Before we become acquainted with him, he has loved and lost by death his gentle _Irene_. This renders the game of ambition still more contemptible in his eyes. It renders him cold also to the love of a certain fair cousin, Anna Comnena. Love, or ambition, approaches him also in the person of Theodora, the daughter of the emperor. She is willing to desert her father's cause, and ally herself and all her hopes to Isaac Comnenus. Comnenus declines her love. The rejected Theodora brings about the catastrophe of the piece. The Emperor Nicephorus is deposed; Isaac is conqueror in the strife, but he gives over the crown he has won to his brother Alexius. Then does Theodora present herself disguised as some humble petitioner to Isaac Comnenus. Armed with a dagger, she forces her way into an inner chamber where he is; a groan is heard, and the following stage direction closes the play--
"_All rush into the inner chamber, whilst Theodora, passing out from it, crosses the stage, holding in her hand a dagger covered with blood. The curtain falls._"
This scanty outline will be sufficient to make the following characteristic quotations intelligible to those who may not have read the play. Eudocia, his sister, thus describes Comnenus:--
----"He Is nothing new to dangers nor to life-- His thirty years on him have nigh told double, Being doubly loaden with the unlightsome stuff That life is made of. I have often thought How nature cheats this world in keeping count: There's some men pass for old men who ne'er lived-- These monks, to wit: they count the time, not spend it; They reckon moments by the tick of beads, And ring the hours with psalmody: clocks, clocks; If one of these had gone a century, I would not say he'd lived. My brother's age Has spanned the matter of too many lives; He's full of years though young."
Comnenus, we have said, is on ill terms with the church. Speaking of the sanctuary he says:--
"I have a safer refuge. Mother church Hath no such holy precinct that my blood Would not redeem all sin and sacrilege Of slaughter therewithin. But there's a spot Within the circle my good sword describes, Which by God's grace is sanctified for me."
"Go, and good angels guard thee is my prayer. _Comnenus._--Good soldiers, Anna. In the arm of flesh Are we to trust. The Mother of the Gods, Prolific Mother, holiest Mother church, Hath banded heaven upon the side opposed. No matter, when such supplicants as thou Pray for us, other angels need we none."