Giovanni, in Act 1, Scene 2, soliloquizes on the hopelessness of his doomed love:
Lost, I am lost! My fates have doomed my death.
The more I strive, I love; the more I love,
The less I hope. I see my ruin, certain.
What judgement or endeavours could apply
To my incurable and restless wounds
I throughly have examined, but in vain.
Oh, that it were not in religion sin
To make our love a god and worship it!
I have even wearied heaven with prayers, dried up
The spring of my continual tears, even starved
My veins with daily fasts.
Giovanni’s early ruminations on his ill-fated love are some of the most clearly-articulated views on his relationship in the play. He is refreshingly self-aware of the dangers that lie on the path he has chosen for himself, acknowledging that his “ruin” is all but “certain.” In fact, it is Giovanni’s very recognition of the religious blasphemy he commits by desiring to “make [their] love a god and worship it” that makes his later descent all the more tragic—his awareness does nothing to impede his choices, and therein lies the tragedy.
For better or worse, as his soliloquy reaches its end, Giovanni fully embraces the love he feels for Annabella. He continues:
What wit or art
Could counsel I have practised. But, alas,
I find all these but dreams and old men’s tales
To fright unsteady youth. I’m still the same;
Or I must speak or burst. ’Tis not, I know,
My lust, but ’tis my fate that leads me on.
Keep fear, and low, faint-hearted shame with slaves!
I’ll tell her that I love her, though my heart
Were rated at the price of that attempt.
Giovanni thus concludes his soliloquy far more confidently than he began it, sure in his conviction that his feelings must be brought to light. With this final decision to reveal his heart to Annabella, Giovanni dooms not only himself but also his sister, as well as every other character that will eventually become tangled in the siblings’ web of deceit.
