii. (1) 89. 'It will be remarked,' writes J. D. Campbell (P. W., 1893, p. 646), 'that neither title-page nor dedication contains any hint of the joint authorship.' On this point Coleridge writes to Southey, September 19, 1794: --'The tragedy will be printed in less than a week. I shall put my name because it will sell at least a hundred copies in Cambridge. It would appear ridiculous to print two names to such a work. But if you choose it, mention it and it shall be done. To every man who praises it, of course I give the true biography of it.' Letters of S. T. C., 1896, i. 85.]


TO
H. MARTIN, ESQ.
OF
JESUS COLLEGE
CAMBRIDGE

DEAR SIR,
Accept, as a small testimony of my grateful attachment, the following Dramatic Poem, in which I have endeavoured to detail, in an interesting form, the fall of a man, whose great bad actions have cast a disastrous lustre on his name. In the execution of the work, as intricacy of plot could not have been attempted without a gross violation of recent facts, it has been my sole aim to imitate the empassioned and highly figurative language of the French orators, and to develope the characters of the chief actors on a vast stage of horrors.
Yours fraternally,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
JESUS COLLEGE, September 22, 1794.

To Act One

To Act Two

To Act Three