The Betrothed Of Venice Poem by Paolo Giuseppe Mazzarello

Flooded Venice
BRIBER Help me! I'm drowning!
MERCHANT I'll save you, cheap briber. Forgive the debt of these two betrothed.
FIANCE Thank. Unluckily I've just lost my job in the steelworks: the owners stole a lot of money.
MERCHANT In times of the Most Serene Republic, they would have been arrested in a trice.
FIANCEE We'll get married the same. We'll labour at the lagoon with hoes and shovels.
MERCHANT It'll be well-made: take a good glance at the rotten shutters in our seabed. The lagoon needs labour. I and this briber will labour with you.
FIANCEE (inspired) I'm imaging fellows plunged in the boiling pitch.
FIANCE Those fellows, called barrators, accepted a bribe and bought the inoperative shutters: that will be their punishment.
(Exeunt omnes)