The man is a character of my own imagining.

The first scene of The Captive is the dungeon. When I was very young I was
in Europe, and I was in a dungeon; I have never forgotten it. There enter
the tyrant and the two slaves with the man. They chain him to the wall, and
then the tyrant speaks. That first speech--I have written it now--I have
gotten the hammer-thuds! Tyranny is an iron thing--you had to feel the
tread of it, the words had to roll like thunder. It is an advantage to me
that I am full of Wagner; I always hear the music with my poetry. (I shall
be disappointed if some one does not make an opera out of The Captive.)

* * * * *

The man is there, and he is there forever. After that, once a day, bread
and water are shoved in through an opening. But the door of the dungeon
does not open again until the last act--when ten years have passed.

* * * * *

That is all. And now the man will battle with that problem. Will he go mad
with despair? Will he sink into a wild beast? Will he commit suicide? Or
what _will_ he do? Day by day he sinks back from the question, numb with
agony; day by day the grim hand of Fate drags him to it; and so, until from
the chaos of his soul he digs out, blow by blow, a faith.

Here there will be Reality; no shams and no lies will do here--here is iron
necessity, and cries out for iron truth. God--duty--will--virtue--let such
things no more be names, let us see what they _are_!

These are awful words. Sometimes I shrink from this thing as from fire,