regizor caut piesa

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

QUEEN MARY

PHILIP, King of Naples and Sicily, afterwards King of Spain.

THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH

REGINALD POLE, Cardinal and Papal Legate.

SIMON RENARD, Spanish Ambassador.

LE SIEUR DE NOAILLES, French Ambassador.

THOMAS CRANMER, Archbishop of Canterbury.

SIR NICHOLAS HEATH, Archbishop of York; Lord Chancellor after GARDINER

EDWARD COURTENAY, Earl of Devon.

LORD WILLIAM HOWARD, afterwards Lord Howard, and Lord High Admiral.

LORD WILLIAMS OF THAME.

LORD PAGET

LORD PETRE

STEPHEN GARDINER, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor.

EDMUND BONNER, Bishop of London.

THOMAS THIRLBY, Bishop of Ely.

SIR THOMAS WYATT     |

SIR THOMAS STAFFORD  |  Insurrectionary Leaders.

SIR RALPH BAGENHALL

SIR ROBERT SOUTHWELL.

SIR HENRY BEDINGFIELD

SIR WILLIAM CECIL

SIR THOMAS WHITE, Lord Mayor of London.

THE DUKE OF ALVA     |

THE COUNT DE FERIA   | attending on PHILIP

PETER MARTYR.

FATHER COLE

FATHER BOURNE.

VILLA GARCIA

SOTO.

CAPTAIN BRETT     |

ANTHONY KNYVETT   | Adherents of WYATT

PETERS, Gentleman of Lord HOWARD

ROGER, Servant to NOAILLES

WILLIAM, Servant to WYATT

STEWARD OF HOUSEHOLD to the Princess ELIZABETH

OLD NOKES and NOKES.

MARCHIONESS OF EXETER, Mother of COURTENAY

LADY CLARENCE          |

LADY MAGDALEN DACRES   | Ladies in Waiting to the Queen

ALICE                  | to the Princess ELIZABETH

MAID OF HONOUR         |

JOAN     |

TIB      | two Country Wives. 

Lords and other Attendants, Members of the Privy Council, Members of Parliament, Two Gentlemen, Aldermen, Citizens, Peasants, Ushers, Messengers, Guards, Pages, Gospellers, Marshalmen, etc. 
 
 

ACT I

  

Scene I. ALDGATE RICHLY DECORATED. 
 

CROWD. MARSHALMEN. 
 

MARSHALMAN: Stand back, keep a clear lane! When will her Majesty pass,

sayst thou? why now, even now; wherefore draw back your heads and your

horns before I break them, and make what noise you will with your

tongues, so it be not treason. Long live Queen Mary, the lawful and

legitimate daughter of Harry the Eighth! Shout, knaves! 

CITIZENS: Long live Queen Mary! 

FIRST CITIZEN: That's a hard word, legitimate; what does it mean? 

SECOND CITIZEN: It means a bastard. 

THIRD CITIZEN: Nay, it means true-born. 

FIRST CITIZEN: Why, didn't the Parliament make her a bastard? 

SECOND CITIZEN:  No; it was the Lady Elizabeth. 

THIRD CITIZEN: That was after, man; that was after. 

FIRST CITIZEN: Then which is the bastard? 

SECOND CITIZEN: Troth, they be both bastards by Act of Parliament and

Council. 

THIRD CITIZEN:Ay, the Parliament can make every true-born man of us a

bastard. Old Nokes, can't it make thee a bastard? thou shouldst know,

for thou art as white as three Christmasses. 

OLD NOKES: (dreamily). Who's a-passing? King Edward or King Richard? 

THIRD CITIZEN: No, old Nokes. 

OLD NOKES: It's Harry! 

THIRD CITIZEN:It's Queen Mary. 

OLD NOKES: The blessed Mary's a-passing!

                                 [Falls on his knees.] 

NOKES: Let father alone, my masters! he's past your questioning. 

THIRD CITIZEN:Answer thou for him, then thou'rt no such cockerel

thyself, for thou was born i' the tail end of old Harry the Seventh. 

NOKES: Eh! that was afore bastard-making began. I was born true man at

five in the forenoon  i' the tail of old Harry, and so they can't make

me a bastard. 

THIRD CITIZEN:But if Parliament can make the Queen a bastard, why, it

follows all the more that they can make thee one, who art fray'd i'

the knees, and out at elbow, and bald o' the back, and bursten at the

toes, and down at heels. 

NOKES: I was born of a true man and a ring'd wife, and I can't argue

upon it; but I and my old woman 'ud burn upon it, that would we. 

MARSHALMAN: What are you cackling of bastardy under the Queen's own

nose? I'll have you flogg'd and burnt too, by the Rood I will. 

FIRST CITIZEN: He swears by the Rood. Whew! 

SECOND CITIZEN: Hark! the trumpets. 
 

    [The Procession passes, MARY and ELIZABETH riding

    side by side, and disappears under the gate.] 
 

CITIZENS: Long live Queen Mary! down with all traitors! God save her

Grace; and death to Northumberland!

                            [Exeunt.] 
 

    Manent TWO GENTLEMEN. 
 

FIRST GENTLEMAN: By God's light a noble creature, right royal! 

SECOND GENTLEMAN: She looks comelier than ordinary to-day; but to my

mind the Lady Elizabeth is the more noble and royal. 

FIRST GENTLEMAN: I mean the Lady Elizabeth. Did you hear (I have a

daughter in her service who reported it) that she met the Queen at

Wanstead with five hundred horse, and the Queen (tho' some say they be

much divided) took her hand, call'd her sweet sister, and kiss'd not

her alone, but all the ladies of her following. 

SECOND GENTLEMAN: Ay, that was in her hour of joy; there will be

plenty to sunder and unsister them again: this Gardiner for one, who

is to be made Lord Chancellor, and will pounce like a wild beast out

of his cage to worry Cranmer. 

FIRST GENTLEMAN: And furthermore, my daughter said that when there

rose a talk of the late rebellion, she spoke even of Northumberland

pitifully, and of the good Lady Jane as a poor innocent child who had

but obeyed her father; and furthermore, she said that no one in her

time should be burnt for heresy. 

SECOND GENTLEMAN: Well, sir, I look for happy times. 

FIRST GENTLEMAN: There is but one thing against them. I know not if

you know. 

SECOND GENTLEMAN: I suppose you touch upon the rumour that Charles,

the master of the world, has offer'd her his son Philip, the Pope and

the Devil. I trust it is but a rumour. 

FIRST GENTLEMAN: She is going now to the Tower to loose the prisoners

there, and among them Courtenay, to be made Earl of Devon, of royal

blood, of splendid feature, whom the council and all her people wish

her to marry. May it be so, for we are many of us Catholics, but few

Papists, and the Hot Gospellers will go mad upon it. 

SECOND GENTLEMAN: Was she not betroth'd in her babyhood to the Great

Emperor himself? 

FIRST GENTLEMAN: Ay, but he's too old. 

SECOND GENTLEMAN: And again to her cousin Reginald Pole, now Cardinal;

but I hear that he too is full of aches and broken before his day. 

FIRST GENTLEMAN: O, the Pope could dispense with his Cardinalate, and

his achage, and his breakage,  if that were all: will you not follow

the procession? 

SECOND GENTLEMAN: No; I have seen enough for this day. 

FIRST GENTLEMAN: Well, I shall follow; if I can get near enough I

shall judge with my own eyes whether her Grace incline to this

splendid scion of Plantagenet. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene II. A ROOM IN LAMBETH PALACE. 
 

CRANMER: To Strasburg, Antwerp, Frankfort, Zurich, Worms,

Geneva, Basle our Bishops from their sees

Or fled, they say, or flying Poinet, Barlow,

Bale, Scory, Coverdale; besides the Deans

Of Christchurch, Durham, Exeter, and Wells

Ailmer and Bullingham, and hundreds more;

So they report: I shall be left alone.

No: Hooper, Ridley, Latimer will not fly. 
 

    Enter PETER MARTYR. 
 

PETER MARTYR: Fly, Cranmer! were there nothing else, your name

Stands first of those who sign'd the Letters Patent

That gave her royal crown to Lady Jane. 

CRANMER:

Stand first it may, but it was written last:

Those that are now her Privy Council, sign'd

Before me: nay, the Judges had pronounced

That our young Edward might bequeath the crown

Of England, putting by his father's will.

Yet I stood out, till Edward sent for me.

The wan boy-king, with his fast-fading eyes

Fixt hard on mine, his frail transparent hand,

Damp with the sweat of death, and griping mine,

Whisper'd me, if I loved him, not to yield

His Church of England to the Papal wolf

And Mary; then I could no more I sign'd.

Nay, for bare shame of inconsistency,

She cannot pass her traitor council by,

To make me headless. 

PETER MARTYR:        That might be forgiven.

I tell you, fly, my Lord. You do not own

The bodily presence in the Eucharist,

Their wafer and perpetual sacrifice:

Your creed will be your death. 

CRANMER:                       Step after step,

Thro' many voices crying right and left,

Have I climb'd back into the primal church,

And stand within the porch, and Christ with me:

My flight were such a scandal to the faith,

The downfall of so many simple souls,

I dare not leave my post. 

PETER MARTYR:             But you divorced

Queen Catharine and her father; hence, her hate

Will burn till you are burn'd. 

CRANMER:                       I cannot help it.

The Canonists and Schoolmen were with me.

'Thou shalt not wed thy brother's wife.' 'Tis written,

'They shall be childless.' True, Mary was born,

But France would not accept her for a bride

As being born from incest; and this wrought

Upon the king; and child by child, you know,

Were momentary sparkles out as quick

Almost as kindled; and he brought his doubts

And fears to me. Peter, I'll swear for him

He did believe the bond incestuous.

But wherefore am I trenching on the time

That should already have seen your steps a mile

From me and Lambeth? God be with you! Go. 

PETER MARTYR: Ah, but how fierce a letter you wrote against

Their superstition when they slander'd you

For setting up a mass at Canterbury

To please the Queen. 

CRANMER:             It was a wheedling monk

Set up the mass. 

PETER MARTYR:    I know it, my good Lord.

But you so bubbled over with hot terms

Of Satan, liars, blasphemy, Antichrist,

She never will forgive you. Fly, my Lord, fly! 

CRANMER: I wrote it, and God grant me power to burn! 

PETER MARTYR: They have given me a safe conduct: for all that

I dare not stay. I fear, I fear, I see you,

Dear friend, for the last time; farewell, and fly. 

CRANMER: Fly and farewell, and let me die the death.

                                       [Exit PETER MARTYR.] 
 

    Enter OLD SERVANT. 
 

O, kind and gentle master, the Queen's Officers

Are here in force to take you to the Tower. 

CRANMER: Ay, gentle friend, admit them. I will go.

I thank my God it is too late to fly. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene III. ST. PAUL'S CROSS. 
 

FATHER BOURNE in the pulpit. A CROWD. MARCHIONESS OF EXETER,

COURTENAY. The SIEUR DE NOAILLES and his man ROGER in front

of the stage. Hubbub. 
 

NOAILLES: Hast thou let fall those papers in the  palace? 

ROGER: Ay, sir. 

NOAILLES:       'There will be no peace for Mary till

Elizabeth lose her head.' 

ROGER:                    Ay, sir. 

NOAILLES: And the other, 'Long live Elizabeth the Queen!' 

ROGER: Ay, sir; she needs must tread upon them. 

NOAILLES:                                       Well.

These beastly swine make such a grunting here,

I cannot catch what Father Bourne is saying. 

ROGER: Quiet a moment, my masters; hear what the shaveling has to say

for himself. 

CROWD: Hush hear! 

BOURNE: and so this unhappy land, long divided in itself, and

sever'd from the faith, will return into the one true fold, seeing

that our gracious Virgin Queen hath   

CROWD: No pope! no pope! 

ROGER: (to those about him, mimicking BOURNE). hath sent for the

holy legate of the holy father the Pope, Cardinal Pole, to give us all

that holy absolution which   

FIRST CITIZEN: Old Bourne to the life! 

SECOND CITIZEN: Holy absolution! holy Inquisition! 

THIRD CITIZEN: Down with the Papist!

                                        [Hubbub.] 

BOURNE: and now that your good bishop,

Bonner, who hath lain so long under bonds for the

faith

                                        [Hubbub.] 

NOAILLES: Friend Roger, steal thou in among the crowd,

And get the swine to shout Elizabeth.

Yon gray old Gospeller, sour as midwinter,

Begin with him. 

ROGER: (goes). By the mass, old friend, we'll have no pope here while

the Lady Elizabeth lives. 

GOSPELLER: Art thou of the true faith, fellow, that swearest by the

mass? 

ROGER: Ay, that am I, new converted, but the old leaven sticks to my

tongue yet. 

FIRST CITIZEN: He says right; by the mass we'll have no mass here. 

VOICES OF THE CROWD: Peace! hear him; let his own words damn the

Papist. From thine own mouth I judge thee tear him down! 

BOURNE: and since our Gracious Queen, let me call her our second

Virgin Mary, hath begun to re-edify the true temple  , 

FIRST CITIZEN: Virgin Mary! we'll have no virgins here we'll have the

Lady Elizabeth! 
 

    [Swords are drawn, a knife is hurled and sticks in

    the pulpit. The mob throng to the pulpit stairs.] 
 

MARCHIONESS OF EXETER: Son Courtenay, wilt thou see the holy father

Murdered before thy face? up, son, and save him! They love thee, and

thou canst not come to harm. 

COURTENAY: (in the pulpit). Shame, shame, my masters! are you

English-born, And set yourselves by hundreds against one? 

CROWD: A Courtenay! a Courtenay! 
 

    [A train of Spanish servants crosses at the back of the stage.] 
 

NOAILLES: These birds of passage come before their time:

Stave off the crowd upon the Spaniard there. 

ROGER: My masters, yonder's fatter game for you

Than this old gaping gurgoyle: look you there

The Prince of Spain coming to wed our Queen!

After him, boys! and pelt him from the city. 
 

    [They seize stones and follow the Spaniards.

    Exeunt on the other side MARCHIONESS OF

    EXETER and ATTENDANTS.] 
 

NOAILLES: (to ROGER).

Stand from me. If Elizabeth lose her head

That makes for France.

And if her people, anger'd thereupon,

Arise against her and dethrone the Queen

That makes for France.

And if I breed confusion anyway

That makes for France.

                       Good-day, my Lord of Devon;

A bold heart yours to beard that raging mob! 

COURTENAY: My mother said, Go up; and up I went.

I knew they would not do me any wrong,

For I am mighty popular with them, Noailles. 

NOAILLES: You look'd a king. 

COURTENAY:                   Why not? I am king's blood. 

NOAILLES: And in the whirl of change may come to be one. 

COURTENAY: Ah! 

NOAILLES: But does your gracious Queen entreat you kinglike? 

COURTENAY: 'Fore God, I think she entreats me like a child. 

NOAILLES: You've but a dull life in this maiden court, I fear, my

Lord? 

COURTENAY: A life of nods and yawns. 

NOAILLES: So you would honour my poor house to-night,

We might enliven you. Divers honest fellows,

The Duke of Suffolk lately freed from prison,

Sir Peter Carew and Sir Thomas Wyatt,

Sir Thomas Stafford, and some more we play. 

COURTENAY: At what? 

NOAILLES:           The Game of Chess. 

COURTENAY:                             The Game of Chess!

I can play well, and I shall beat you there. 

NOAILLES: Ay, but we play with Henry, King of France,

And certain of his court.

His Highness makes his moves across the Channel,

We answer him with ours, and there are messengers

That go between us. 

COURTENAY: Why, such a game, sir, were whole years a playing. 

NOAILLES: Nay; not so long I trust. That all depends

Upon the skill and swiftness of the players. 

COURTENAY: The King is skilful at it? 

NOAILLES:                             Very, my Lord. 

COURTENAY: And the stakes high? 

NOAILLES:         But not beyond your means. 

COURTENAY: Well, I'm the first of players, I shall win. 

NOAILLES: With our advice and in our company,

And so you well attend to the king's moves,

I think you may. 

COURTENAY: When do you meet? 

NOAILLES:                    To-night. 

COURTENAY: (aside).

I will be there; the fellow's at his tricks

Deep I shall fathom him. (Aloud) Good morning,

Noailles.

             [Exit COURTENAY] 

NOAILLES: Good-day, my Lord. Strange game of chess! a King

That with her own pawns plays against a Queen,

Whose play is all to find herself a King.

Ay; but this fine blue-blooded Courtenay seems

Too princely for a pawn. Call him a Knight,

That, with an ass's, not a horse's head,

Skips every way, from levity or from fear.

Well, we shall use him somehow, so that Gardiner

And Simon Renard spy not out our game

Too early. Roger, thinkest thou that anyone

Suspected thee to be my man? 

ROGER:                       Not one, sir. 

NOAILLES: No! the disguise was perfect. Let's away.

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene IV. LONDON. A ROOM IN THE PALACE. 
 

ELIZABETH. Enter COURTENAY. 
 

COURTENAY: So yet am I,

Unless my friends and mirrors lie to me,

A goodlier-looking fellow than this Philip.

Pah!

The Queen is ill advised: shall I turn traitor?

They've almost talked me into it: yet the word

Affrights me somewhat: to be such a one

As Harry Bolingbroke hath a lure in it.

Good now, my Lady Queen, tho' by your age,

And by your looks you are not worth the having,

Yet by your crown you are.    [Seeing ELIZABETH]

                           The Princess there?

If I tried her and la she's amorous.

Have we not heard of her in Edward's time,

Her freaks and frolics with the late Lord Admiral?

I do believe she'd yield. I should be still

A party in the state; and then, who knows  

ELIZABETH: What are you musing on, my Lord of Devon? 

COURTENAY: Has not the Queen  

ELIZABETH:                    Done what, Sir? 

COURTENAY:                                   made you follow

The Lady Suffolk and the Lady Lennox?

You,

The heir presumptive. 

ELIZABETH:            Why do you ask? you know it. 

COURTENAY: You needs must bear it hardly. 

ELIZABETH:                                No, indeed!

I am utterly submissive to the Queen. 

COURTENAY: Well, I was musing upon that; the Queen

Is both my foe and yours: we should be friends. 

ELIZABETH: My Lord, the hatred of another to us

Is no true bond of friendship. 

COURTENAY:                     Might it not

Be the rough preface of some closer bond? 

ELIZABETH: My Lord, you late were loosed from out the Tower,

Where, like a butterfly in a chrysalis,

You spent your life; that broken, out you flutter

Thro' the new world, go zigzag, now would settle

Upon this flower, now that; but all things here

At court are known; you have solicited

The Queen, and been rejected. 

COURTENAY:                    Flower, she!

Half faded! but you, cousin, are fresh and sweet

As the first flower no bee has ever tried. 

ELIZABETH: Are you the bee to try me? why, but now

I called you butterfly. 

COURTENAY:              You did me wrong,

I love not to be called a butterfly:

Why do you call me butterfly? 

ELIZABETH: Why do you go so gay then? 

COURTENAY:                            Velvet and gold.

This dress was made me as the Earl of Devon

To take my seat in; looks it not right royal? 

ELIZABETH: So royal that the Queen forbad you wearing it. 

COURTENAY: I wear it then to spite her. 

ELIZABETH:                              My Lord, my Lord;

I see you in the Tower again. Her Majesty

Hears you affect the Prince prelates kneel to

you.  

COURTENAY: I am the noblest blood in Europe, Madam,

A Courtenay of Devon, and her cousin. 

ELIZABETH: She hears you make your boast that after all

She means to wed you. Folly, my good Lord. 

COURTENAY: How folly? a great party in the state

Wills me to wed her. 

ELIZABETH:          Failing her, my Lord,

Doth not as great a party in the state

Will you to wed me? 

COURTENAY:          Even so, fair Lady. 

ELIZABETH: You know to flatter ladies. 

COURTENAY:                             Nay, I meant

True matters of the heart. 

ELIZABETH:                 My heart, my Lord,

Is no great party in the state as yet. 

COURTENAY: Great, said you? nay, you shall be great. I love you,

Lay my life in your hands. Can you be close? 

ELIZABETH: Can you, my Lord? 

COURTENAY:                   Close as a miser's casket.

Listen:

The King of France, Noailles the Ambassador,

The Duke of Suffolk and Sir Peter Carew,

Sir Thomas Wyatt, I myself, some others,

Have sworn this Spanish marriage shall not be.

If Mary will not hear us well conjecture

Were I in Devon with my wedded bride,

The people there so worship me Your ear;

You shall be Queen. 

ELIZABETH:          You speak too low, my Lord;

I cannot hear you. 

COURTENAY:         I'll repeat it. 

ELIZABETH:                         No!

Stand further off, or you may lose your head. 

COURTENAY: I have a head to lose for your sweet

sake. 

ELIZABETH: Have you, my Lord? Best keep it for your own.

Nay, pout not, cousin.

Not many friends are mine, except indeed

Among the many. I believe you mine;

And so you may continue mine, farewell,

And that at once. 
 

    Enter MARY, behind. 
 

MARY: Whispering leagued together

To bar me from my Philip. 

COURTENAY:                Pray consider  

ELIZABETH: (seeing the QUEEN).

Well, that's a noble horse of yours, my Lord.

I trust that he will carry you well to-day,

And heal your headache. 

COURTENAY:              You are wild; what headache?

Heartache, perchance; not headache. 

ELIZABETH: (aside to COURTENAY). Are you blind? 

        [COURTENAY sees the QUEEN and exit. Exit MARY] 
 

  Enter LORD WILLIAM HOWARD 
 

HOWARD: Was that my Lord of Devon? do not you

Be seen in corners with my Lord of Devon.

He hath fallen out of favour with the Queen.

She fears the Lords may side with you and him

Against her marriage; therefore is he dangerous.

And if this Prince of fluff and feather come

To woo you, niece, he is dangerous everyway. 

ELIZABETH: Not very dangerous that way, my good uncle. 

HOWARD: But your own state is full of danger here.

The disaffected, heretics, reformers,

Look to you as the one to crown their ends.

Mix not yourself with any plot I pray you;

Nay, if by chance you hear of any such,

Speak not thereof no, not to your best friend,

Lest you should be confounded with it. Still

Perinde ac cadaver as the priest says,

You know your Latin quiet as a dead body.

What was my Lord of Devon telling you? 

ELIZABETH: Whether he told me anything or not,

I follow your good counsel, gracious uncle.

Quiet as a dead body. 

HOWARD:               You do right well.

I do not care to know; but this I charge you,

Tell Courtenay nothing. The Lord Chancellor

(I count it as a kind of virtue in him,

He hath not many), as a mastiff dog

May love a puppy cur for no more reason

Than that the twain have been tied up together,

Thus Gardiner for the two were fellow-prisoners

So many years in yon accursed Tower

Hath taken to this Courtenay. Look to it, niece,

He hath no fence when Gardiner questions him;

All oozes out; yet him because they know him

The last White Rose, the last Plantagenet

(Nay, there is Cardinal Pole, too), the people

Claim as their natural leader ay, some say,

That you shall marry him, make him King belike. 

ELIZABETH: Do they say so, good uncle? 

HOWARD:                                Ay, good niece!

You should be plain and open with me, niece.

You should not play upon me. 

ELIZABETH:                   No, good uncle. 
 

    Enter GARDINER 
 

GARDINER: The Queen would see your Grace upon the moment. 

ELIZABETH: Why, my lord Bishop? 

GARDINER: I think she means to counsel your withdrawing

To Ashridge, or some other country house. 

ELIZABETH: Why, my lord Bishop? 

GARDINER: I do but bring the message, know no more.

Your Grace will hear her reasons from herself. 

ELIZABETH: 'Tis mine own wish fulfill'd before the word

Was spoken, for in truth I had meant to crave

Permission of her Highness to retire

To Ashridge, and pursue my studies there. 

GARDINER: Madam, to have the wish before the word

Is man's good Fairy and the Queen is yours.

I left her with rich jewels in her hand,

Whereof 'tis like enough she means to make

A farewell present to your Grace. 

ELIZABETH:                        My Lord,

I have the jewel of a loyal heart. 

GARDINER: I doubt it not, Madam, most loyal.

                                  [Bows low and exit.] 

HOWARD:                                      See,

This comes of parleying with my Lord of Devon.

Well, well, you must obey; and I myself

Believe it will be better for your welfare.

Your time will come. 

ELIZABETH:           I think my time will come.

Uncle,

I am of sovereign nature, that I know,

Not to be quell'd; and I have felt within me

Stirrings of some great doom when God's just hour

Peals but this fierce old Gardiner his big baldness,

That irritable forelock which he rubs,

His buzzard beak and deep-incavern'd eyes

Half fright me. 

HOWARD:         You've a bold heart; keep it so.

He cannot touch you save that you turn traitor;

And so take heed I pray you you are one

Who love that men should smile upon you, niece.

They'd smile you into treason some of them. 

ELIZABETH: I spy the rock beneath the smiling sea.

But if this Philip, the proud Catholic prince,

And this bald priest, and she that hates me, seek

In that lone house, to practise on my life,

By poison, fire, shot, stab  

HOWARD: They will not, niece.

Mine is the fleet and all the power at sea

Or will be in a moment. If they dared

To harm you, I would blow this Philip and all

Your trouble to the dogstar and the devil. 

ELIZABETH: To the Pleiads, uncle; they have lost

a sister. 

HOWARD: But why say that? what have you done

to lose her?

Come, come, I will go with you to the Queen. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene V. A ROOM IN THE PALACE. 
 

MARY with PHILIP'S miniature. ALICE. 
 

MARY: (kissing the miniature).

Most goodly, King-like and an Emperor's son,

A king to be, is he not noble, girl? 

ALICE: Goodly enough, your Grace, and yet, methinks,

I have seen goodlier. 

MARY:                 Ay; some waxen doll

Thy baby eyes have rested on, belike;

All red and white, the fashion of our land.

But my good mother came (God rest her soul)

Of Spain, and I am Spanish in myself,

And in my likings. 

ALICE:             By your Grace's leave

Your royal mother came of Spain, but took

To the English red and White. Your royal father

(For so they say) was all pure lily and rose

In his youth, and like a Lady. 

MARY:                          O, just God!

Sweet mother, you had time and cause enough

To sicken of his lilies and his roses.

Cast off, betray'd, defamed, divorced, forlorn!

And then the King that traitor past forgiveness,

The false archbishop fawning on him, married

The mother of Elizabeth a heretic

Ev'n as she is; but God hath sent me here

To take such order with all heretics

That it shall be, before I die, as tho'

My father and my brother had not lived.

What wast thou saying of this Lady Jane,

Now in the Tower? 

ALICE:            Why, Madam, she was passing

Some chapel down in Essex, and with her

Lady Anne Wharton, and the Lady Anne

Bow'd to the Pyx; but Lady Jane stood up

Stiff as the very backbone of heresy.

And wherefore bow ye not, says Lady Anne,

To him within there who made Heaven and Earth?

I cannot, and I dare not, tell your Grace

What Lady Jane replied. 

MARY:                   But I will have it. 

ALICE: She said pray pardon me, and pity her

She hath harken'd evil counsel ah! she said,

The baker made him. 

MARY:               Monstrous! blasphemous!

She ought to burn. Hence, thou (Exit ALICE). No being traitor

Her head will fall: shall it? she is but a child.

We do not kill the child for doing that

His father whipt him into doing a head

So full of grace and beauty! would that mine

Were half as gracious! O, my lord to be,

My love, for thy sake only.

I am eleven years older than he is.

But will he care for that?

No, by the holy Virgin, being noble,

But love me only: then the bastard sprout,

My sister, is far fairer than myself.

Will he be drawn to her?

No, being of the true faith with myself.

Paget is for him for to wed with Spain

Would treble England Gardiner is against him;

The Council, people, Parliament against him;

But I will have him! My hard father hated me;

My brother rather hated me than loved;

My sister cowers and hates me. Holy Virgin,

Plead with thy blessed Son; grant me my prayer:

Give me my Philip; and we two will lead

The living waters of the Faith again

Back thro' their widow'd channel here, and watch

The parch'd banks rolling incense, as of old,

To heaven, and kindled with the palms of Christ! 

    Enter USHER 

Who waits, sir? 

USHER:          Madam, the Lord Chancellor. 

MARY: Bid him come in. (Enter GARDINER)

Good morning, my good Lord. 
 

[Exit USHER] 
 

GARDINER: That every morning of your Majesty

May be most good, is every morning's prayer

Of your most loyal subject, Stephen Gardiner. 

MARY: Come you to tell me this, my Lord? 

GARDINER:                                And more.

Your people have begun to learn your worth.

Your pious wish to pay King Edward's debts,

Your lavish household curb'd, and the remission

Of half that subsidy levied on the people,

Make all tongues praise and all hearts beat for you.

I'd have you yet more loved: the realm is poor,

The exchequer at neap-tide: we might withdraw

Part of our garrison at Calais. 

MARY:                           Calais!

Our one point on the main, the gate of France!

I am Queen of England; take mine eyes, mine heart,

But do not lose me Calais. 

GARDINER:                  Do not fear it.

Of that hereafter. I say your Grace is loved.

That I may keep you thus, who am your friend

And ever faithful counsellor, might I speak? 

MARY: I can forespeak your speaking. Would I marry

Prince Philip, if all England hate him? That is

Your question, and I front it with another:

Is it England, or a party? Now, your answer. 

GARDINER: My answer is, I wear beneath my dress

A shirt of mail: my house hath been assaulted,

And when I walk abroad, the populace,

With fingers pointed like so many daggers,

Stab me in fancy, hissing Spain and Philip;

And when I sleep, a hundred men-at-arms

Guard my poor dreams for England. Men would murder me,

Because they think me favourer of this marriage. 

MARY: And that were hard upon you, my Lord Chancellor. 

GARDINER: But our young Earl of Devon  

MARY:                                  Earl of Devon?

I freed him from the Tower, placed him at Court;

I made him Earl of Devon, and the fool

He wrecks his health and wealth on courtesans,

And rolls himself in carrion like a dog. 

GARDINER: More like a school-boy that hath broken bounds,

Sickening himself with sweets. 

MARY:                          I will not hear of him.

Good, then, they will revolt: but I am Tudor,

And shall control them. 

GARDINER:               I will help you, Madam,

Even to the utmost. All the church is grateful.

You have ousted the mock priest, repulpited

The shepherd of St. Peter, raised the rood again,

And brought us back the mass. I am all thanks

To God and to your Grace: yet I know well,

Your people, and I go with them so far,

Will brook nor Pope nor Spaniard here to play

The tyrant, or in commonwealth or church. 

MARY: (showing the picture).

Is this the face of one who plays the tyrant?

Peruse it; is it not goodly, ay, and gentle? 

GARDINER: Madam, methinks a cold face and a haughty.

And when your Highness talks of Courtenay

Ay, true a goodly one. I would his life

Were half as goodly (aside). 

MARY:               What is that you mutter? 

GARDINER: Oh, Madam, take it bluntly; marry Philip,

And be stepmother of a score of sons!

The prince is known in Spain, in Flanders, ha!

For Philip  

MARY:       You offend us; you may leave us.

You see thro' warping glasses. 

GARDINER:                      If your Majesty  

MARY: I have sworn upon the body and blood of Christ

I'll none but Philip. 

GARDINER:             Hath your Grace so sworn? 

MARY: Ay, Simon Renard knows it. 

GARDINER:                        News to me!

It then remains for your poor Gardiner,

So you still care to trust him somewhat less

Than Simon Renard, to compose the event

In some such form as least may harm your Grace. 

MARY: I'll have the scandal sounded to the mud.

I know it a scandal. 

GARDINER: All my hope is now

It may be found a scandal. 

MARY: You offend us. 

GARDINER: (aside).

These princes are like children, must be physick'd,

The bitter in the sweet. I have lost mine office,

It may be, thro' mine honesty, like a fool.

                                         [Exit.] 
 

    Enter USHER. 
 

MARY: Who waits? 

USHER: The Ambassador from France, your Grace. 

MARY: (sits down).

Bid him come in. Good morning, Sir de Noailles. 

                                      [Exit USHER] 

NOAILLES: (entering).

A happy morning to your Majesty. 

MARY: And I should some time have a happy morning;

I have had none yet. What says the King your master? 

NOAILLES: Madam, my master hears with much alarm,

That you may marry Philip, Prince of Spain

Foreseeing, with whate'er unwillingness,

That if this Philip be the titular king

Of England, and at war with him, your Grace

And kingdom will be suck'd into the war,

Ay, tho' you long for peace; wherefore, my master,

If but to prove your Majesty's goodwill,

Would fain have some fresh treaty drawn between you. 

MARY: Why some fresh treaty? wherefore should I do it?

Sir, if we marry, we shall still maintain

All former treaties with his Majesty.

Our royal word for that! and your good master,

Pray God he do not be the first to break them,

Must be content with that; and so, farewell. 

NOAILLES: (going, returns).

I would your answer had been other, Madam,

For I foresee dark days. 

MARY:                    And so do I, sir;

Your master works against me in the dark.

I do believe he holp Northumberland

Against me. 

NOAILLES:   Nay, pure phantasy, your Grace.

Why should he move against you? 

MARY:                           Will you hear why?

Mary of Scotland, for I have not own'd

My sister, and I will not, after me

Is heir of England; and my royal father,

To make the crown of Scotland one with ours,

Had mark'd her for my brother Edward's bride;

Ay, but your king stole her a babe from Scotland

In order to betroth her to your Dauphin.

See then:

Mary of Scotland, married to your Dauphin,

Would make our England, France;

Mary of England, joining hands with Spain,

Would be too strong for France.

Yea, were there issue born to her, Spain and we,

One crown, might rule the world. There lies your fear.

That is your drift. You play at hide and seek.

Show me your faces! 

NOAILLES:           Madam, I am amazed:

French, I must needs wish all good things for France.

That must be pardon'd me; but I protest

Your Grace's policy hath a farther flight

Than mine into the future. We but seek

Some settled ground for peace to stand upon. 

MARY: Well, we will leave all this, sir, to our council.

Have you seen Philip ever? 

NOAILLES:                  Only once. 

MARY: Is this like Philip? 

NOAILLES:                  Ay, but nobler-looking. 

MARY: Hath he the large ability of the Emperor? 

NOAILLES: No, surely. 

MARY: I can make allowance for thee,

Thou speakest of the enemy of thy king. 

NOAILLES: Make no allowance for the naked truth.

He is every way a lesser man than Charles;

Stone-hard, ice-cold no dash of daring in him. 

MARY: If cold, his life is pure. 

NOAILLES:                        Why (smiling), no, indeed. 

MARY: Sayst thou? 

NOAILLES:         A very wanton life indeed (smiling). 

MARY: Your audience is concluded, sir. 

                           [Exit NOAILLES] 

                                       You cannot

Learn a man's nature from his natural foe. 

    Enter USHER 

Who waits? 

USHER:     The Ambassador of Spain, your Grace.

                                           [Exit.] 
 

    Enter SIMON RENARD 
 

MARY: (rising to meet him).

Thou art ever welcome, Simon Renard. Hast thou

Brought me the letter which thine Emperor promised

Long since, a formal offer of the hand Of Philip? 

RENARD: Nay, your Grace, it hath not reach'd me.

I know not wherefore some mischance of flood,

And broken bridge, or spavin'd horse, or wave

And wind at their old battle: he must have written. 

MARY: But Philip never writes me one poor word.

Which in his absence had been all my wealth.

Strange in a wooer! 

RENARD:             Yet I know the Prince,

So your king-parliament suffer him to land,

Yearns to set foot upon your island shore. 

MARY: God change the pebble which his kingly foot

First presses into some more costly stone

Than ever blinded eye. I'll have one mark it

And bring it me. I'll have it burnish'd firelike;

I'll set it round with gold, with pearl, with diamond.

Let the great angel of the church come with him;

Stand on the deck and spread his wings for sail!

God lay the waves and strow the storms at sea,

And here at land among the people! O Renard,

I am much beset, I am almost in despair.

Paget is ours. Gardiner perchance is ours;

But for our heretic Parliament  

RENARD:                         O Madam,

You fly your thoughts like kites. My master, Charles,

Bad you go softly with your heretics here,

Until your throne had ceased to tremble. Then

Spit them like larks for aught I care. Besides,

When Henry broke the carcase of your church

To pieces, there were many wolves among you

Who dragg'd the scatter'd limbs into their den.

The Pope would have you make them render these;

So would your cousin, Cardinal Pole; ill counsel!

These let them keep at present; stir not yet

This matter of the Church lands. At his coming

Your star will rise. 

MARY:                My star! a baleful one.

I see but the black night, and hear the wolf.

What star? 

RENARD:    Your star will be your princely son,

Heir of this England and the Netherlands!

And if your wolf the while should howl for more,

We'll dust him from a bag of Spanish gold.

I do believe, I have dusted some already,

That, soon or late, your Parliament is ours. 

MARY: Why do they talk so foully of your Prince,

Renard? 

RENARD: The lot of Princes. To sit high

Is to be lied about. 

MARY:                They call him cold,

Haughty, ay, worse. 

RENARD:             Why, doubtless, Philip shows

Some of the bearing of your blue blood still

All within measure nay, it well becomes him. 

MARY: Hath he the large ability of his father? 

RENARD: Nay, some believe that he will go beyond him. 

MARY: Is this like him? 

RENARD:                 Ay, somewhat; but your Philip

Is the most princelike Prince beneath the sun.

This is a daub to Philip. 

MARY:                     Of a pure life? 

RENARD: As an angel among angels. Yea, by Heaven,

The text Your Highness knows it, 'Whosoever

Looketh after a woman,' would not graze

The Prince of Spain. You are happy in him there,

Chaste as your Grace! 

MARY:                 I am happy in him there. 

RENARD: And would be altogether happy, Madam,

So that your sister were but look'd to closer.

You have sent her from the court, but then she goes,

I warrant, not to hear the nightingales,

But hatch you some new treason in the woods. 

MARY: We have our spies abroad to catch her tripping,

And then if caught, to the Tower. 

RENARD:                           The Tower! the block!

The word has turn'd your Highness pale; the thing

Was no such scarecrow in your father's time.

I have heard, the tongue yet quiver'd with the jest

When the head leapt so common! I do think

To save your crown that it must come to this. 

MARY: No, Renard; it must never come to this. 

RENARD: Not yet; but your old Traitors of the Tower

Why, when you put Northumberland to death,

The sentence having past upon them all,

Spared you the Duke of Suffolk, Guildford Dudley,

Ev'n that young girl who dared to wear your crown? 

MARY: Dared? nay, not so; the child obey'd her father.

Spite of her tears her father forced it on her. 

RENARD: Good Madam, when the Roman wish'd to reign,

He slew not him alone who wore the purple,

But his assessor in the throne, perchance

A child more innocent than Lady Jane. 

MARY: I am English Queen, not Roman Emperor. 

RENARD: Yet too much mercy is a want of mercy,

And wastes more life. Stamp out the fire, or this

Will smoulder and re-flame, and burn the throne

Where you should sit with Philip: he will not come

Till she be gone. 

MARY:             Indeed, if that were true

For Philip comes, one hand in mine, and one

Steadying the tremulous pillars of the Church

But no, no, no. Farewell. I am somewhat faint

With our long talk. Tho' Queen, I am not Queen

Of mine own heart, which every now and then

Beats me half dead: yet stay, this golden chain

My father on a birthday gave it me,

And I have broken with my father take

And wear it as memorial of a morning

Which found me full of foolish doubts, and leaves me

As hopeful. 

RENARD: (aside). Whew the folly of all follies

Is to be love-sick for a shadow. (Aloud) Madam,

This chains me to your service, not with gold,

But dearest links of love. Farewell, and trust me,

Philip is yours.

                    [Exit.] 

MARY:            Mine but not yet all mine. 
 

    Enter USHER 
 

USHER: Your Council is in Session, please your Majesty. 

MARY: Sir, let them sit. I must have time to breathe.

No, say I come. (Exit USHER) I won by boldness once.

The Emperor counsell'd me to fly to Flanders.

I would not; but a hundred miles I rode,

Sent out my letters, call'd my friends together,

Struck home and won.

And when the Council would not crown me thought

To bind me first by oaths I could not keep,

And keep with Christ and conscience was it boldness

Or weakness that won there? when I, their Queen,

Cast myself down upon my knees before them,

And those hard men brake into woman tears,

Ev'n Gardiner, all amazed, and in that passion

Gave me my Crown. 

    Enter ALICE 

                  Girl; hast thou ever heard

Slanders against Prince Philip in our Court? 

ALICE: What slanders? I, your Grace; no, never. 

MARY:                                           Nothing? 

ALICE: Never, your Grace. 

MARY: See that you neither hear them nor repeat! 

ALICE: (aside).

Good Lord! but I have heard a thousand such.

Ay, and repeated them as often mum!

Why comes that old fox-Fleming back again? 
 

    Enter RENARD 
 

RENARD: Madam, I scarce had left your Grace's presence

Before I chanced upon the messenger

Who brings that letter which we waited for

The formal offer of Prince Philip's hand.

It craves an instant answer, Ay or No. 

MARY: An instant Ay or No! the Council sits.

Give it me quick. 

ALICE: (stepping before her).

                  Your Highness is all trembling. 

MARY: Make way.    [Exit into the Council Chamber.] 

ALICE:          O, Master Renard, Master Renard,

If you have falsely painted your fine Prince;

Praised, where you should have blamed him, I pray God

No woman ever love you, Master Renard.

It breaks my heart to hear her moan at night

As tho' the nightmare never left her bed. 

RENARD: My pretty maiden, tell me, did you ever

Sigh for a beard? 

ALICE:            That's not a pretty question. 

RENARD: Not prettily put? I mean, my pretty maiden,

A pretty man for such a pretty maiden. 

ALICE: My Lord of Devon is a pretty man.

I hate him. Well, but if I have, what then? 

RENARD: Then, pretty maiden, you should know that whether

A wind be warm or cold, it serves to fan

A kindled fire. 

ALICE:          According to the song. 

    His friends would praise him, I believed 'em,

      His foes would blame him, and I scorn'd 'em,

    His friends as Angels I received 'em,

      His foes the Devil had suborn'd 'em. 

RENARD: Peace, pretty maiden.

I hear them stirring in the Council Chamber.

Lord Paget's 'Ay' is sure who else? and yet,

They are all too much at odds to close at once

In one full-throated No! Her Highness comes. 
 

    Enter MARY 
 

ALICE: How deathly pale! a chair, your Highness

                [Bringing one to the QUEEN.] 

RENARD: Madam,

The Council? 

MARY:        Ay! My Philip is all mine. 

[Sinks into chair, half fainting.] 
 
 

ACT II

  

Scene I. ALINGTON CASTLE. 
 

SIR THOMAS WYATT: I do not hear from Carew or the Duke

Of Suffolk, and till then I should not move.

The Duke hath gone to Leicester; Carew stirs

In Devon: that fine porcelain Courtenay,

Save that he fears he might be crack'd in using,

(I have known a semi-madman in my time

So fancy-ridd'n) should be in Devon too. 

    Enter WILLIAM 

News abroad, William? 

WILLIAM: None so new, Sir Thomas, and none so old, Sir Thomas. No new

news that Philip comes to wed Mary, no old news that all men hate it.

Old Sir Thomas would have hated it. The bells are ringing at

Maidstone. Doesn't your worship hear? 

WYATT: Ay, for the Saints are come to reign again.

Most like it is a Saint's-day. There's no call

As yet for me; so in this pause, before

The mine be fired, it were a pious work

To string my father's sonnets, left about

Like loosely-scatter'd jewels, in fair order,

And head them with a lamer rhyme of mine,

To grace his memory. 

WILLIAM: Ay, why not, Sir Thomas? He was a fine courtier, he; Queen

Anne loved him. All the women loved him. I loved him, I was in Spain

with him. I couldn't eat in Spain, I couldn't sleep in Spain. I hate

Spain, Sir Thomas. 

WYATT: But thou could'st drink in Spain if I remember. 

WILLIAM: Sir Thomas, we may grant the wine. Old Sir Thomas always

granted the wine. 

WYATT: Hand me the casket with my father's sonnets. 

WILLIAM: Ay sonnets a fine courtier of the old Court, old Sir

Thomas.    [Exit.] 

WYATT: Courtier of many courts, he loved the more

His own gray towers, plain life and letter'd peace,

To read and rhyme in solitary fields,

The lark above, the nightingale below,

And answer them in song. The sire begets

Not half his likeness in the son. I fail

Where he was fullest: yet to write it down.

                                    [He writes.] 
 

    Re-enter WILLIAM 
 

WILLIAM: There is news, there is news, and no call for

sonnet-sorting now, nor for sonnet-making either, but ten thousand

men on Penenden Heath all calling after your worship, and your

worship's name heard into Maidstone market, and your worship the first

man in Kent and Christendom, for the Queen's down, and the world's up,

and your worship a-top of it. 

WYATT: Inverted Aesop mountain out of mouse.

Say for ten thousand ten and pothouse knaves,

Brain-dizzied with a draught of morning ale. 
 

    Enter ANTONY KNYVETT 
 

WILLIAM: Here's Antony Knyvett. 

KNYVETT: Look you, Master Wyatt,

Tear up that woman's work there. 

WYATT:                           No; not these,

Dumb children of my father, that will speak

When I and thou and all rebellions lie

Dead bodies without voice. Song flies you know

For ages. 

KNYVETT:  Tut, your sonnet's a flying ant,

Wing'd for a moment. 

WYATT:               Well, for mine own work,

                                [Tearing the paper.]

It lies there in six pieces at your feet;

For all that I can carry it in my head. 

KNYVETT: If you can carry your head upon your shoulders. 

WYATT: I fear you come to carry it off my shoulders,

And sonnet-making's safer. 

KNYVETT:                   Why, good Lord,

Write you as many sonnets as you will.

Ay, but not now; what, have you eyes, ears, brains?

This Philip and the black-faced swarms of Spain,

The hardest, cruellest people in the world,

Come locusting upon us, eat us up,

Confiscate lands, goods, money Wyatt, Wyatt,

Wake, or the stout old island will become

A rotten limb of Spain. They roar for you

On Penenden Heath, a thousand of them more

All arm'd, waiting a leader; there's no glory

Like his who saves his country: and you sit

Sing-songing here; but, if I'm any judge,

By God, you are as poor a poet, Wyatt,

As a good soldier. 

WYATT:             You as poor a critic

As an honest friend: you stroke me on one cheek,

Buffet the other. Come, you bluster, Antony!

You know I know all this. I must not move

Until I hear from Carew and the Duke.

I fear the mine is fired before the time. 

KNYVETT: (showing a paper).

But here's some Hebrew. Faith, I half forgot it.

Look; can you make it English? A strange youth

Suddenly thrust it on me, whisper'd, 'Wyatt,'

And whisking round a corner, show'd his back

Before I read his face. 

WYATT:                  Ha! Courtenay's cipher.    [Reads.]

'Sir Peter Carew fled to France: it is thought the Duke will be taken.

I am with you still; but, for appearance sake, stay with the Queen.

Gardiner knows, but the Council are all at odds, and the Queen hath no

force for resistance. Move, if you move, at once.' 

Is Peter Carew fled? Is the Duke taken?

Down scabbard, and out sword! and let Rebellion

Roar till throne rock, and crown fall. No; not that;

But we will teach Queen Mary how to reign.

Who are those that shout below there? 

KNYVETT: Why, some fifty

That follow'd me from Penenden Heath in hope

To hear you speak. 

WYATT:             Open the window, Knyvett;

The mine is fired, and I will speak to them. 

Men of Kent; England of England; you that have kept your old customs

upright, while all the rest of England bow'd theirs to the Norman, the

cause that hath brought us together is not the cause of a county or a

shire, but of this England, in whose crown our Kent is the fairest

jewel. Philip shall not wed Mary; and ye have called me to be your

leader. I know Spain. I have been there with my father; I have seen

them in their own land; have marked the haughtiness of their nobles;

the cruelty of their priests. If this man marry our Queen, however

the Council and the Commons may fence round his power with restriction,

he will be King, King of England, my masters; and the Queen, and the

laws, and the people, his slaves. What? shall we have Spain on the

throne and in the parliament; Spain in the pulpit and on the law-bench;

Spain in all the great offices of state; Spain in our ships, in our

forts, in our houses, in our beds? 

CROWD: No! no! no Spain! 

WILLIAM: No Spain in our beds that were worse than all. I have been

there with old Sir Thomas, and the beds I know. I hate Spain. 

A PEASANT: But, Sir Thomas, must we levy war against the Queen's

Grace? 

WYATT: No, my friend; war for the Queen's Grace to save her from

herself and Philip war against Spain. And think not we shall be

alone thousands  will flock to us. The Council, the Court itself, is

on our side. The Lord Chancellor himself is on our side. The King of

France is with us; the King of Denmark is with us; the world is with

us war  against Spain! And if we move not now, yet it will be known

that we have moved; and if Philip come to be King, O, my God! the

rope, the rack, the thumbscrew, the stake, the fire. If we move not

now, Spain moves, bribes our nobles with her gold, and creeps, creeps

snake-like about our legs till we cannot move at all; and ye know, my

masters, that wherever Spain hath ruled she hath wither'd all beneath

her. Look at the New World a paradise made hell; the red man, that

good helpless creature, starved, maim'd, flogg'd, flay'd, burn'd,

boil'd, buried alive, worried by dogs; and here, nearer home, the

Netherlands, Sicily, Naples, Lombardy. I say no more only this, their

lot is yours. Forward to London with me! forward to London! If ye love

your liberties or your skins, forward to London! 

CROWD: Forward to London! A Wyatt! a Wyatt! 

WYATT: But first to Rochester, to take the guns

From out the vessels lying in the river.

Then on. 

A PEASANT: Ay, but I fear we be too few, Sir Thomas. 

WYATT: Not many yet. The world as yet, my friend,

Is not half-waked; but every parish tower

Shall clang and clash alarum as we pass,

And pour along the land, and swoll'n and fed

With indraughts and side-currents, in full force

Roll upon London. 

CROWD:             A Wyatt! a Wyatt! Forward! 

KNYVETT: Wyatt, shall we proclaim Elizabeth? 

WYATT: I'll think upon it, Knyvett. 

KNYVETT:                            Or Lady Jane? 

WYATT: No, poor soul; no.

Ah, gray old castle of Alington, green field

Beside the brimming Medway, it may chance

That I shall never look upon you more. 

KNYVETT: Come, now, you're sonnetting again. 

WYATT:                                       Not I.

I'll have my head set higher in the state;

Or if the Lord God will it on the stake. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene II. GUILDHALL. 
 

SIR THOMAS WHITE (The Lord Mayor), LORD WILLIAM HOWARD, SIR RALPH

BAGENHALL, ALDERMEN and CITIZENS. 
 

WHITE: I trust the Queen comes hither with her guards. 

HOWARD: Ay, all in arms. 

        [Several of the citizens move hastily out of the hall.] 

                         Why do they hurry out there? 

WHITE: My Lord, cut out the rotten from your apple,

Your apple eats the better. Let them go.

They go like those old Pharisees in John

Convicted by their conscience, arrant cowards,

Or tamperers with that treason out of Kent.

When will her Grace be here? 

HOWARD:                      In some few minutes.

She will address your guilds and companies.

I have striven in vain to raise a man for her.

But help her in this exigency, make

Your city loyal, and be the mightiest man

This day in England. 

WHITE:               I am Thomas White.

Few things have fail'd to which I set my will.

I do my most and best. 

HOWARD:                You know that after

The Captain Brett, who went with your train bands

To fight with Wyatt, had gone over to him

With all his men, the Queen in that distress

Sent Cornwallis and Hastings to the traitor,

Feigning to treat with him about her marriage

Know too what Wyatt said. 

WHITE:                    He'd sooner be,

While this same marriage question was being argued,

Trusted than trust the scoundrel and demanded

Possession of her person and the Tower. 

HOWARD: And four of her poor Council too, my Lord,

As hostages. 

WHITE:       I know it. What do and say

Your Council at this hour? 

HOWARD:                    I will trust you.

We fling ourselves on you, my Lord. The Council,

The Parliament as well, are troubled waters;

And yet like waters of the fen they know not

Which way to flow. All hangs on her address,

And upon you, Lord Mayor. 

WHITE:                    How look'd the city

When now you past it? Quiet? 

HOWARD:                      Like our Council,

Your city is divided. As we past,

Some hail'd, some hiss'd us. There were citizens

Stood each before his shut-up booth, and look'd

As grim and grave as from a funeral.

And here a knot of ruffians all in rags,

With execrating execrable eyes,

Glared at the citizen. Here was a young mother,

Her face on flame, her red hair all blown back,

She shrilling 'Wyatt,' while the boy she held

Mimick'd and piped her 'Wyatt,' as red as she

In hair and cheek; and almost elbowing her,

So close they stood, another, mute as death,

And white as her own milk; her babe in arms

Had felt the faltering of his mother's heart,

And look'd as bloodless. Here a pious Catholic,

Mumbling and mixing up in his scared prayers

Heaven and earth's Maries; over his bow'd shoulder

Scowl'd that world-hated and world-hating beast,

A haggard Anabaptist. Many such groups.

The names of Wyatt, Elizabeth, Courtenay,

Nay the Queen's right to reign 'fore God, the rogues

Were freely buzzed among them. So I say

Your city is divided, and I fear

One scruple, this or that way, of success

Would turn it thither. Wherefore now the Queen

In this low pulse and palsy of the state,

Bad me to tell you that she counts on you

And on myself as her two hands; on you,

In your own city, as her right, my Lord,

For you are loyal. 

WHITE:             Am I Thomas White?

One word before she comes. Elizabeth

Her name is much abused among these traitors.

Where is she? She is loved by all of us.

I scarce have heart to mingle in this matter,

If she should be mishandled. 

HOWARD:                      No; she shall not.

The Queen had written her word to come to court:

Methought I smelt out Renard in the letter,

And fearing for her, sent a secret missive,

Which told her to be sick. Happily or not,

It found her sick indeed. 

WHITE:                    God send her well;

Here comes her Royal Grace. 
 

    Enter GUARDS, MARY and GARDINER. SIR THOMAS

    WHITE leads her to a raised seat on the dais. 
 

WHITE: I, the Lord Mayor, and these our companies

And guilds of London, gathered here, beseech

Your Highness to accept our lowliest thanks

For your most princely presence; and we pray

That we, your true and loyal citizens,

From your own royal lips, at once may know

The wherefore of this coming, and so learn

Your royal will, and do it. I, Lord Mayor

Of London, and our guilds and companies. 

MARY: In mine own person am I come to you,

To tell you what indeed ye see and know,

How traitorously these rebels out of Kent

Have made strong head against ourselves and you.

They would not have me wed the Prince of Spain:

That was their pretext so they spake at first

But we sent divers of our Council to them,

And by their answers to the question ask'd,

It doth appear this marriage is the least

Of all their quarrel.

They have betrayed the treason of their hearts:

Seek to possess our person, hold our Tower,

Place and displace our councillors, and use

Both us and them according as they will.

Now what I am ye know right well your Queen;

To whom, when I was wedded to the realm

And the realm's laws (the spousal ring whereof,

Not ever to be laid aside, I wear

Upon this finger), ye did promise full

Allegiance and obedience to the death.

Ye know my father was the rightful heir

Of England, and his right came down to me

Corroborate by your acts of Parliament:

And as ye were most loving unto him,

So doubtless will ye show yourselves to me.

Wherefore, ye will not brook that anyone

Should seize our person, occupy our state,

More specially a traitor so presumptuous

As this same Wyatt, who hath tamper'd with

A public ignorance, and, under colour

Of such a cause as hath no colour, seeks

To bend the laws to his own will, and yield

Full scope to persons rascal and forlorn,

To make free spoil and havock of your goods.

Now as your Prince, I say,

I, that was never mother, cannot tell

How mothers love their children; yet, methinks,

A prince as naturally may love his people

As these their children; and be sure your Queen

So loves you, and so loving, needs must deem

This love by you return'd as heartily;

And thro' this common knot and bond of love,

Doubt not they will be speedily overthrown.

As to this marriage, ye shall understand

We made thereto no treaty of ourselves,

And set no foot theretoward unadvised

Of all our Privy Council; furthermore,

This marriage had the assent of those to whom

The king, my father, did commit his trust;

Who not alone esteem'd it honourable,

But for the wealth and glory of our realm,

And all our loving subjects, most expedient.

As to myself,

I am not so set on wedlock as to choose

But where I list, nor yet so amorous

That I must needs be husbanded; I thank God,

I have lived a virgin, and I noway doubt

But that with God's grace, I can live so still.

Yet if it might please God that I should leave

Some fruit of mine own body after me,

To be your king, ye would rejoice thereat,

And it would be your comfort, as I trust;

And truly, if I either thought or knew

This marriage should bring loss or danger to you,

My subjects, or impair in any way

This royal state of England, I would never

Consent thereto, nor marry while I live;

Moreover, if this marriage should not seem,

Before our own High Court of Parliament,

To be of rich advantage to our realm,

We will refrain, and not alone from this,

Likewise from any other, out of which

Looms the least chance of peril to our realm.

Wherefore be bold, and with your lawful Prince

Stand fast against our enemies and yours,

And fear them not. I fear them not. My Lord,

I leave Lord William Howard in your city,

To guard and keep you whole and safe from all

The spoil and sackage aim'd at by these rebels,

Who mouth and foam against the Prince of Spain. 

VOICES: Long live Queen Mary!

                              Down with Wyatt!

                                               The Queen! 

WHITE: Three voices from our guilds and companies!

You are shy and proud like Englishmen, my masters,

And will not trust your voices. Understand:

Your lawful Prince hath come to cast herself

On loyal hearts and bosoms, hoped to fall

Into the wide-spread arms of fealty,

And finds you statues. Speak at once and all!

For whom?

Our sovereign Lady by King Harry's will;

The Queen of England or the Kentish Squire?

I know you loyal. Speak! in the name of God!

The Queen of England or the rabble of Kent?

The reeking dungfork master of the mace!

Your havings wasted by the scythe and spade

Your rights and charters hobnail'd into slush

Your houses fired your gutters bubbling blood  

ACCLAMATION: No! No! The Queen! the Queen! 

WHITE:                                     Your Highness hears

This burst and bass of loyal harmony,

And how we each and all of us abhor

The venomous, bestial, devilish revolt

Of Thomas Wyatt. Hear us now make oath

To raise your Highness thirty thousand men,

And arm and strike as with one hand, and brush

This Wyatt from our shoulders, like a flea

That might have leapt upon us unawares.

Swear with me, noble fellow-citizens, all,

With all your trades, and guilds, and companies. 

CITIZENS: We swear! 

MARY: We thank your Lordship and your loyal city. 
 

[Exit MARY attended.] 
 

WHITE: I trust this day, thro' God, I have saved the crown. 

FIRST ALDERMAN: Ay, so my Lord of Pembroke in command

Of all her force be safe; but there are doubts. 

SECOND ALDERMAN: I hear that Gardiner, coming with the Queen,

And meeting Pembroke, bent to his saddle-bow,

As if to win the man by flattering him.

Is he so safe to fight upon her side? 

FIRST ALDERMAN: If not, there's no man safe. 

WHITE:                                       Yes, Thomas White.

I am safe enough; no man need flatter me. 

SECOND ALDERMAN: Nay, no man need; but did you mark our Queen?

The colour freely play'd into her face,

And the half sight which makes her look so stern,

Seem'd thro' that dim dilated world of hers,

To read our faces; I have never seen her

So queenly or so goodly. 

WHITE:                   Courage, sir,

That makes or man or woman look their goodliest.

Die like the torn fox dumb, but never whine

Like that poor heart, Northumberland, at the block. 

BAGENHALL: The man had children, and he whined for those.

Methinks most men are but poor-hearted, else

Should we so doat on courage, were it commoner?

The Queen stands up, and speaks for her own self;

And all men cry, She is queenly, she is goodly.

Yet she's no goodlier; tho' my Lord Mayor here,

By his own rule, he hath been so bold to-day,

Should look more goodly than the rest of us. 

WHITE: Goodly? I feel most goodly heart and hand,

And strong to throw ten Wyatts and all Kent.

Ha! ha! sir; but you jest; I love it: a jest

In time of danger shows the pulses even.

Be merry! yet, Sir Ralph, you look but sad.

I dare avouch you'd stand up for yourself,

Tho' all the world should bay like winter wolves. 

BAGENHALL: Who knows? the man is proven by the hour. 

WHITE: The man should make the hour, not this the man;

And Thomas White will prove this Thomas Wyatt,

And he will prove an Iden to this Cade,

And he will play the Walworth to this Wat;

Come, sirs, we prate; hence all gather your men

Myself must bustle. Wyatt comes to Southwark;

I'll have the drawbridge hewn into the Thames,

And see the citizens arm'd. Good day; good day.

                                       [Exit WHITE] 

BAGENHALL: One of much outdoor bluster. 

HOWARD:                                 For all that,

Most honest, brave, and skilful; and his wealth

A fountain of perennial alms his fault

So thoroughly to believe in his own self. 

BAGENHALL: Yet thoroughly to believe in one's own self,

So one's own self be thorough, were to do

Great things, my Lord. 

HOWARD:                It may be. 

BAGENHALL:                        I have heard

One of your Council fleer and jeer at him. 

HOWARD: The nursery-cocker'd child will jeer at aught

That may seem strange beyond his nursery.

The statesman that shall jeer and fleer at men,

Makes enemies for himself and for his king;

And if he jeer not seeing the true man

Behind his folly, he is thrice the fool;

And if he see the man and still will jeer,

He is child and fool, and traitor to the State.

Who is he? let me shun him. 

BAGENHALL:                    Nay, my Lord,

He is damn'd enough already. 

HOWARD:                      I must set

The guard at Ludgate. Fare you well, Sir Ralph. 

BAGENHALL: 'Who knows?' I am for England. But who knows,

That knows the Queen, the Spaniard, and the Pope,

Whether I be for Wyatt, or the Queen? 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene III. LONDON BRIDGE. 
 

Enter SIR THOMAS WYATT and BRETT. 
 

WYATT: Brett, when the Duke of Norfolk moved against us

Thou cried'st 'A Wyatt!' and flying to our side

Left his all bare, for which I love thee, Brett.

Have for thine asking aught that I can give,

For thro' thine help we are come to London Bridge;

But how to cross it balks me. I fear we cannot. 

BRETT: Nay, hardly, save by boat, swimming, or wings. 

WYATT: Last night I climb'd into the gate-house, Brett,

And scared the gray old porter and his wife.

And then I crept along the gloom and saw

They had hewn the drawbridge down into the river.

It roll'd as black as death; and that same tide

Which, coming with our coming, seem'd to smile

And sparkle like our fortune as thou saidest,

Ran sunless down, and moan'd against the piers.

But o'er the chasm I saw Lord William Howard

By torchlight, and his guard; four guns gaped at me,

Black, silent mouths: had Howard spied me there

And made them speak, as well he might have done,

Their voice had left me none to tell you this.

What shall we do? 

BRETT:            On somehow. To go back

Were to lose all. 

WYATT:            On over London Bridge

We cannot: stay we cannot; there is ordnance

On the White Tower and on the Devil's Tower,

And pointed full at Southwark; we must round

By Kingston Bridge. 

BRETT:              Ten miles about. 

WYATT:                               Ev'n so.

But I have notice from our partisans

Within the city that they will stand by us

If Ludgate can be reach'd by dawn to-morrow. 
 

    Enter one of WYATT'S MEN. 
 

MAN: Sir Thomas, I've found this paper; pray

your worship read it; I know not my letters; the old

priests taught me nothing. 

WYATT (reads). 'Whosoever will apprehend the traitor Thomas Wyatt

shall have a hundred pounds for reward.' 

MAN: Is that it? That's a big lot of money. 

WYATT: Ay, ay, my friend; not read it? 'tis not written

Half plain enough. Give me a piece of paper!

                                 [Writes 'THOMAS WYATT' large.]

There, any man can read that.    [Sticks it in his cap.] 

BRETT: But that's foolhardy. 

WYATT: No! boldness, which will give my followers boldness. 
 

    Enter MAN with a prisoner. 
 

MAN: We found him, your worship, a plundering o' Bishop Winchester's

house; he says he's a poor gentleman. 

WYATT: Gentleman! a thief! Go hang him. Shall we make

Those that we come to serve our sharpest foes? 

BRETT: Sir Thomas  

WYATT:             Hang him, I say. 

BRETT: Wyatt, but now you promised me a boon. 

WYATT: Ay, and I warrant this fine fellow's life. 

BRETT: Ev'n so; he was my neighbour once in Kent.

He's poor enough, has drunk and gambled out

All that he had, and gentleman he was.

We have been glad together; let him live. 

WYATT: He has gambled for his life, and lost, he hangs.

No, no, my word's my word. Take thy poor gentleman!

Gamble thyself at once out of my sight,

Or I will dig thee with my dagger. Away!

Women and children! 
 

    Enter a Crowd of WOMEN and CHILDREN. 
 

FIRST WOMAN: O Sir Thomas, Sir Thomas, pray you go away, Sir Thomas,

or you'll make the White Tower a black 'un for us this blessed day.

He'll be the death on us; and you'll set the Divil's Tower a-spitting,

and he'll smash all our bits o' things worse than Philip o' Spain. 

SECOND WOMAN: Don't ye now go to think that we be for Philip o' Spain. 

THIRD WOMAN: No, we know that ye be come to kill the Queen, and we'll

pray for you all on our bended knees. But o' God's mercy don't ye kill

the Queen here, Sir Thomas; look ye, here's little Dickon, and little

Robin, and little Jenny though she's but a side-cousin and all on

our knees, we pray you to kill the Queen further off, Sir Thomas. 

WYATT: My friends, I have not come to kill the Queen

Or here or there: I come to save you all,

And I'll go further off. 

CROWD: Thanks, Sir Thomas, we be beholden to you, and we'll pray for

you on our bended knees till our lives' end. 

WYATT: Be happy, I am your friend. To Kingston, forward! 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene IV. ROOM IN THE GATEHOUSE OF WESTMINSTER PALACE. 
 

MARY, ALICE, GARDINER, RENARD, LADIES. 
 

GARDINER: Their cry is, Philip never shall be king. 

MARY: Lord Pembroke in command of all our force

Will front their cry and shatter them into dust. 

ALICE: Was not Lord Pembroke with Northumberland?

O madam, if this Pembroke should be false? 

MARY: No, girl; most brave and loyal, brave and loyal.

His breaking with Northumberland broke Northumberland.

At the park gate he hovers with our guards.

These Kentish ploughmen cannot break the guards. 
 

    Enter MESSENGER 
 

MESSENGER: Wyatt, your Grace, hath broken thro' the guards

And gone to Ludgate. 

GARDINER:            Madam, I much fear

That all is lost; but we can save your Grace.

The river still is free. I do beseech you,

There yet is time, take boat and pass to Windsor. 

MARY: I pass to Windsor and I lose my crown. 

GARDINER: Pass, then, I pray your Highness, to the Tower. 

MARY: I shall but be their prisoner in the Tower. 

CRIES without. The traitor! treason! Pembroke! 

LADIES:                                          Treason! treason! 

MARY: Peace.

False to Northumberland, is he false to me?

Bear witness, Renard, that I live and die

The true and faithful bride of Philip A sound

Of feet and voices thickening hither blows

Hark, there is battle at the palace gates,

And I will out upon the gallery. 

LADIES: No, no, your Grace; see there the arrows flying. 

MARY: I am Harry's daughter, Tudor, and not fear.

                                  [Goes out on the gallery.]

The guards are all driven in, skulk into corners

Like rabbits to their holes. A gracious guard

Truly; shame on them! they have shut the gates! 
 

    Enter SIR ROBERT SOUTHWELL. 
 

SOUTHWELL: The porter, please your Grace, hath shut the gates

On friend and foe. Your gentlemen-at-arms,

If this be not your Grace's order, cry

To have the gates set wide again, and they

With their good battleaxes will do you right

Against all traitors. 

MARY: They are the flower of England; set the gates wide. 

                                          [Exit SOUTHWELL.] 
 

    Enter COURTENAY 
 

COURTENAY: All lost, all lost, all yielded! A barge, a barge!

The Queen must to the Tower. 

MARY:                        Whence come you, sir? 

COURTENAY: From Charing Cross; the rebels broke us there,

And I sped hither with what haste I might

To save my royal cousin. 

MARY:                    Where is Pembroke? 

COURTENAY: I left him somewhere in the thick of it. 

MARY: Left him and fled; and thou that would'st be King,

And hast nor heart nor honour. I myself

Will down into the battle and there bide

The upshot of my quarrel, or die with those

That are no cowards and no Courtenays. 

COURTENAY: I do not love your Grace should call me coward. 
 

    Enter another MESSENGER 
 

MESSENGER: Over, your Grace, all crush'd; the brave Lord William

Thrust him from Ludgate, and the traitor flying

To Temple Bar, there by Sir Maurice Berkeley

Was taken prisoner. 

MARY:               To the Tower with him! 

MESSENGER: 'Tis said he told Sir Maurice there was one

Cognisant of this, and party thereunto,

My Lord of Devon. 

MARY:             To the Tower with him! 

COURTENAY: O la, the Tower, the Tower, always the Tower,

I shall grow into it I shall be the Tower. 

MARY: Your Lordship may not have so long to wait. Remove him! 

COURTENAY: La, to whistle out my life,

And carve my coat upon the walls again!

                             [Exit COURTENAY guarded.] 

MESSENGER: Also this Wyatt did confess the Princess

Cognisant thereof, and party thereunto. 

MARY: What? whom whom did you say? 

MESSENGER:                          Elizabeth,

Your Royal sister. 

MARY:              To the Tower with her!

My foes are at my feet and I am Queen. 
 

[GARDINER and her LADIES kneel to her.] 
 

GARDINER: (rising).

There let them lie, your foot-stool! (Aside.) Can I strike

Elizabeth? not now and save the life

Of Devon: if I save him, he and his

Are bound to me may strike hereafter. (Aloud.) Madam,

What Wyatt said, or what they said he said,

Cries of the moment and the street  

MARY: He said it. 

GARDINER: Your courts of justice will determine that. 

RENARD: (advancing).

I trust by this your Highness will allow

Some spice of wisdom in my telling you,

When last we talk'd, that Philip would not come

Till Guildford Dudley and the Duke of Suffolk,

And Lady Jane had left us. 

MARY:                      They shall die. 

RENARD: And your so loving sister? 

MARY:                              She shall die.

My foes are at my feet, and Philip King. 

[Exeunt.] 
 
 

ACT III

  

Scene I. THE CONDUIT IN GRACECHURCH, 
 

Painted with the Nine Worthies, among them King Henry VIII. holding a

book, on it inscribed 'Verbum Dei'. 
 

Enter SIR RALPH BAGENHALL and SIR THOMAS STAFFORD. 
 

BAGENHALL: A hundred here and hundreds hang'd in Kent.

The tigress had unsheath'd her nails at last,

And Renard and the Chancellor sharpen'd them.

In every London street a gibbet stood.

They are down to-day. Here by this house was one;

The traitor husband dangled at the door,

And when the traitor wife came out for bread

To still the petty treason therewithin,

Her cap would brush his heels. 

STAFFORD:                      It is Sir Ralph,

And muttering to himself as heretofore.

Sir, see you aught up yonder? 

BAGENHALL:                    I miss something.

The tree that only bears dead fruit is gone. 

STAFFORD: What tree, sir? 

BAGENHALL:                Well, the tree in Virgil, sir,

That bears not its own apples. 

STAFFORD:                      What! the gallows? 

BAGENHALL: Sir, this dead fruit was ripening overmuch,

And had to be removed lest living Spain

Should sicken at dead England. 

STAFFORD:                      Not so dead,

But that a shock may rouse her. 

BAGENHALL:                      I believe

Sir Thomas Stafford? 

STAFFORD:            I am ill disguised. 

BAGENHALL: Well, are you not in peril here? 

STAFFORD:                                   I think so.

I came to feel the pulse of England, whether

It beats hard at this marriage. Did you see it? 

BAGENHALL: Stafford, I am a sad man and a serious.

Far liefer had I in my country hall

Been reading some old book, with mine old hound

Couch'd at my hearth, and mine old flask of wine

Beside me, than have seen it: yet I saw it. 

STAFFORD: Good, was it splendid? 

BAGENHALL:                       Ay, if Dukes, and Earls,

And Counts, and sixty Spanish cavaliers,

Some six or seven Bishops, diamonds, pearls,

That royal commonplace too, cloth of gold,

Could make it so. 

STAFFORD:         And what was Mary's dress? 

BAGENHALL: Good faith, I was too sorry for the woman

To mark the dress. She wore red shoes! 

STAFFORD:                              Red shoes! 

BAGENHALL: Scarlet, as if her feet were wash'd in blood,

As if she had waded in it. 

STAFFORD:                  Were your eyes

So bashful that you look'd no higher? 

BAGENHALL:                            A diamond,

And Philip's gift, as proof of Philip's love,

Who hath not any for any, tho' a true one,

Blazed false upon her heart. 

STAFFORD:                    But this proud Prince  

BAGENHALL: Nay, he is King, you know, the King of Naples.

The father ceded Naples, that the son

Being a King, might wed a Queen O he

Flamed in brocade white satin his trunk-hose,

Inwrought with silver, on his neck a collar,

Gold, thick with diamonds; hanging down from this

The Golden Fleece and round his knee, misplaced,

Our English Garter, studded with great emeralds,

Rubies, I know not what. Have you had enough

Of all this gear? 

STAFFORD: Ay, since you hate the telling it.

How look'd the Queen? 

BAGENHALL:            No fairer for her jewels.

And I could see that as the new-made couple

Came from the Minster, moving side by side

Beneath one canopy, ever and anon

She cast on him a vassal smile of love,

Which Philip with a glance of some distaste,

Or so methought, return'd. I may be wrong, sir.

This marriage will not hold. 

STAFFORD:                    I think with you.

The King of France will help to break it. 

BAGENHALL:                                France!

We have once had half of France, and hurl'd our battles

Into the heart of Spain; but England now

Is but a ball chuck'd between France and Spain,

His in whose hand she drops; Harry of Bolingbroke

Had holpen Richard's tottering throne to stand,

Could Harry have foreseen that all our nobles

Would perish on the civil slaughter-field,

And leave the people naked to the crown,

And the crown naked to the people; the crown

Female, too! Sir, no woman's regimen

Can save us. We are fallen, and as I think,

Never to rise again. 

STAFFORD:            You are too black-blooded.

I'd make a move myself to hinder that:

I know some lusty fellows there in France. 

BAGENHALL: You would but make us weaker, Thomas Stafford.

Wyatt was a good soldier, yet he fail'd,

And strengthen'd Philip. 

STAFFORD:                Did not his last breath

Clear Courtenay and the Princess from the charge

Of being his co-rebels? 

BAGENHALL:              Ay, but then

What such a one as Wyatt says is nothing:

We have no men among us. The new Lords

Are quieted with their sop of Abbeylands,

And ev'n before the Queen's face Gardiner buys them

With Philip's gold. All greed, no faith, no courage!

Why, ev'n the haughty prince, Northumberland,

The leader of our Reformation, knelt

And blubber'd like a lad, and on the scaffold

Recanted, and resold himself to Rome. 

STAFFORD: I swear you do your country wrong, Sir Ralph.

I know a set of exiles over there,

Dare-devils, that would eat fire and spit it out

At Philip's beard: they pillage Spain already.

The French King winks at it. An hour will come

When they will sweep her from the seas. No men?

Did not Lord Suffolk die like a true man?

Is not Lord William Howard a true man?

Yea, you yourself, altho' you are black-blooded:

And I, by God, believe myself a man.

Ay, even in the church there is a man

CRANMER:

Fly would he not, when all men bad him fly.

And what a letter he wrote against the Pope!

There's a brave man, if any. 

BAGENHALL:                   Ay; if it hold. 

CROWD: (coming on).

God save their Graces! 

STAFFORD:              Bagenhall, I see

The Tudor green and white. (Trumpets.) They are coming now.

And here's a crowd as thick as herring-shoals. 

BAGENHALL: Be limpets to this pillar, or we are torn

Down the strong wave of brawlers. 

CROWD: God save their Graces! 
 

        [Procession of Trumpeters, Javelin-men, etc.; then

        Spanish and Flemish Nobles intermingled.] 
 

STAFFORD: Worth seeing, Bagenhall! These black dog-Dons

Garb themselves bravely. Who's the long-face there,

Looks very Spain of very Spain? 

BAGENHALL:                      The Duke

Of Alva, an iron soldier. 

STAFFORD:                 And the Dutchman,

Now laughing at some jest? 

BAGENHALL:                 William of Orange,

William the Silent. 

STAFFORD:           Why do they call him so? 

BAGENHALL: He keeps, they say, some secret that may cost

Philip his life. 

STAFFORD:        But then he looks so merry. 

BAGENHALL: I cannot tell you why they call him so. 
 

    [The KING and QUEEN pass, attended by Peers of

    the Realm, Officers of State, etc. Cannon shot off.] 
 

CROWD: Philip and Mary, Philip and Mary!

Long live the King and Queen, Philip and Mary! 

STAFFORD: They smile as if content with one another. 

BAGENHALL: A smile abroad is oft a scowl at home. 
 

[KING and QUEEN pass on. Procession.] 
 

FIRST CITIZEN: I thought this Philip had been one of those black

devils of Spain, but he hath a yellow beard. 

SECOND CITIZEN: Not red like Iscariot's. 

FIRST CITIZEN: Like a carrot's, as thou say'st, and English carrot's

better than Spanish licorice; but I thought he was a beast. 

THIRD CITIZEN: Certain I had heard that every Spaniard carries a tail

like a devil under his trunk-hose. 

TAILOR: Ay, but see what trunk-hoses! Lord! they be fine; I never

stitch'd none such. They make amends for the tails. 

FOURTH CITIZEN: Tut! every Spanish priest will tell you that all

English heretics have tails. 

FIRST CITIZEN: Death and the Devil if he find I have one  

FOURTH CITIZEN: Lo! thou hast call'd them up! here they come a pale

horse for Death and Gardiner for the Devil. 
 

    Enter GARDINER (turning back from the procession). 
 

GARDINER: Knave, wilt thou wear thy cap before the Queen? 

MAN: My Lord, I stand so squeezed among the crowd

I cannot lift my hands unto my head. 

GARDINER: Knock off his cap there, some of you about him!

See there be others that can use their hands.

Thou art one of Wyatt's men? 

MAN:                         No, my Lord, no. 

GARDINER: Thy name, thou knave? 

MAN:                            I am nobody, my Lord. 

GARDINER: (shouting).

God's passion! knave, thy name? 

MAN:                            I have ears to hear. 

GARDINER: Ay, rascal, if I leave thee ears to hear.

Find out his name and bring it me (to ATTENDANT). 

ATTENDANT:                        Ay, my Lord. 

GARDINER: Knave, thou shalt lose thine ears and find thy tongue,

And shalt be thankful if I leave thee that.

                         [Coming before the Conduit.]

The conduit painted the nine worthies ay!

But then what's here? King Harry with a scroll.

Ha Verbum Dei verbum word of God!

God's passion! do you know the knave that painted it? 

ATTENDANT: I do, my Lord. 

GARDINER:                 Tell him to paint it out,

And put some fresh device in lieu of it

A pair of gloves, a pair of gloves, sir; ha?

There is no heresy there. 

ATTENDANT:                I will, my Lord;

The man shall paint a pair of gloves. I am sure

(Knowing the man) he wrought it ignorantly,

And not from any malice. 

GARDINER:                Word of God

In English! over this the brainless loons

That cannot spell Esaias from St. Paul,

Make themselves drunk and mad, fly out and flare

Into rebellions. I'll have their bibles burnt.

The bible is the priest's. Ay! fellow, what!

Stand staring at me! shout, you gaping rogue! 

MAN: I have, my Lord, shouted till I am hoarse. 

GARDINER: What hast thou shouted, knave? 

MAN:                                     Long live Queen Mary! 

GARDINER: Knave, there be two. There be both King and Queen,

Philip and Mary. Shout! 

MAN:                    Nay, but, my Lord,

The Queen comes first, Mary and Philip. 

GARDINER:                               Shout, then,

Mary and Philip! 

MAN:             Mary and Philip! 

GARDINER:                         Now,

Thou hast shouted for thy pleasure, shout for mine!

Philip and Mary! 

MAN:             Must it be so, my Lord? 

GARDINER: Ay, knave. 

MAN:                 Philip and Mary! 

GARDINER:                             I distrust thee.

Thine is a half voice and a lean assent.

What is thy name? 

MAN:              Sanders. 

GARDINER:                  What else? 

MAN:                                  Zerubbabel. 

GARDINER: Where dost thou live? 

MAN:                            In Cornhill. 

GARDINER:                                    Where, knave, where? 

MAN: Sign of the Talbot. 

GARDINER:                Come to me to-morrow.

Rascal! this land is like a hill of fire,

One crater opens when another shuts.

But so I get the laws against the heretic,

Spite of Lord Paget and Lord William Howard,

And others of our Parliament, revived,

I will show fire on my side stake and fire

Sharp work and short. The knaves are easily cow'd.

Follow their Majesties.

                           [Exit. The crowd following.] 

BAGENHALL:              As proud as Becket. 

STAFFORD: You would not have him murder'd as Becket was? 

BAGENHALL: No murder fathers murder: but I say

There is no man there was one woman with us

It was a sin to love her married, dead

I cannot choose but love her. 

STAFFORD:                     Lady Jane? 

CROWD: (going off).

God save their Graces! 

STAFFORD:              Did you see her die? 

BAGENHALL: No, no; her innocent blood had blinded me.

You call me too black-blooded true enough

Her dark dead blood is in my heart with mine.

If ever I cry out against the Pope

Her dark dead blood that ever moves with mine

Will stir the living tongue and make the cry. 

STAFFORD: Yet doubtless you can tell me how she died? 

BAGENHALL: Seventeen and knew eight languages in music

Peerless her needle perfect, and her learning

Beyond the churchmen; yet so meek, so modest,

So wife-like humble to the trivial boy

Mismatch'd with her for policy! I have heard

She would not take a last farewell of him,

She fear'd it might unman him for his end.

She could not be unmann'd no, nor outwoman'd

Seventeen a rose of grace!

Girl never breathed to rival such a rose;

Rose never blew that equall'd such a bud. 

STAFFORD:                                 Pray you go on. 

BAGENHALL: She came upon the scaffold,

And said she was condemn'd to die for treason;

She had but follow'd the device of those

Her nearest kin: she thought they knew the laws.

But for herself, she knew but little law,

And nothing of the titles to the crown;

She had no desire for that, and wrung her hands,

And trusted God would save her thro' the blood

Of Jesus Christ alone. 

STAFFORD:              Pray you go on. 

BAGENHALL: Then knelt and said the Misere Mei

But all in English, mark you; rose again,

And, when the headsman pray'd to be forgiven,

Said, 'You will give me my true crown at last,

But do it quickly;' then all wept but she,

Who changed not colour when she saw the block,

But ask'd him, childlike: 'Will you take it off

Before I lay me down?' 'No, madam,' he said,

Gasping; and when her innocent eyes were bound,

She, with her poor blind hands feeling 'where is it?

Where is it?' You must fancy that which follow'd,

If you have heart to do it! 

CROWD: (in the distance).

                            God save their Graces! 

STAFFORD: Their Graces, our disgraces! God confound them!

Why, she's grown bloodier! when I last was here,

This was against her conscience would be murder! 

BAGENHALL: The 'Thou shall do no murder,' which God's hand

Wrote on her conscience, Mary rubb'd out pale

She could not make it white and over that,

Traced in the blackest text of Hell 'Thou shall!'

And sign'd it Mary! 

STAFFORD:            Philip and the Pope

Must have sign'd too. I hear this Legate's coming

To bring us absolution from the Pope.

The Lords and Commons will bow down before him

You are of the house? what will you do, Sir Ralph? 

BAGENHALL: And why should I be bolder than the rest,

Or honester than all? 

STAFFORD:             But, sir, if I

And oversea they say this state of yours

Hath no more mortice than a tower of cards;

And that a puff would do it then if I

And others made that move I touch'd upon,

Back'd by the power of France, and landing here,

Came with a sudden splendour, shout, and show,

And dazzled men and deafen'd by some bright

Loud venture, and the people so unquiet

And I the race of murder'd Buckingham

Not for myself, but for the kingdom Sir,

I trust that you would fight along with us. 

BAGENHALL: No; you would fling your lives into the gulf. 

STAFFORD: But if this Philip, as he's like to do,

Left Mary a wife-widow here alone,

Set up a viceroy, sent his myriads hither

To seize upon the forts and fleet, and make us

A Spanish province; would you not fight then? 

BAGENHALL: I think I should fight then. 

STAFFORD:                               I am sure of it.

Hist! there's the face coming on here of one

Who knows me. I must leave you. Fare you well,

You'll hear of me again. 

BAGENHALL:               Upon the scaffold. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene II. ROOM IN WHITEHALL PALACE. 
 

MARY. Enter PHILIP and CARDINAL POLE. 
 

POLE: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Benedicta tu in mulieribus. 

MARY: Loyal and royal cousin, humblest thanks.

Had you a pleasant voyage up the river? 

POLE: We had your royal barge, and that same chair,

Or rather throne of purple, on the deck.

Our silver cross sparkled before the prow,

The ripples twinkled at their diamond-dance,

The boats that follow'd, were as glowing-gay

As regal gardens; and your flocks of swans,

As fair and white as angels; and your shores

Wore in mine eyes the green of Paradise.

My foreign friends, who dream'd us blanketed

In ever-closing fog, were much amazed

To find as fair a sun as might have flash'd

Upon their lake of Garda, fire the Thames;

Our voyage by sea was all but miracle;

And here the river flowing from the sea,

Not toward it (for they thought not of our tides),

Seem'd as a happy miracle to make glide

In quiet home your banish'd countryman. 

MARY: We heard that you were sick in Flanders, cousin. 

POLE: A dizziness. 

MARY:              And how came you round again? 

POLE: The scarlet thread of Rahab saved her life;

And mine, a little letting of the blood. 

MARY: Well? now? 

POLE:            Ay, cousin, as the heathen giant

Had but to touch the ground, his force return'd

Thus, after twenty years of banishment,

Feeling my native land beneath my foot,

I said thereto: 'Ah, native land of mine,

Thou art much beholden to this foot of mine,

That hastes with full commission from the Pope

To absolve thee from thy guilt of heresy.

Thou hast disgraced me and attainted me,

And mark'd me ev'n as Cain, and I return

As Peter, but to bless thee: make me well.'

Methinks the good land heard me, for to-day

My heart beats twenty, when I see you, cousin.

Ah, gentle cousin, since your Herod's death,

How oft hath Peter knock'd at Mary's gate!

And Mary would have risen and let him in,

But, Mary, there were those within the house

Who would not have it. 

MARY:                  True, good cousin Pole;

And there were also those without the house

Who would not have it. 

POLE:                  I believe so, cousin.

State-policy and church-policy are conjoint,

But Janus-faces looking diverse ways.

I fear the Emperor much misvalued me.

But all is well; 'twas ev'n the will of God,

Who, waiting till the time had ripen'd, now,

Makes me his mouth of holy greeting. 'Hail,

Daughter of God, and saver of the faith.

Sit benedictus fructus ventris tui!' 

MARY: Ah, heaven! 

POLE:             Unwell, your Grace? 

MARY:                                 No, cousin, happy

Happy to see you; never yet so happy

Since I was crown'd. 

POLE:                Sweet cousin, you forget

That long low minster where you gave your hand

To this great Catholic King. 

PHILIP:                      Well said, Lord Legate. 

MARY: Nay, not well said; I thought of you, my liege,

Ev'n as I spoke. 

PHILIP:          Ay, Madam; my Lord Paget

Waits to present our Council to the Legate.

Sit down here, all; Madam, between us you. 

POLE: Lo, now you are enclosed with boards of cedar,

Our little sister of the Song of Songs!

You are doubly fenced and shielded sitting here

Between the two most high-set thrones on earth,

The Emperor's highness happily symboll'd by

The King your husband, the Pope's Holiness

By mine own self. 

MARY:             True, cousin, I am happy.

When will you that we summon both our houses

To take this absolution from your lips,

And be regather'd to the Papal fold? 

POLE: In Britain's calendar the brightest day

Beheld our rough forefathers break their Gods,

And clasp the faith in Christ; but after that

Might not St. Andrew's be her happiest day? 

MARY: Then these shall meet upon St. Andrew's day. 
 

    Enter PAGET, who presents the Council. Dumb show. 
 

POLE: I am an old man wearied with my journey,

Ev'n with my joy. Permit me to withdraw.

To Lambeth? 

PHILIP:     Ay, Lambeth has ousted Cranmer.

It was not meet the heretic swine should live

In Lambeth. 

MARY:       There or anywhere, or at all. 

PHILIP: We have had it swept and garnish'd after him. 

POLE: Not for the seven devils to enter in? 

PHILIP: No, for we trust they parted in the swine. 

POLE: True, and I am the Angel of the Pope.

Farewell, your Graces. 

PHILIP:                Nay, not here to me;

I will go with you to the waterside. 

POLE: Not be my Charon to the counter side? 

PHILIP: No, my Lord Legate, the Lord Chancellor goes. 

POLE: And unto no dead world; but Lambeth palace,

Henceforth a centre of the living faith. 

                        [Exeunt PHILIP, POLE, PAGET, etc.] 
 

    Manet MARY 
 

MARY: He hath awaked! he hath awaked!

He stirs within the darkness!

Oh, Philip, husband! now thy love to mine

Will cling more close, and those bleak manners thaw,

That make me shamed and tongue-tied in my love.

The second Prince of Peace

The great unborn defender of the Faith,

Who will avenge me of mine enemies

He comes, and my star rises.

The stormy Wyatts and Northumberlands,

The proud ambitions of Elizabeth,

And all her fieriest partisans are pale

Before my star!

The light of this new learning wanes and dies:

The ghosts of Luther and Zuinglius fade

Into the deathless hell which is their doom

Before my star!

His sceptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind!

His sword shall hew the heretic peoples down!

His faith shall clothe the world that will be his,

Like universal air and sunshine! Open,

Ye everlasting gates! The King is here!

My star, my son! 

    Enter PHILIP, DUKE OF ALVA, etc. 

                 Oh, Philip, come with me;

Good news have I to tell you, news to make

Both of us happy ay, the Kingdom too.

Nay come with me one moment! 

PHILIP: (to ALVA).           More than that:

There was one here of late William the Silent

They call him he is free enough in talk,

But tells me nothing. You will be, we trust,

Sometime the viceroy of those provinces

He must deserve his surname better. 

ALVA:                               Ay, sir;

Inherit the Great Silence. 

PHILIP:                    True; the provinces

Are hard to rule and must be hardly ruled;

Most fruitful, yet, indeed, an empty rind,

All hollow'd out with stinging heresies;

And for their heresies, Alva, they will fight;

You must break them or they break you. 

ALVA: (proudly).                      The First. 

PHILIP: Good!

Well, Madam, this new happiness of mine? 

                                    [Exeunt.] 
 

    Enter THREE PAGES. 
 

FIRST PAGE: News, mates! a miracle, a miracle! news!

The bells must ring; Te Deums must be sung;

The Queen hath felt the motion of her babe! 

SECOND PAGE: Ay; but see here! 

FIRST PAGE:                    See what? 

SECOND PAGE:                             This paper, Dickon.

I found it fluttering at the palace gates:

'The Queen of England is delivered of a dead dog!' 

THIRD PAGE: These are the things that madden her. Fie upon it! 

FIRST PAGE: Ay; but I hear she hath a dropsy, lad,

Or a high-dropsy, as the doctors call it. 

THIRD PAGE: Fie on her dropsy, so she have a dropsy!

I know that she was ever sweet to me. 

FIRST PAGE: For thou and thine are Roman to the core. 

THIRD PAGE: So thou and thine must be. Take heed! 

FIRST PAGE:                                       Not I,

And whether this flash of news be false or true,

So the wine run, and there be revelry,

Content am I. Let all the steeples clash,

Till the sun dance, as upon Easter Day. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene III. GREAT HALL IN WHITEHALL. 
 

At the far end a dais. On this three chairs, two under one canopy

for MARY and PHILIP, another on the right of these for POLE.

Under the dais on POLE'S side, ranged along the wall, sit all the

Spiritual Peers, and along the wall opposite, all the Temporal. The

Commons on cross benches in front, a line of approach to the dais

between them. In the foreground, SIR RALPH BAGENHALL and other

Members of the Commons. 
 

FIRST MEMBER: St. Andrew's day; sit close, sit close, we are friends.

Is reconciled the word? the Pope again?

It must be thus; and yet, cocksbody! how strange

That Gardiner, once so one with all of us

Against this foreign marriage, should have yielded

So utterly! strange! but stranger still that he,

So fierce against the Headship of the Pope,

Should play the second actor in this pageant

That brings him in; such a cameleon he! 

SECOND MEMBER: This Gardiner turn'd his coat in Henry's time;

The serpent that hath slough'd will slough again. 

THIRD MEMBER: Tut, then we all are serpents. 

SECOND MEMBER: Speak for yourself. 

THIRD MEMBER: Ay, and for Gardiner! being English citizen,

How should he bear a bridegroom out of Spain?

The Queen would have him! being English churchman

How should he bear the headship of the Pope?

The Queen would have it! Statesmen that are wise

Shape a necessity, as a sculptor clay,

To their own model. 

SECOND MEMBER: Statesmen that are wise

Take truth herself for model. What say you?

                          [To SIR RALPH BAGENHALL] 

BAGENHALL: We talk and talk. 

FIRST MEMBER: Ay, and what use to talk?

Philip's no sudden alien the Queen's husband,

He's here, and king, or will be yet cocksbody!

So hated here! I watch'd a hive of late;

My seven-years' friend was with me, my young boy;

Out crept a wasp, with half the swarm behind.

'Philip!' says he. I had to cuff the rogue

For infant treason. 

THIRD MEMBER:       But they say that bees,

If any creeping life invade their hive

Too gross to be thrust out, will build him round,

And bind him in from harming of their combs.

And Philip by these articles is bound

From stirring hand or foot to wrong the realm. 

SECOND MEMBER: By bonds of beeswax, like your creeping thing;

But your wise bees had stung him first to death. 

THIRD MEMBER: Hush, hush!

You wrong the Chancellor: the clauses added

To that same treaty which the emperor sent us

Were mainly Gardiner's: that no foreigner

Hold office in the household, fleet, forts, army;

That if the Queen should die without a child,

The bond between the kingdoms be dissolved;

That Philip should not mix us any way

With his French wars  

SECOND MEMBER: Ay, ay, but what security,

Good sir, for this, if Philip   

THIRD MEMBER: Peace the Queen, Philip, and Pole.

                                   [All rise, and stand.] 
 

    Enter MARY, PHILIP, and POLE 
 

    [GARDINER conducts them to the three chairs of state.

    PHILIP sits on the QUEEN'S left, POLE on her right.] 
 

GARDINER: Our short-lived sun, before his winter plunge,

Laughs at the last red leaf, and Andrew's Day. 

MARY: Should not this day be held in after years

More solemn than of old? 

PHILIP:                  Madam, my wish

Echoes your Majesty's. 

POLE:                  It shall be so. 

GARDINER: Mine echoes both your Graces'; (aside) but the Pope

Can we not have the Catholic church as well

Without as with the Italian? if we cannot,

Why then the Pope.

                   My lords of the upper house,

And ye, my masters, of the lower house,

Do ye stand fast by that which ye resolved? 

VOICES: We do. 

GARDINER: And be you all one mind to supplicate

The Legate here for pardon, and acknowledge

The primacy of the Pope? 

VOICES:                  We are all one mind. 

GARDINER: Then must I play the vassal to this Pole.   [Aside.] 

    [He draws a paper from under his robes and

    presents it to the KING and QUEEN, who look

    through it and return it to him; then ascends

    a tribune, and reads.] 

We, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,

And Commons here in Parliament assembled,

Presenting the whole body of this realm

Of England, and dominions of the same,

Do make most humble suit unto your Majesties,

In our own name and that of all the state,

That by your gracious means and intercession

Our supplication be exhibited

To the Lord Cardinal Pole, sent here as Legate

From our most Holy Father Julius, Pope,

And from the Apostolic see of Rome;

And do declare our penitence and grief

For our long schism and disobedience,

Either in making laws and ordinances

Against the Holy Father's primacy,

Or else by doing or by speaking aught

Which might impugn or prejudice the same;

By this our supplication promising,

As well for our own selves as all the realm,

That now we be and ever shall be quick,

Under and with your Majesties' authorities,

To do to the utmost all that in us lies

Towards the abrogation and repeal

Of all such laws and ordinances made;

Whereon we humbly pray your Majesties,

As persons undefiled with our offence,

So to set forth this humble suit of ours

That we the rather by your intercession

May from the Apostolic see obtain,

Thro' this most reverend Father, absolution,

And full release from danger of all censures

Of Holy Church that we be fall'n into,

So that we may, as children penitent,

Be once again received into the bosom

And unity of Universal Church;

And that this noble realm thro' after years

May in this unity and obedience

Unto the holy see and reigning Pope

Serve God and both your Majesties. 

VOICES: Amen.

                 [All sit.] 
 

    [He again presents the petition to the KING and

    QUEEN, who hand it reverentially to POLE] 
 

POLE: (sitting). This is the loveliest day that ever smiled

On England. All her breath should, incenselike,

Rise to the heavens in grateful praise of Him

Who now recalls her to His ancient fold.

Lo! once again God to this realm hath given

A token of His more especial Grace;

For as this people were the first of all

The islands call'd into the dawning church

Out of the dead, deep night of heathendom,

So now are these the first whom God hath given

Grace to repent and sorrow for their schism;

And if your penitence be not mockery,

Oh how the blessed angels who rejoice

Over one saved do triumph at this hour

In the reborn salvation of a land

So noble.    [A pause.]

          For ourselves we do protest

That our commission is to heal, not harm;

We come not to condemn, but reconcile;

We come not to compel, but call again;

We come not to destroy, but edify;

Nor yet to question things already done;

These are forgiven matters of the past

And range with jetsam and with offal thrown

Into the blind sea of forgetfulness.    [A pause.

Ye have reversed the attainder laid on us

By him who sack'd the house of God; and we,

Amplier than any field on our poor earth

Can render thanks in fruit for being sown,

Do here and now repay you sixty-fold,

A hundred, yea, a thousand thousand-fold,

With heaven for earth. 

    [Rising and stretching forth his hands. All kneel but

   SIR RALPH BAGENHALL, who rises and remains standing.] 

                       The Lord who hath redeem'd us

With His own blood, and wash'd us from our sins,

To purchase for Himself a stainless bride;

He, whom the Father hath appointed Head

Of all his church, He by His mercy absolve you!    [A pause.]

And we by that authority Apostolic,

Given unto us, his Legate, by the Pope,

Our Lord and Holy Father, Julius,

God's Vicar and Vicegerent upon earth,

Do here absolve you and deliver you

And every one of you, and all the realm

And its dominions from all heresy,

All schism, and from all and every censure,

Judgment, and pain accruing thereupon;

And also we restore you to the bosom

And unity of Universal Church.

                         [Turning to GARDINER]

Our letters of commission will declare this plainlier. 
 

    [QUEEN heard sobbing. Cries of Amen! Amen! Some of the

    Members embrace one another. All but SIR RALPH BAGENHALL

    pass out into the neighboring chapel, whence is heard

    the Te Deum.] 
 

BAGENHALL: We strove against the papacy from the first,

In William's time, in our first Edward's time,

And in my master Henry's time; but now,

The unity of Universal Church,

Mary would have it; and this Gardiner follows;

The unity of Universal Hell,

Philip would have it; and this Gardiner follows!

A Parliament of imitative apes!

Sheep at the gap which Gardiner takes, who not

Believes the Pope, nor any of them believe

These spaniel-Spaniard English of the time,

Who rub their fawning noses in the dust,

For that is Philip's gold-dust, and adore

This Vicar of their Vicar. Would I had been

Born Spaniard! I had held my head up then.

I am ashamed that I am Bagenhall,

English. 
 

    Enter OFFICER. 
 

OFFICER: Sir Ralph Bagenhall! 

BAGENHALL:                    What of that? 

OFFICER: You were the one sole man in either house

Who stood upright when both the houses fell. 

BAGENHALL: The houses fell! 

OFFICER:                     I mean the houses knelt

Before the Legate. 

BAGENHALL:         Do not scrimp your phrase,

But stretch it wider; say when England fell. 

OFFICER: I say you were the one sole man who stood. 

BAGENHALL: I am the one sole man in either house,

Perchance in England, loves her like a son. 

OFFICER: Well, you one man, because you stood upright,

Her Grace the Queen commands you to the Tower. 

BAGENHALL: As traitor, or as heretic, or for what? 

OFFICER: If any man in any way would be

The one man, he shall be so to his cost. 

BAGENHALL: What! will she have my head? 

OFFICER:                                 A round fine likelier.

Your pardon.    [Calling to ATTENDANT.]

             By the river to the Tower. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene IV. WHITEHALL. A ROOM IN THE PALACE.

MARY, GARDINER, POLE, PAGET, BONNER, etc. 
 

MARY: The King and I, my Lords, now that all traitors

Against our royal state have lost the heads

Wherewith they plotted in their treasonous malice,

Have talk'd together, and are well agreed

That those old statutes touching Lollardism

To bring the heretic to the stake, should be

No longer a dead letter, but requicken'd. 

ONE OF THE COUNCIL: Why, what hath fluster'd Gardiner? how he rubs

His forelock! 

PAGET:        I have changed a word with him

In coming, and may change a word again. 

GARDINER: Madam, your Highness is our sun, the King

And you together our two suns in one;

And so the beams of both may shine upon us,

The faith that seem'd to droop will feel your light,

Lift head, and flourish; yet not light alone,

There must be heat there must be heat enough

To scorch and wither heresy to the root.

For what saith Christ? 'Compel them to come in.'

And what saith Paul? 'I would they were cut off

That trouble you.' Let the dead letter live!

Trace it in fire, that all the louts to whom

Their A B C is darkness, clowns and grooms

May read it! so you quash rebellion too,

For heretic and traitor are all one:

Two vipers of one breed an amphisbaena,

Each end a sting: Let the dead letter burn! 

PAGET: Yet there be some disloyal Catholics,

And many heretics loyal; heretic throats

Cried no God-bless-her to the Lady Jane,

But shouted in Queen Mary. So there be

Some traitor-heretic, there is axe and cord.

To take the lives of others that are loyal,

And by the churchman's pitiless doom of fire,

Were but a thankless policy in the crown,

Ay, and against itself; for there are many. 

MARY: If we could burn out heresy, my Lord Paget,

We reck not tho' we lost this crown of England

Ay! tho' it were ten Englands! 

GARDINER:                      Right, your Grace.

Paget, you are all for this poor life of ours,

And care but little for the life to be. 

PAGET: I have some time, for curiousness, my Lord

Watch'd children playing at their life to be,

And cruel at it, killing helpless flies;

Such is our time all times for aught I know. 

GARDINER: We kill the heretics that sting the soul

They, with right reason, flies that prick the flesh. 

PAGET: They had not reach'd right reason; little children!

They kill'd but for their pleasure and the power

They felt in killing. 

GARDINER:            A spice of Satan, ha!

Why, good! what then? granted! we are fallen creatures;

Look to your Bible, Paget! we are fallen. 

PAGET: I am but of the laity, my Lord Bishop,

And may not read your Bible, yet I found

One day, a wholesome scripture, 'Little children,

Love one another.' 

GARDINER:          Did you find a scripture,

'I come not to bring peace but a sword'? The sword

Is in her Grace's hand to smite with. Paget,

You stand up here to fight for heresy,

You are more than guess'd at as a heretic,

And on the steep-up track of the true faith

Your lapses are far seen. 

PAGET:                    The faultless Gardiner! 

MARY: You brawl beyond the question; speak, Lord Legate! 

POLE: Indeed, I cannot follow with your Grace:

Rather would say the shepherd doth not kill

The sheep that wander from his flock, but sends

His careful dog to bring them to the fold.

Look to the Netherlands, wherein have been

Such holocausts of heresy! to what end?

For yet the faith is not established there. 

GARDINER: The end's not come. 

POLE: No nor this way will come,

Seeing there lie two ways to every end,

A better and a worse the worse is here

To persecute, because to persecute

Makes a faith hated, and is furthermore

No perfect witness of a perfect faith

In him who persecutes: when men are tost

On tides of strange opinion, and not sure

Of their own selves, they are wroth with their own selves,

And thence with others; then, who lights the faggot?

Not the full faith, no, but the lurking doubt.

Old Rome, that first made martyrs in the Church,

Trembled for her own gods, for these were trembling

But when did our Rome tremble? 

PAGET:                         Did she not

In Henry's time and Edward's? 

POLE:                         What, my Lord!

The Church on Peter's rock? never! I have seen

A pine in Italy that cast its shadow

Athwart a cataract; firm stood the pine

The cataract shook the shadow. To my mind,

The cataract typed the headlong plunge and fall

Of heresy to the pit: the pine was Rome.

You see, my Lords,

It was the shadow of the Church that trembled;

Your church was but the shadow of a church,

Wanting the Papal mitre. 

GARDINER: (muttering).  Here be tropes. 

POLE: And tropes are good to clothe a naked truth,

And make it look more seemly. 

GARDINER:                     Tropes again! 

POLE: You are hard to please. Then without tropes, my Lord,

An overmuch severeness, I repeat,

When faith is wavering makes the waverer pass

Into more settled hatred of the doctrines

Of those who rule, which hatred by and by

Involves the ruler (thus there springs to light

That Centaur of a monstrous Commonweal,

The traitor-heretic) then tho' some may quail,

Yet others are that dare the stake and fire,

And their strong torment bravely borne, begets

An admiration and an indignation,

And hot desire to imitate; so the plague

Of schism spreads; were there but three or four

Of these misleaders, yet I would not say

Burn! and we cannot burn whole towns; they are many,

As my Lord Paget says. 

GARDINER:              Yet my Lord Cardinal  

POLE: I am your Legate; please you let me finish.

Methinks that under our Queen's regimen

We might go softlier than with crimson rowel

And streaming lash. When Herod-Henry first

Began to batter at your English Church,

This was the cause, and hence the judgment on her.

She seethed with such adulteries, and the lives

Of many among your churchmen were so foul

That heaven wept and earth blush'd. I would advise

That we should thoroughly cleanse the Church within

Before these bitter statutes be requicken'd.

So after that when she once more is seen

White as the light, the spotless bride of Christ,

Like Christ himself on Tabor, possibly

The Lutheran may be won to her again;

Till when, my Lords, I counsel tolerance. 

GARDINER: What, if a mad dog bit your hand, my Lord,

Would you not chop the bitten finger off,

Lest your whole body should madden with the poison?

I would not, were I Queen, tolerate the heretic,

No, not an hour. The ruler of a land

Is bounden by his power and place to see

His people be not poison'd. Tolerate them!

Why? do they tolerate you? Nay, many of them

Would burn have burnt each other; call they not

The one true faith, a loathsome idol-worship?

Beware, Lord Legate, of a heavier crime

Than heresy is itself; beware, I say,

Lest men accuse you of indifference

To all faiths, all religion; for you know

Right well that you yourself have been supposed

Tainted with Lutheranism in Italy. 

POLE: (angered). But you, my Lord, beyond all supposition,

In clear and open day were congruent

With that vile Cranmer in the accursed lie

Of good Queen Catherine's divorce the spring

Of all those evils that have flow'd upon us;

For you yourself have truckled to the tyrant,

And done your best to bastardise our Queen,

For which God's righteous judgment fell upon you

In your five years of imprisonment, my Lord,

Under young Edward. Who so bolster'd up

The gross King's headship of the Church, or more

Denied the Holy Father! 

GARDINER:               Ha! what! eh?

But you, my Lord, a polish'd gentleman,

A bookman, flying from the heat and tussle,

You lived among your vines and oranges,

In your soft Italy yonder! You were sent for.

You were appeal'd to, but you still preferr'd

Your learned leisure. As for what I did

I suffer'd and repented. You, Lord Legate

And Cardinal-Deacon, have not now to learn

That ev'n St. Peter in his time of fear

Denied his Master, ay, and thrice, my Lord. 

POLE: But not for five-and-twenty years, my Lord. 

GARDINER: Ha! good! it seems then I was summon'd hither

But to be mock'd and baited. Speak, friend Bonner,

And tell this learned Legate he lacks zeal.

The Church's evil is not as the King's,

Cannot be heal'd by stroking. The mad bite

Must have the cautery tell him and at once.

What would'st thou do hadst thou his power, thou

That layest so long in heretic bonds with me;

Would'st thou not burn and blast them root and branch? 

BONNER: Ay, after you, my Lord. 

GARDINER:                       Nay, God's passion, before me! speak' 

BONNER: I am on fire until I see them flame. 

GARDINER: Ay, the psalm-singing weavers, cobblers, scum

But this most noble prince Plantagenet,

Our good Queen's cousin dallying over seas

Even when his brother's, nay, his noble mother's,

Head fell  

POLE:      Peace, madman!

Thou stirrest up a grief thou canst not fathom.

Thou Christian Bishop, thou Lord Chancellor

Of England! no more rein upon thine anger

Than any child! Thou mak'st me much ashamed

That I was for a moment wroth at thee. 

MARY: I come for counsel and ye give me feuds,

Like dogs that set to watch their master's gate,

Fall, when the thief is ev'n within the walls,

To worrying one another. My Lord Chancellor,

You have an old trick of offending us;

And but that you are art and part with us

In purging heresy, well we might, for this

Your violence and much roughness to the Legate,

Have shut you from our counsels. Cousin Pole,

You are fresh from brighter lands. Retire with me.

His Highness and myself (so you allow us)

Will let you learn in peace and privacy

What power this cooler sun of England hath

In breeding godless vermin. And pray Heaven

That you may see according to our sight.

Come, cousin.

               

 

[Exeunt QUEEN and POLE, etc.] 
 

GARDINER: Pole has the Plantagenet face,

But not the force made them our mightiest kings.

Fine eyes but melancholy, irresolute

A fine beard, Bonner, a very full fine beard.

But a weak mouth, an indeterminate ha? 

BONNER: Well, a weak mouth, perchance. 

GARDINER:                              And not like thine

To gorge a heretic whole, roasted or raw. 

BONNER: I'd do my best, my Lord; but yet the Legate

Is here as Pope and Master of the Church,

And if he go not with you  

GARDINER:                  Tut, Master Bishop,

Our bashful Legate, saw'st not how he flush'd?

Touch him upon his old heretical talk,

He'll burn a diocese to prove his orthodoxy.

And let him call me truckler. In those times,

Thou knowest we had to dodge, or duck, or die;

I kept my head for use of Holy Church;

And see you, we shall have to dodge again,

And let the Pope trample our rights, and plunge

His foreign fist into our island Church

To plump the leaner pouch of Italy.

For a time, for a time.

Why? that these statutes may be put in force,

And that his fan may thoroughly purge his floor. 

BONNER: So then you hold the Pope  

GARDINER:                          I hold the Pope!

What do I hold him? what do I hold the Pope?

Come, come, the morsel stuck this Cardinal's fault

I have gulpt it down. I am wholly for the Pope,

Utterly and altogether for the Pope,

The Eternal Peter of the changeless chair,

Crown'd slave of slaves, and mitred king of kings,

God upon earth! what more? what would you have?

Hence, let's be gone. 

   

Enter USHER 
 

USHER:                Well that you be not gone,

My Lord. The Queen, most wroth at first with you,

Is now content to grant you full forgiveness,

So that you crave full pardon of the Legate.

I am sent to fetch you. 

GARDINER:               Doth Pole yield, sir, ha!

Did you hear 'em? were you by? 

USHER:                         I cannot tell you,

His bearing is so courtly-delicate;

And yet methinks he falters: their two Graces

Do so dear-cousin and royal-cousin him,

So press on him the duty which as Legate

He owes himself, and with such royal smiles  

GARDINER: Smiles that burn men. Bonner, it will be carried.

He falters, ha? 'fore God, we change and change;

Men now are bow'd and old, the doctors tell you,

At three-score years; then if we change at all

We needs must do it quickly; it is an age

Of brief life, and brief purpose, and brief patience,

As I have shown to-day. I am sorry for it

If Pole be like to turn. Our old friend Cranmer,

Your more especial love, hath turn'd so often,

He knows not where he stands, which, if this pass,

We two shall have to teach him; let 'em look to it,

Cranmer and Hooper, Ridley and Latimer,

Rogers and Ferrar, for their time is come,

Their hour is hard at hand, their 'dies Irae'

Their 'dies Illa,' which will test their sect.

I feel it but a duty you will find in it

Pleasure as well as duty, worthy Bonner,

To test their sect. Sir, I attend the Queen

To crave most humble pardon of her most

Royal, Infallible, Papal Legate-cousin. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene V. WOODSTOCK. 
 

ELIZABETH, LADY IN WAITING. 
 

ELIZABETH: So they have sent poor Courtenay over sea. 

LADY: And banish'd us to Woodstock, and the fields.

The colours of our Queen are green and white,

These fields are only green, they make me gape. 

ELIZABETH: There's whitethorn, girl. 

LADY: Ay, for an hour in May.

But court is always May, buds out in masques,

Breaks into feather'd merriments, and flowers

In silken pageants. Why do they keep us here?

Why still suspect your Grace? 

ELIZABETH:                    Hard upon both.

    [Writes on the window with a diamond.] 

    Much suspected, of me

    Nothing proven can be.

          Quoth Elizabeth, prisoner. 

LADY: What hath your Highness written? 

ELIZABETH:                             A true rhyme. 

LADY: Cut with a diamond; so to last like truth. 

ELIZABETH: Ay, if truth last. 

LADY:                         But truth, they say, will out,

So it must last. It is not like a word,

That comes and goes in uttering. 

ELIZABETH:                       Truth, a word!

The very Truth and very Word are one.

But truth of story, which I glanced at, girl,

Is like a word that comes from olden days,

And passes thro' the peoples: every tongue

Alters it passing, till it spells and speaks

Quite other than at first. 

LADY:                      I do not follow. 

ELIZABETH: How many names in the long sweep of time

That so foreshortens greatness, may but hang

On the chance mention of some fool that once

Brake bread with us, perhaps: and my poor chronicle

Is but of glass. Sir Henry Bedingfield

May split it for a spite. 

LADY:                     God grant it last,

And witness to your Grace's innocence,

Till doomsday melt it. 

ELIZABETH:             Or a second fire,

Like that which lately crackled underfoot

And in this very chamber, fuse the glass,

And char us back again into the dust

We spring from. Never peacock against rain

Scream'd as you did for water. 

LADY:                          And I got it.

I woke Sir Henry and he's true to you

I read his honest horror in his eyes. 

ELIZABETH: Or true to you? 

LADY:                      Sir Henry Bedingfield!

I will have no man true to me, your Grace,

But one that pares his nails; to me? the clown! 

ELIZABETH: Out, girl! you wrong a noble gentleman. 

LADY: For, like his cloak, his manners want the nap

And gloss of court; but of this fire he says.

Nay swears, it was no wicked wilfulness,

Only a natural chance. 

ELIZABETH:             A chance perchance

One of those wicked wilfuls that men make,

Nor shame to call it nature. Nay, I know

They hunt my blood. Save for my daily range

Among the pleasant fields of Holy Writ

I might despair. But there hath some one come;

The house is all in movement. Hence, and see. 
 

[Exit LADY] 
 

MILKMAID: (singing without). 

    Shame upon you, Robin,

        Shame upon you now!

    Kiss me would you? with my hands

        Milking the cow?

        Daisies grow again,

        Kingcups blow again,

    And you came and kiss'd me milking the cow. 

    Robin came behind me,

        Kiss'd me well I vow;

    Cuff him could I? with my hands

        Milking the cow?

        Swallows fly again,

        Cuckoos cry again,

    And you came and kiss'd me milking the cow. 

    Come, Robin, Robin,

        Come and kiss me now;

    Help it can I? with my hands

        Milking the cow?

        Ringdoves coo again,

        All things woo again.

    Come behind and kiss me milking the cow! 

ELIZABETH: Right honest and red-cheek'd; Robin was violent,

And she was crafty a sweet violence,

And a sweet craft. I would I were a milkmaid,

To sing, love, marry, churn, brew, bake, and die,

Then have my simple headstone by the church,

And all things lived and ended honestly.

I could not if I would. I am Harry's daughter:

Gardiner would have my head. They are not sweet,

The violence and the craft that do divide

The world of nature; what is weak must lie;

The lion needs but roar to guard his young;

The lapwing lies, says 'here' when they are there.

Threaten the child; 'I'll scourge you if you did it:'

What weapon hath the child, save his soft tongue,

To say 'I did not?' and my rod's the block.

I never lay my head upon the pillow

But that I think, 'Wilt thou lie there to-morrow?'

How oft the falling axe, that never fell,

Hath shock'd me back into the daylight truth

That it may fall to-day! Those damp, black, dead

Nights in the Tower; dead with the fear of death

Too dead ev'n for a death-watch! Toll of a bell,

Stroke of a clock, the scurrying of a rat

Affrighted me, and then delighted me,

For there was life And there was life in death

The little murder'd princes, in a pale light,

Rose hand in hand, and whisper'd, 'come away!

The civil wars are gone for evermore:

Thou last of all the Tudors, come away!

With us is peace!' The last? It was a dream;

I must not dream, not wink, but watch. She has gone,

Maid Marian to her Robin by and by

Both happy! a fox may filch a hen by night,

And make a morning outcry in the yard;

But there's no Renard here to 'catch her tripping.'

Catch me who can; yet, sometime I have wish'd

That I were caught, and kill'd away at once

Out of the flutter. The gray rogue, Gardiner,

Went on his knees, and pray'd me to confess

In Wyatt's business, and to cast myself

Upon the good Queen's mercy; ay, when, my Lord?

God save the Queen! My jailor  
 

    Enter SIR HENRY BEDINGFIELD 
 

BEDINGFIELD: One, whose bolts,

That jail you from free life, bar you from death.

There haunt some Papist ruffians hereabout

Would murder you. 

ELIZABETH:        I thank you heartily, sir,

But I am royal, tho' your prisoner,

And God hath blest or cursed me with a nose

Your boots are from the horses. 

BEDINGFIELD:                    Ay, my Lady.

When next there comes a missive from the Queen

It shall be all my study for one hour

To rose and lavender my horsiness,

Before I dare to glance upon your Grace. 

ELIZABETH: A missive from the Queen: last time she wrote,

I had like to have lost my life: it takes my breath:

O God, sir, do you look upon your boots,

Are you so small a man? Help me: what think you,

Is it life or death. 

BEDINGFIELD:         I thought not on my boots;

The devil take all boots were ever made

Since man went barefoot. See, I lay it here,

For I will come no nearer to your Grace; 

    [Laying down the letter.] 

And, whether it bring you bitter news or sweet,

And God hath given your Grace a nose, or not,

I'll help you, if I may. 

ELIZABETH:               Your pardon, then;

It is the heat and narrowness of the cage

That makes the captive testy; with free wing

The world were all one Araby. Leave me now,

Will you, companion to myself, sir? 

BEDINGFIELD:                        Will I?

With most exceeding willingness, I will;

You know I never come till I be call'd.

                                    [Exit.] 

ELIZABETH: It lies there folded: is there venom in it?

A snake and if I touch it, it may sting.

Come, come, the worst!

Best wisdom is to know the worst at once.    [Reads:] 

'It is the King's wish, that you should wed Prince Philibert of Savoy.

You are to come to Court on the instant; and think of this in your

coming.    'MARY THE QUEEN.' 

Think I have many thoughts;

I think there may be birdlime here for me;

I think they fain would have me from the realm;

I think the Queen may never bear a child;

I think that I may be some time the Queen,

Then, Queen indeed: no foreign prince or priest

Should fill my throne, myself upon the steps.

I think I will not marry anyone,

Specially not this landless Philibert

Of Savoy; but, if Philip menace me,

I think that I will play with Philibert,

As once the Holy Father did with mine,

Before my father married my good mother,

For fear of Spain. 
 

    Enter LADY. 
 

LADY:             O Lord! your Grace, your Grace,

I feel so happy: it seems that we shall fly

These bald, blank fields, and dance into the sun

That shines on princes. 

ELIZABETH:              Yet, a moment since,

I wish'd myself the milkmaid singing here,

To kiss and cuff among the birds and flowers

A right rough life and healthful. 

LADY:                             But the wench

Hath her own troubles; she is weeping now;

For the wrong Robin took her at her word.

Then the cow kick'd, and all her milk was spilt.

Your Highness such a milkmaid? 

ELIZABETH:                     I had kept

My Robins and my cows in sweeter order

Had I been such. 

LADY: (slyly).  And had your Grace a Robin? 

ELIZABETH: Come, come, you are chill here; you want the sun

That shines at court; make ready for the journey.

Pray God, we 'scape the sunstroke. Ready at once. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene VI. LONDON. A ROOM IN THE PALACE. 
 

LORD PETRE and LORD WILLIAM HOWARD. 
 

PETRE: You cannot see the Queen. Renard denied her,

Ev'n now to me. 

HOWARD:         Their Flemish go-between

And all-in-all. I came to thank her Majesty

For freeing my friend Bagenhall from the Tower;

A grace to me! Mercy, that herb-of-grace,

Flowers now but seldom. 

PETRE:                  Only now perhaps.

Because the Queen hath been three days in tears

For Philip's going like the wild hedge-rose

Of a soft winter, possible, not probable,

However you have prov'n it. 

HOWARD:                     I must see her. 
 

    Enter RENARD 
 

RENARD: My Lords, you cannot see her Majesty. 

HOWARD: Why then the King! for I would have him bring it

Home to the leisure wisdom of his Queen,

Before he go, that since these statutes past,

Gardiner out-Gardiners Gardiner in his heat,

Bonner cannot out-Bonner his own self

Beast! but they play with fire as children do,

And burn the house. I know that these are breeding

A fierce resolve and fixt heart-hate in men

Against the King, the Queen, the Holy Father,

The faith itself. Can I not see him? 

RENARD:                              Not now.

And in all this, my Lord, her Majesty

Is flint of flint, you may strike fire from her,

Not hope to melt her. I will give your message. 

                          [Exeunt PETRE and HOWARD] 

    Enter PHILIP (musing) 

PHILIP: She will not have Prince Philibert of Savoy,

I talk'd with her in vain says she will live

And die true maid a goodly creature too.

Would she had been the Queen! yet she must have him;

She troubles England: that she breathes in England

Is life and lungs to every rebel birth

That passes out of embryo.

                           Simon Renard!

This Howard, whom they fear, what was he saying? 

RENARD: What your imperial father said, my liege,

To deal with heresy gentlier. Gardiner burns,

And Bonner burns; and it would seem this people

Care more for our brief life in their wet land,

Than yours in happier Spain. I told my Lord

He should not vex her Highness; she would say

These are the means God works with, that His church

May flourish. 

PHILIP:       Ay, sir, but in statesmanship

To strike too soon is oft to miss the blow.

Thou knowest I bad my chaplain, Castro, preach

Against these burnings. 

RENARD:                 And the Emperor

Approved you, and when last he wrote, declared

His comfort in your Grace that you were bland

And affable to men of all estates,

In hope to charm them from their hate of Spain. 

PHILIP: In hope to crush all heresy under Spain.

But, Renard, I am sicker staying here

Than any sea could make me passing hence,

Tho' I be ever deadly sick at sea.

So sick am I with biding for this child.

Is it the fashion in this clime for women

To go twelve months in bearing of a child?

The nurses yawn'd, the cradle gaped, they led

Processions, chanted litanies, clash'd their bells,

Shot off their lying cannon, and her priests

Have preach'd, the fools, of this fair prince to come;

Till, by St. James, I find myself the fool.

Why do you lift your eyebrow at me thus? 

RENARD: I never saw your Highness moved till now. 

PHILIP: So weary am I of this wet land of theirs,

And every soul of man that breathes therein. 

RENARD: My liege, we must not drop the mask before

The masquerade is over  

PHILIP:                 Have I dropt it?

I have but shown a loathing face to you,

Who knew it from the first. 
 

    Enter MARY 
 

MARY: (aside).             With Renard. Still

Parleying with Renard, all the day with Renard,

And scarce a greeting all the day for me

And goes to-morrow.

                       [Exit MARY] 

PHILIP: (to RENARD, who advances to him).

                    Well, sir, is there more? 

RENARD: (who has perceived the QUEEN).

May Simon Renard speak a single word? 

PHILIP: Ay. 

RENARD:     And be forgiven for it? 

PHILIP:                             Simon Renard

Knows me too well to speak a single word

That could not be forgiven. 

RENARD:                     Well, my liege,

Your Grace hath a most chaste and loving wife. 

PHILIP: Why not? The Queen of Philip should be chaste. 

RENARD: Ay, but, my Lord, you know what Virgil sings,

Woman is various and most mutable. 

PHILIP: She play the harlot! never. 

RENARD:                             No, sire, no,

Not dream'd of by the rabidest gospeller.

There was a paper thrown into the palace,

'The King hath wearied of his barren bride.'

She came upon it, read it, and then rent it,

With all the rage of one who hates a truth

He cannot but allow. Sire, I would have you

What should I say, I cannot pick my words

Be somewhat less majestic to your Queen. 

PHILIP: Am I to change my manners, Simon Renard,

Because these islanders are brutal beasts?

Or would you have me turn a sonneteer,

And warble those brief-sighted eyes of hers? 

RENARD: Brief-sighted tho' they be, I have seen them, sire,

When you perchance were trifling royally

With some fair dame of court, suddenly fill

With such fierce fire had it been fire indeed

It would have burnt both speakers. 

PHILIP:                            Ay, and then? 

RENARD: Sire, might it not be policy in some matter

Of small importance now and then to cede

A point to her demand? 

PHILIP:                Well, I am going. 

RENARD: For should her love when you are gone, my liege,

Witness these papers, there will not be wanting

Those that will urge her injury should her love

And I have known such women more than one

Veer to the counterpoint, and jealousy

Hath in it an alchemic force to fuse

Almost into one metal love and hate,

And she impress her wrongs upon her Council,

And these again upon her Parliament

We are not loved here, and would be then perhaps

Not so well holpen in our wars with France,

As else we might be here she comes. 
 

    Enter MARY 
 

MARY:                                O Philip!

Nay, must you go indeed? 

PHILIP:                  Madam, I must. 

MARY: The parting of a husband and a wife

Is like the cleaving of a heart; one half

Will flutter here, one there. 

PHILIP:                       You say true, Madam. 

MARY: The Holy Virgin will not have me yet

Lose the sweet hope that I may bear a prince.

If such a prince were born and you not here! 

PHILIP: I should be here if such a prince were born. 

MARY: But must you go? 

PHILIP:                Madam, you know my father,

Retiring into cloistral solitude

To yield the remnant of his years to heaven,

Will shift the yoke and weight of all the world

From off his neck to mine. We meet at Brussels.

But since mine absence will not be for long,

Your Majesty shall go to Dover with me,

And wait my coming back. 

MARY:                    To Dover? no,

I am too feeble. I will go to Greenwich,

So you will have me with you; and there watch

All that is gracious in the breath of heaven

Draw with your sails from our poor land, and pass

And leave me, Philip, with my prayers for you. 

PHILIP: And doubtless I shall profit by your prayers. 

MARY: Methinks that would you tarry one day more

(The news was sudden) I could mould myself

To bear your going better; will you do it? 

PHILIP: Madam, a day may sink or save a realm. 

MARY: A day may save a heart from breaking too. 

PHILIP: Well, Simon Renard, shall we stop a day? 

RENARD: Your Grace's business will not suffer, sire,

For one day more, so far as I can tell. 

PHILIP: Then one day more to please her Majesty. 

MARY: The sunshine sweeps across my life again.

O if I knew you felt this parting, Philip,

As I do! 

PHILIP:  By St. James I do protest,

Upon the faith and honour of a Spaniard,

I am vastly grieved to leave your Majesty.

Simon, is supper ready? 

RENARD:                 Ay, my liege,

I saw the covers laying. 

PHILIP:                  Let us have it. 

[Exeunt.] 
 
 

ACT IV

  

Scene I. A ROOM IN THE PALACE. 
 

MARY, CARDINAL POLE. 
 

MARY: What have you there? 

POLE:                      So please your Majesty,

A long petition from the foreign exiles

To spare the life of Cranmer. Bishop Thirlby,

And my Lord Paget and Lord William Howard,

Crave, in the same cause, hearing of your Grace.

Hath he not written himself infatuated

To sue you for his life? 

MARY:                    His life? Oh, no;

Not sued for that he knows it were in vain.

But so much of the anti-papal leaven

Works in him yet, he hath pray'd me not to sully

Mine own prerogative, and degrade the realm

By seeking justice at a stranger's hand

Against my natural subject. King and Queen,

To whom he owes his loyalty after God,

Shall these accuse him to a foreign prince?

Death would not grieve him more. I cannot be

True to this realm of England and the Pope

Together, says the heretic. 

POLE:                       And there errs;

As he hath ever err'd thro' vanity.

A secular kingdom is but as the body

Lacking a soul; and in itself a beast.

The Holy Father in a secular kingdom

Is as the soul descending out of heaven

Into a body generate. 

MARY:                 Write to him, then. 

POLE: I will. 

MARY:         And sharply, Pole. 

POLE:                            Here come the Cranmerites! 
 

    Enter THIRLBY, LORD PAGET, LORD WILLIAM HOWARD 
 

HOWARD: Health to your Grace! Good morrow, my Lord Cardinal;

We make our humble prayer unto your Grace

That Cranmer may withdraw to foreign parts,

Or into private life within the realm.

In several bills and declarations, Madam,

He hath recanted all his heresies. 

PAGET: Ay, ay; if Bonner have not forged the bills.    [Aside. 

MARY: Did not More die, and Fisher? he must burn. 

HOWARD: He hath recanted, Madam. 

MARY:                            The better for him.

He burns in Purgatory, not in Hell. 

HOWARD: Ay, ay, your Grace; but it was never seen

That any one recanting thus at full,

As Cranmer hath, came to the fire on earth. 

MARY: It will be seen now, then. 

THIRLBY:                         O Madam, Madam!

I thus implore you, low upon my knees,

To reach the hand of mercy to my friend.

I have err'd with him; with him I have recanted.

What human reason is there why my friend

Should meet with lesser mercy than myself? 

MARY: My Lord of Ely, this. After a riot

We hang the leaders, let their following go.

Cranmer is head and father of these heresies,

New learning as they call it; yea, may God

Forget me at most need when I forget

Her foul divorce my sainted mother No!  

HOWARD: Ay, ay, but mighty doctors doubted there.

The Pope himself waver'd; and more than one

Row'd in that galley Gardiner to wit,

Whom truly I deny not to have been

Your faithful friend and trusty councillor.

Hath not your Highness ever read his book.

His tractate upon True Obedience,

Writ by himself and Bonner? 

MARY:                       I will take

Such order with all bad, heretical books

That none shall hold them in his house and live,

Henceforward. No, my Lord. 

HOWARD:                    Then never read it.

The truth is here. Your father was a man

Of such colossal kinghood, yet so courteous,

Except when wroth, you scarce could meet his eye

And hold your own; and were he wroth indeed,

You held it less, or not at all. I say,

Your father had a will that beat men down;

Your father had a brain that beat men down  

POLE: Not me, my Lord. 

HOWARD:                No, for you were not here;

You sit upon this fallen Cranmer's throne;

And it would more become you, my Lord Legate,

To join a voice, so potent with her Highness,

To ours in plea for Cranmer than to stand

On naked self-assertion. 

MARY:                    All your voices

Are waves on flint. The heretic must burn. 

HOWARD: Yet once he saved your Majesty's own life;

Stood out against the King in your behalf.

At his own peril. 

MARY:             I know not if he did;

And if he did I care not, my Lord Howard.

My life is not so happy, no such boon,

That I should spare to take a heretic priest's,

Who saved it or not saved. Why do you vex me? 

PAGET: Yet to save Cranmer were to serve the Church,

Your Majesty's I mean; he is effaced,

Self-blotted out; so wounded in his honour,

He can but creep down into some dark hole

Like a hurt beast, and hide himself and die;

But if you burn him, well, your Highness knows

The saying, 'Martyr's blood seed of the Church.' 

MARY: Of the true Church; but his is none, nor will be.

You are too politic for me, my Lord Paget

And if he have to live so loath'd a life,

It were more merciful to burn him now. 

THIRLBY:. O yet relent. O, Madam, if you knew him

As I do, ever gentle, and so gracious,

With all his learning  

MARY:                  Yet a heretic still.

His learning makes his burning the more just. 

THIRLBY:. So worshipt of all those that came across him;

The stranger at his hearth, and all his house  

MARY: His children and his concubine, belike. 

THIRLBY:. To do him any wrong was to beget

A kindness from him, for his heart was rich,

Of such fine mould, that if you sow'd therein

The seed of Hate, it blossom'd Charity. 

POLE: 'After his kind it costs him nothing,' there's

An old world English adage to the point.

These are but natural graces, my good Bishop,

Which in the Catholic garden are as flowers,

But on the heretic dunghill only weeds. 

HOWARD: Such weeds make dunghills gracious. 

MARY:                                       Enough, my Lords.

It is God's will, the Holy Father's will,

And Philip's will, and mine, that he should burn.

He is pronounced anathema. 

HOWARD:                    Farewell, Madam,

God grant you ampler mercy at your call

Than you have shown to Cranmer

                                   [Exeunt LORDS.] 

POLE:                           After this,

Your Grace will hardly care to overlook

This same petition of the foreign exiles

For Cranmer's life. 

MARY:               Make out the writ to-night. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene II. OXFORD. CRANMER IN PRISON. 
 

Last night, I dream'd the faggots were alight,

And that myself was fasten'd to the stake, I

And found it all a visionary flame,

Cool as the light in old decaying wood;

And then King Harry look'd from out a cloud,

And bad me have good courage; and I heard

An angel cry 'There is more joy in Heaven,'

And after that, the trumpet of the dead.

                                    [Trumpets without.]

Why, there are trumpets blowing now: what is it? 
 

     Enter FATHER COLE 
 

COLE: Cranmer, I come to question you again;

Have you remain'd in the true Catholic faith

I left you in? 

CRANMER:       In the true Catholic faith,

By Heaven's grace, I am more and more confirm'd.

Why are the trumpets blowing, Father Cole? 

COLE: Cranmer, it is decided by the Council

That you to-day should read your recantation

Before the people in St. Mary's Church.

And there be many heretics in the town,

Who loathe you for your late return to Rome,

And might assail you passing through the street,

And tear you piecemeal: so you have a guard. 

CRANMER: Or seek to rescue me. I thank the Council. 

COLE: Do you lack any money? 

CRANMER:                     Nay, why should I?

The prison fare is good enough for me. 

COLE: Ay, but to give the poor. 

CRANMER:                        Hand it me, then!

I thank you. 

COLE:        For a little space, farewell;

Until I see you in St. Mary's Church.

                                 [Exit COLE] 

CRANMER: It is against all precedent to burn

One who recants; they mean to pardon me.

To give the poor they give the poor who die.

Well, burn me or not burn me I am fixt;

It is but a communion, not a mass:

A holy supper, not a sacrifice;

No man can make his Maker Villa Garcia. 
 

    Enter VILLA GARCIA 
 

VILLA GARCIA: Pray you write out this paper for me, Cranmer. 

CRANMER: Have I not writ enough to satisfy you? 

VILLA GARCIA: It is the last. 

CRANMER:                      Give it me, then.

                                           [He writes.] 

VILLA GARCIA:                                   Now sign. 

CRANMER: I have sign'd enough, and I will sign no more. 

VILLA GARCIA: It is no more than what you have sign'd already,

The public form thereof. 

CRANMER:                 It may be so;

I sign it with my presence, if I read it. 

VILLA GARCIA: But this is idle of you. Well, sir, well,

You are to beg the people to pray for you;

Exhort them to a pure and virtuous life;

Declare the Queen's right to the throne; confess

Your faith before all hearers; and retract

That Eucharistic doctrine in your book.

Will you not sign it now? 

CRANMER:                  No, Villa Garcia,

I sign no more. Will they have mercy on me? 

VILLA GARCIA: Have you good hopes of mercy!

So, farewell.

                 [Exit.] 

CRANMER: Good hopes, not theirs, have I that I am fixt,

Fixt beyond fall; however, in strange hours,

After the long brain-dazing colloquies,

And thousand-times recurring argument

Of those two friars ever in my prison,

When left alone in my despondency,

Without a friend, a book, my faith would seem

Dead or half-drown'd, or else swam heavily

Against the huge corruptions of the Church,

Monsters of mistradition, old enough

To scare me into dreaming, 'what am I,

Cranmer, against whole ages?' was it so,

Or am I slandering my most inward friend,

To veil the fault of my most outward foe

The soft and tremulous coward in the flesh?

O higher, holier, earlier, purer church,

I have found thee and not leave thee any more.

It is but a communion, not a mass

No sacrifice, but a life-giving feast!

(Writes.) So, so; this will I say thus will I pray.

                                           [Puts up the paper.] 
 

    Enter BONNER 
 

BONNER: Good day, old friend; what, you look somewhat worn;

And yet it is a day to test your health

Ev'n at the best: I scarce have spoken with you

Since when? your degradation. At your trial

Never stood up a bolder man than you;

You would not cap the Pope's commissioner

Your learning, and your stoutness, and your heresy,

Dumbfounded half of us. So, after that,

We had to dis-archbishop and unlord,

And make you simple Cranmer once again.

The common barber dipt your hair, and I

Scraped from your finger-points the holy oil;

And worse than all, you had to kneel to me;

Which was not pleasant for you, Master Cranmer.

Now you, that would not recognise the Pope,

And you, that would not own the Real Presence,

Have found a real presence in the stake,

Which frights you back into the ancient faith:

And so you have recanted to the Pope.

How are the mighty fallen, Master Cranmer! 

CRANMER: You have been more fierce against the Pope than I;

But why fling back the stone he strikes me with?

    [Aside.]

O Bonner, if I ever did you kindness

Power hath been given you to try faith by fire

Pray you, remembering how yourself have changed,

Be somewhat pitiful, after I have gone,

To the poor flock to women and to children

That when I was archbishop held with me. 

BONNER: Ay gentle as they call you live or die!

Pitiful to this pitiful heresy?

I must obey the Queen and Council, man.

Win thro' this day with honour to yourself,

And I'll say something for you so good-bye.

                                         [Exit.] 

CRANMER: This hard coarse man of old hath crouch'd to me

Till I myself was half ashamed for him. 

    Enter THIRLBY. 

Weep not, good Thirlby. 

THIRLBY:               Oh, my Lord, my Lord!

My heart is no such block as Bonner's is:

Who would not weep? 

CRANMER:            Why do you so my lord me,

Who am disgraced? 

THIRLBY:         On earth; but saved in heaven

By your recanting. 

CRANMER:           Will they burn me, Thirlby? 

THIRLBY: Alas, they will; these burnings will not help

The purpose of the faith; but my poor voice

Against them is a whisper to the roar

Of a spring-tide. 

CRANMER:          And they will surely burn me? 

THIRLBY: Ay; and besides, will have you in the church

Repeat your recantation in the ears

Of all men, to the saving of their souls,

Before your execution. May God help you

Thro' that hard hour! 

CRANMER:              And may God bless you, Thirlby!

Well, they shall hear my recantation there. 

                                 [Exit THIRLBY] 

Disgraced, dishonour'd! not by them, indeed,

By mine own self by mine own hand!

O thin-skinn'd hand and jutting veins, 'twas you

That sign'd the burning of poor Joan of Kent;

But then she was a witch. You have written much,

But you were never raised to plead for Frith,

Whose dogmas I have reach'd: he was deliver'd

To the secular arm to burn; and there was Lambert;

Who can foresee himself? truly these burnings,

As Thirlby says, are profitless to the burners,

And help the other side. You shall burn too,

Burn first when I am burnt.

Fire inch by inch to die in agony! Latimer

Had a brief end not Ridley. Hooper burn'd

Three-quarters of an hour. Will my faggots

Be wet as his were? It is a day of rain.

I will not muse upon it.

My fancy takes the burner's part, and makes

The fire seem even crueller than it is.

No, I not doubt that God will give me strength,

Albeit I have denied him. 
 

    Enter SOTO and VILLA GARCIA 
 

VILLA GARCIA:             We are ready

To take you to St. Mary's, Master Cranmer. 

CRANMER: And I: lead on; ye loose me from my bonds. 

[Exeunt.] 
 
 

Scene III. ST. MARY'S CHURCH. 
 

COLE in the Pulpit, LORD WILLIAMS OF THAME presiding. LORD WILLIAM

HOWARD, LORD PAGET, and others. CRANMER enters between SOTO and

VILLA GARCIA, and the whole Choir strike up 'Nunc Dimittis.' CRANMER

is set upon a Scaffold before the people. 
 

COLE: Behold him

              [A pause: people in the foreground.] 

PEOPLE: Oh, unhappy sight! 

FIRST PROTESTANT: See how the tears run down his fatherly face. 

SECOND PROTESTANT: James, didst thou ever see a carrion crow Stand

watching a sick beast before he dies? 

FIRST PROTESTANT: Him perch'd up there? I wish some thunderbolt Would

make this Cole a cinder, pulpit and all. 

COLE: Behold him, brethren: he hath cause to weep!

So have we all: weep with him if ye will,

Yet

It is expedient for one man to die,

Yea, for the people, lest the people die.

Yet wherefore should he die that hath return'd

To the one Catholic Universal Church,

Repentant of his errors? 

PROTESTANT murmurs. Ay, tell us that. 

COLE: Those of the wrong side will despise the man,

Deeming him one that thro' the fear of death

Gave up his cause, except he seal his faith

In sight of all with flaming martyrdom. 

CRANMER: Ay. 

COLE:        Ye hear him, and albeit there may seem

According to the canons pardon due

To him that so repents, yet are there causes

Wherefore our Queen and Council at this time

Adjudge him to the death. He hath been a traitor,

A shaker and confounder of the realm;

And when the King's divorce was sued at Rome,

He here, this heretic metropolitan,

As if he had been the Holy Father, sat

And judged it. Did I call him heretic?

A huge heresiarch! never was it known

That any man so writing, preaching so,

So poisoning the Church, so long continuing,

Hath found his pardon; therefore he must die,

For warning and example.

                         Other reasons

There be for this man's ending, which our Queen

And Council at this present deem it not

Expedient to be known. 

PROTESTANT murmurs.  I warrant you. 

COLE: Take therefore, all, example by this man,

For if our Holy Queen not pardon him,

Much less shall others in like cause escape,

That all of you, the highest as the lowest,

May learn there is no power against the Lord.

There stands a man, once of so high degree,

Chief prelate of our Church, archbishop, first

In Council, second person in the realm,

Friend for so long time of a mighty King;

And now ye see downfallen and debased

From councillor to caitiff fallen so low,

The leprous flutterings of the byway, scum

And offal of the city would not change

Estates with him; in brief, so miserable,

There is no hope of better left for him,

No place for worse.

                    Yet, Cranmer, be thou glad.

This is the work of God. He is glorified

In thy conversion: lo! thou art reclaim'd;

He brings thee home: nor fear but that to-day

Thou shalt receive the penitent thief's award,

And be with Christ the Lord in Paradise.

Remember how God made the fierce fire seem

To those three children like a pleasant dew.

Remember, too,

The triumph of St. Andrew on his cross,

The patience of St. Lawrence in the fire.

Thus, if thou call on God and all the saints,

God will beat down the fury of the flame,

Or give thee saintly strength to undergo.

And for thy soul shall masses here be sung

By every priest in Oxford. Pray for him. 

CRANMER: Ay, one and all, dear brothers, pray for me;

Pray with one breath, one heart, one soul for me. 

COLE: And now, lest anyone among you doubt

The man's conversion and remorse of heart,

Yourselves shall hear him speak. Speak, Master Cranmer,

Fulfil your promise made me, and proclaim

Your true undoubted faith, that all may hear. 

CRANMER: And that I will. O God, Father of Heaven!

O Son of God, Redeemer of the world!

O Holy Ghost! proceeding from them both,

Three persons and one God, have mercy on me,

Most miserable sinner, wretched man.

I have offended against heaven and earth

More grievously than any tongue can tell.

Then whither should I flee for any help?

I am ashamed to lift my eyes to heaven,

And I can find no refuge upon earth.

Shall I despair then? God forbid! O God,

For thou art merciful, refusing none

That come to Thee for succour, unto Thee,

Therefore, I come; humble myself to Thee;

Saying, O Lord God, although my sins be great,

For thy great mercy have mercy! O God the Son,

Not for slight faults alone, when thou becamest

Man in the Flesh, was the great mystery wrought;

O God the Father, not for little sins

Didst thou yield up thy Son to human death;

But for the greatest sin that can be sinn'd,

Yea, even such as mine, incalculable,

Unpardonable, sin against the light,

The truth of God, which I had proven and known.

Thy mercy must be greater than all sin.

Forgive me, Father, for no merit of mine,

But that Thy name by man be glorified,

And Thy most blessed Son's, who died for man. 

Good people, every man at time of death

Would fain set forth some saying that may live

After his death and better humankind;

For death gives life's last word a power to live,

And, like the stone-cut epitaph, remain

After the vanish'd voice, and speak to men.

God grant me grace to glorify my God!

And first I say it is a grievous case,

Many so dote upon this bubble world,

Whose colours in a moment break and fly,

They care for nothing else. What saith St. John:

'Love of this world is hatred against God.'

Again, I pray you all that, next to God,

You do unmurmuringly and willingly

Obey your King and Queen, and not for dread

Of these alone, but from the fear of Him

Whose ministers they be to govern you.

Thirdly, I pray you all to live together

Like brethren; yet what hatred Christian men

Bear to each other, seeming not as brethren,

But mortal foes! But do you good to all

As much as in you lieth. Hurt no man more

Than you would harm your loving natural brother

Of the same roof, same breast. If any do,

Albeit he think himself at home with God,

Of this be sure, he is whole worlds away. 

PROTESTANT murmurs. What sort of brothers then be those that lust

To burn each other? 

WILLIAMS:           Peace among you, there! 

CRANMER: Fourthly, to those that own exceeding wealth,

Remember that sore saying spoken once

By Him that was the truth, 'How hard it is

For the rich man to enter into Heaven;'

Let all rich men remember that hard word.

I have not time for more: if ever, now

Let them flow forth in charity, seeing now

The poor so many, and all food so dear.

Long have I lain in prison, yet have heard

Of all their wretchedness. Give to the poor,

Ye give to God. He is with us in the poor. 

And now, and forasmuch as I have come

To the last end of life, and thereupon

Hangs all my past, and all my life to be,

Either to live with Christ in Heaven with joy,

Or to be still in pain with devils in hell;

And, seeing in a moment, I shall find

                                       [Pointing upwards.]

Heaven or else hell ready to swallow me,

                                  [Pointing downwards.]

I shall declare to you my very faith

Without all colour. 

COLE:               Hear him, my good brethren. 

CRANMER: I do believe in God, Father of all;

In every article of the Catholic faith,

And every syllable taught us by our Lord,

His prophets, and apostles, in the Testaments,

Both Old and New. 

COLE:           Be plainer, Master Cranmer. 

CRANMER: And now I come to the great cause that weighs

Upon my conscience more than anything

Or said or done in all my life by me;

For there be writings I have set abroad

Against the truth I knew within my heart,

Written for fear of death, to save my life,

If that might be; the papers by my hand

Sign'd since my degradation by this hand

                     [Holding out his right hand.]

Written and sign'd I here renounce them all;

And, since my hand offended, having written

Against my heart, my hand shall first be burnt,

So I may come to the fire.

                              [Dead silence.] 

    PROTESTANT murmurs. 

FIRST PROTESTANT: I knew it would be so. 

SECOND PROTESTANT:                       Our prayers are heard! 

THIRD PROTESTANT: God bless him! 

CATHOLIC murmurs:              Out upon him! out upon him!

Liar! dissembler! traitor! to the fire! 

WILLIAMS: (raising his voice).

You know that you recanted all you said

Touching the sacrament in that same book

You wrote against my Lord of Winchester;

Dissemble not; play the plain Christian man. 

CRANMER: Alas, my Lord,

I have been a man loved plainness all my life;

I did dissemble, but the hour has come

For utter truth and plainness; wherefore, I say,

I hold by all I wrote within that book.

Moreover,

As for the Pope I count him Antichrist,

With all his devil's doctrines; and refuse,

Reject him, and abhor him. I have said. 

[Cries on all sides, 'Pull him down! Away with him!'] 

COLE: Ay, stop the heretic's mouth! Hale him away! 

WILLIAMS: Harm him not, harm him not! have him to the fire! 
 

    [CRANMER goes out between Two Friars, smiling; hands are

    reached to him from the crowd. LORD WILLIAM HOWARD and

    LORD PAGET are left alone in the church.] 
 

PAGET: The nave and aisles all empty as a fool's jest!

No, here's Lord William Howard. What, my Lord,

You have not gone to see the burning? 

HOWARD:                               Fie!

To stand at ease, and stare as at a show,

And watch a good man burn. Never again.

I saw the deaths of Latimer and Ridley.

Moreover, tho' a Catholic, I would not,

For the pure honour of our common nature,

Hear what I might another recantation

Of Cranmer at the stake. 

PAGET:                   You'd not hear that.

He pass'd out smiling, and he walk'd upright;

His eye was like a soldier's, whom the general

He looks to and he leans on as his God,

Hath rated for some backwardness and bidd'n him

Charge one against a thousand, and the man

Hurls his soil'd life against the pikes and dies. 

HOWARD: Yet that he might not after all those papers

Of recantation yield again, who knows? 

PAGET: Papers of recantation! Think you then

That Cranmer read all papers that he sign'd?

Or sign'd all those they tell us that he sign'd?

Nay, I trow not: and you shall see, my Lord,

That howsoever hero-like the man

Dies in the fire, this Bonner or another

Will in some lying fashion misreport

His ending to the glory of their church.

And you saw Latimer and Ridley die?

Latimer was eighty, was he not? his best

Of life was over then. 

HOWARD:                His eighty years

Look'd somewhat crooked on him in his frieze;

But after they had stript him to his shroud,

He stood upright, a lad of twenty-one,

And gather'd with his hands the starting flame,

And wash'd his hands and all his face therein,

Until the powder suddenly blew him dead.

Ridley was longer burning; but he died

As manfully and boldly, and, 'fore God,

I know them heretics, but right English ones.

If ever, as heaven grant, we clash with Spain,

Our Ridley-soldiers and our Latimer-sailors

Will teach her something. 

PAGET:                    Your mild Legate Pole

Will tell you that the devil helpt them thro' it.

              [A murmur of the Crowd in the distance.]

Hark, how those Roman wolfdogs howl and bay him! 

HOWARD: Might it not be the other side rejoicing

In his brave end? 

PAGET:            They are too crush'd, too broken,

They can but weep in silence. 

HOWARD:                       Ay, ay, Paget,

They have brought it in large measure on themselves.

Have I not heard them mock the blessed Host

In songs so lewd, the beast might roar his claim

To being in God's image, more than they?

Have I not seen the gamekeeper, the groom.

Gardener, and huntsman, in the parson's place,

The parson from his own spire swung out dead,

And Ignorance crying in the streets, and all men

Regarding her? I say they have drawn the fire

On their own heads: yet, Paget, I do hold

The Catholic, if he have the greater right,

Hath been the crueller. 

PAGET:                  Action and re-action,

The miserable see-saw of our child-world,

Make us despise it at odd hours, my Lord.

Heaven help that this re-action not re-act

Yet fiercelier under Queen Elizabeth,

So that she come to rule us. 

HOWARD:                      The world's mad. 

PAGET: My Lord, the world is like a drunken man,

Who cannot move straight to his end but reels

Now to the right, then as far to the left,

Push'd by the crowd beside and underfoot

An earthquake; for since Henry for a doubt

Which a young lust had clapt upon the back,

Crying, 'Forward!' set our old church rocking, men

Have hardly known what to believe, or whether

They should believe in anything; the currents

So shift and change, they see not how they are borne,

Nor whither. I conclude the King a beast;

Verily a lion if you will the world

A most obedient beast and fool myself

Half beast and fool as appertaining to it;

Altho' your Lordship hath as little of each

Cleaving to your original Adam-clay,

As may be consonant with mortality. 

HOWARD: We talk and Cranmer suffers.

The kindliest man I ever knew; see, see,

I speak of him in the past. Unhappy land!

Hard-natured Queen, half-Spanish in herself,

And grafted on the hard-grain'd stock of Spain

Her life, since Philip left her, and she lost

Her fierce desire of bearing him a child,

Hath, like a brief and bitter winter's day,

Gone narrowing down and darkening to a close.

There will be more conspiracies, I fear. 

PAGET: Ay, ay, beware of France. 

HOWARD:                          O Paget, Paget!

I have seen heretics of the poorer sort,

Expectant of the rack from day to day,

To whom the fire were welcome, lying chain'd

In breathless dungeons over steaming sewers,

Fed with rank bread that crawl'd upon the tongue,

And putrid water, every drop a worm,

Until they died of rotted limbs; and then

Cast on the dunghill naked, and become

Hideously alive again from head to heel,

Made even the carrion-nosing mongrel vomit

With hate and horror. 

PAGET:                Nay, you sicken me

To hear you. 

HOWARD:      Fancy-sick; these things are done,

Done right against the promise of this Queen

Twice given. 

PAGET:       No faith with heretics, my Lord!

Hist! there be two old gossips gospellers,

I take it; stand behind the pillar here;

I warrant you they talk about the burning. 
 

    Enter TWO OLD WOMEN. JOAN, and after her TIB 
 

JOAN: Why, it be Tib! 

TIB: I cum behind tha, gall, and couldn't make tha hear. Eh, the wind

and the wet! What a day, what a day! nigh upo' judgement daay loike.

Pwoaps be pretty things, Joan, but they wunt set i' the Lord's cheer

o' that daay. 

JOAN: I must set down myself, Tib; it be a var waay vor my owld legs

up vro' Islip. Eh, my rheumatizy be that bad howiver be I to win to

the burnin'. 

TIB: I should saay 'twur ower by now. I'd ha' been here avore, but

Dumble wur blow'd wi' the wind, and Dumble's the best milcher in

Islip. 

JOAN: Our Daisy's as good 'z her. 

TIB: Noa, Joan. 

JOAN: Our Daisy's butter's as good'z hern. 

TIB: Noa, Joan. 

JOAN: Our Daisy's cheeses be better. 

TIB: Noa, Joan. 

JOAN: Eh, then ha' thy waay wi' me, Tib; ez thou hast wi' thy owld

man. 

TIB: Ay, Joan, and my owld man wur up and awaay betimes wi' dree hard

eggs for a good pleace at the burnin'; and barrin' the wet, Hodge 'ud

ha' been a-harrowin' o' white peasen i' the outfield and barrin' the

wind, Dumble wur blow'd wi' the wind, so 'z we was forced to stick

her, but we fetched her round at last. Thank the Lord therevore.

Dumble's the best milcher in Islip. 

JOAN: Thou's thy way wi' man and beast, Tib. I wonder at tha', it

beats me! Eh, but I do know ez Pwoaps and vires be bad things; tell

'ee now, I heerd summat as summun towld summun o' owld Bishop

Gardiner's end; there wur an owld lord a-cum to dine wi' un, and a wur

so owld a couldn't bide vor his dinner, but a had to bide howsomiver,

vor 'I wunt dine,' says my Lord Bishop, says he, 'not till I hears ez

Latimer and Ridley be a-vire;' and so they bided on and on till vour

o' the clock, till his man cum in post vro' here, and tells un ez the

vire has tuk holt. 'Now,' says the Bishop, says he, 'we'll gwo to

dinner;' and the owld lord fell to 's meat wi' a will, God bless un!

but Gardiner wur struck down like by the hand o' God avore a could

taste a mossel, and a set un all a-vire, so 'z the tongue on un cum

a-lolluping out o' 'is mouth as black as a rat. Thank the Lord,

therevore. 

PAGET: The fools! 

TIB: Ay, Joan; and Queen Mary gwoes on a-burnin' and a-burnin', to get

her baaby born; but all her burnin's 'ill never burn out the hypocrisy

that makes the water in her. There's nought but the vire of God's hell

ez can burn out that. 

JOAN: Thank the Lord, therevore. 

PAGET: The fools! 

TIB: A-burnin', and a-burnin', and a-makin' o' volk madder and madder;

but tek thou my word vor't, Joan, and I bean't wrong not twice i' ten

year the burnin' o' the owld archbishop'll burn the Pwoap out o'

this 'ere land vor iver and iver. 

HOWARD: Out of the church, you brace of cursed crones, Or I will have

you duck'd! (Women hurry out.) Said I not right? For how should

reverend prelate or throned prince Brook for an hour such brute

malignity? Ah, what an acrid wine has Luther brew'd! 

PAGET: Pooh, pooh, my Lord! poor garrulous country-wives.

Buy you their cheeses, and they'll side with you;

You cannot judge the liquor from the lees. 

HOWARD: I think that in some sort we may. But see, 

    Enter PETERS 

Peters, my gentleman, an honest Catholic,

Who follow'd with the crowd to Cranmer's fire.

One that would neither misreport nor lie,

Not to gain paradise: no, nor if the Pope,

Charged him to do it he is white as death.

Peters, how pale you look! you bring the smoke

Of Cranmer's burning with you. 

PETERS:                        Twice or thrice

The smoke of Cranmer's burning wrapt me round. 

HOWARD: Peters, you know me Catholic, but English.

Did he die bravely? Tell me that, or leave

All else untold. 

PETERS:          My Lord, he died most bravely. 

HOWARD: Then tell me all. 

PAGET:                    Ay, Master Peters, tell us. 

PETERS: You saw him how he past among the crowd;

And ever as he walk'd the Spanish friars

Still plied him with entreaty and reproach:

But Cranmer, as the helmsman at the helm

Steers, ever looking to the happy haven

Where he shall rest at night, moved to his death;

And I could see that many silent hands

Came from the crowd and met his own; and thus

When we had come where Ridley burnt with Latimer,

He, with a cheerful smile, as one whose mind

Is all made up, in haste put off the rags

They had mock'd his misery with, and all in white,

His long white beard, which he had never shaven

Since Henry's death, down-sweeping to the chain,

Wherewith they bound him to the stake, he stood

More like an ancient father of the Church,

Than heretic of these times; and still the friars

Plied him, but Cranmer only shook his head,

Or answer'd them in smiling negatives;

Whereat Lord Williams gave a sudden cry:

'Make short! make short!' and so they lit the wood.

Then Cranmer lifted his left hand to heaven,

And thrust his right into the bitter flame;

And crying, in his deep voice, more than once,

'This hath offended this unworthy hand!'

So held it till it all was burn'd, before

The flame had reach'd his body; I stood near

Mark'd him he never uttered moan of pain:

He never stirr'd or writhed, but, like a statue,

Unmoving in the greatness of the flame,

Gave up the ghost; and so past martyr-like

Martyr I may not call him past but whither? 

PAGET: To purgatory, man, to purgatory. 

PETERS: Nay, but, my Lord, he denied purgatory. 

PAGET: Why then to heaven, and God ha' mercy on him. 

HOWARD: Paget, despite his fearful heresies,

I loved the man, and needs must moan for him;

O Cranmer! 

PAGET:     But your moan is useless now:

Come out, my Lord, it is a world of fools. 

[Exeunt.] 
 
 

ACT V

  

Scene I. LONDON. HALL IN THE PALACE. 
 

QUEEN, SIR NICHOLAS HEATH 
 

HEATH: Madam,

I do assure you, that it must be look'd to:

Calais is but ill-garrison'd, in Guisnes

Are scarce two hundred men, and the French fleet

Rule in the narrow seas. It must be look'd to,

If war should fall between yourself and France;

Or you will lose your Calais. 

MARY:                         It shall be look'd to;

I wish you a good morning, good Sir Nicholas:

Here is the King.

                     [Exit HEATH] 
 

    Enter PHILIP 
 

PHILIP:           Sir Nicholas tells you true,

And you must look to Calais when I go. 
 
 

MARY: Go? must you go, indeed again so soon?

Why, nature's licensed vagabond, the swallow,

That might live always in the sun's warm heart,

Stays longer here in our poor north than you:

Knows where he nested ever comes again. 

PHILIP: And, Madam, so shall I. 

MARY:                           O, will you? will you?

I am faint with fear that you will come no more. 

PHILIP: Ay, ay; but many voices call me hence. 

MARY: Voices I hear unhappy rumours nay,

I say not, I believe. What voices call you

Dearer than mine that should be dearest to you?

Alas, my Lord! what voices and how many? 

PHILIP: The voices of Castille and Aragon,

Granada, Naples, Sicily, and Milan,

The voices of Franche-Comte, and the Netherlands,

The voices of Peru and Mexico,

Tunis, and Oran, and the Philippines,

And all the fair spice-islands of the East. 

MARY: (admiringly).

You are the mightiest monarch upon earth,

I but a little Queen: and, so indeed,

Need you the more. 

PHILIP:            A little Queen! but when

I came to wed your majesty, Lord Howard,

Sending an insolent shot that dash'd the seas

Upon us, made us lower our kingly flag

To yours of England. 

MARY:                Howard is all English!

There is no king, not were he ten times king,

Ten times our husband, but must lower his flag

To that of England in the seas of England. 

PHILIP: Is that your answer? 

MARY:                        Being Queen of England,

I have none other. 

PHILIP:            So. 

MARY:                  But wherefore not

Helm the huge vessel of your state, my liege,

Here by the side of her who loves you most? 

PHILIP: No, Madam, no! a candle in the sun

Is all but smoke a star beside the moon

Is all but lost; your people will not crown me

Your people are as cheerless as your clime;

Hate me and mine: witness the brawls, the gibbets.

Here swings a Spaniard there an Englishman;

The peoples are unlike as their complexion;

Yet will I be your swallow and return

But now I cannot bide. 

MARY:                  Not to help me?

They hate me also for my love to you,

My Philip; and these judgments on the land

Harvestless autumns, horrible agues, plague  

PHILIP: The blood and sweat of heretics at the stake

Is God's best dew upon the barren field.

Burn more! 

MARY:      I will, I will; and you will stay? 

PHILIP: Have I not said? Madam, I came to sue

Your Council and yourself to declare war. 

MARY: Sir, there are many English in your ranks

To help your battle. 

PHILIP:              So far, good. I say

I came to sue your Council and yourself

To declare war against the King of France. 

MARY: Not to see me? 

PHILIP:              Ay, Madam, to see you.

Unalterably and pesteringly fond!    [Aside.]

But, soon or late you must have war with France;

King Henry warms your traitors at his hearth.

Carew is there, and Thomas Stafford there.

Courtenay, belike  

MARY:              A fool and featherhead! 

PHILIP: Ay, but they use his name. In brief, this Henry

Stirs up your land against you to the intent

That you may lose your English heritage.

And then, your Scottish namesake marrying

The Dauphin, he would weld France, England, Scotland,

Into one sword to hack at Spain and me. 

MARY: And yet the Pope is now colleagued with France;

You make your wars upon him down in Italy:

Philip, can that be well? 

PHILIP:                   Content you, Madam;

You must abide my judgment, and my father's,

Who deems it a most just and holy war.

The Pope would cast the Spaniard out of Naples:

He calls us worse than Jews, Moors, Saracens.

The Pope has pushed his horns beyond his mitre

Beyond his province. Now,

Duke Alva will but touch him on the horns,

And he withdraws; and of his holy head

For Alva is true son of the true church

No hair is harm'd. Will you not help me here? 

MARY: Alas! the Council will not hear of war.

They say your wars are not the wars of England.

They will not lay more taxes on a land

So hunger-nipt and wretched; and you know

The crown is poor. We have given the church-lands back:

The nobles would not; nay, they clapt their hands

Upon their swords when ask'd; and therefore God

Is hard upon the people. What's to be done?

Sir, I will move them in your cause again,

And we will raise us loans and subsidies

Among the merchants; and Sir Thomas Gresham

Will aid us. There is Antwerp and the Jews. 

PHILIP: Madam, my thanks. 

MARY:                     And you will stay your going? 

PHILIP: And further to discourage and lay lame

The plots of France, altho' you love her not,

You must proclaim Elizabeth your heir.

She stands between you and the Queen of Scots. 

MARY: The Queen of Scots at least is Catholic. 

PHILIP: Ay, Madam, Catholic; but I will not have

The King of France the King of England too. 

MARY: But she's a heretic, and, when I am gone,

Brings the new learning back. 

PHILIP:                       It must be done.

You must proclaim Elizabeth your heir. 

MARY: Then it is done; but you will stay your going

Somewhat beyond your settled purpose? 

PHILIP:                               No! 

MARY: What, not one day? 

PHILIP:                  You beat upon the rock. 

MARY: And I am broken there. 

PHILIP:                   Is this a place

To wail in, Madam? what! a public hall.

Go in, I pray you. 

MARY:              Do not seem so changed.

Say go; but only say it lovingly. 

PHILIP: You do mistake. I am not one to change.

I never loved you more. 

MARY:                   Sire, I obey you.

Come quickly. 

PHILIP:       Ay.

                     [Exit MARY] 
 

    Enter COUNT DE FERIA 
 

FERIA: (aside).  The Queen in tears! 

PHILIP:                               Feria!

Hast thou not mark'd come closer to mine ear

How doubly aged this Queen of ours hath grown

Since she lost hope of bearing us a child? 

FERIA: Sire, if your Grace hath mark'd it, so have I. 

PHILIP: Hast thou not likewise mark'd Elizabeth,

How fair and royal like a Queen, indeed? 

FERIA: Allow me the same answer as before

That if your Grace hath mark'd her, so have I. 

PHILIP: Good, now; methinks my Queen is like enough

To leave me by and by. 

FERIA:                 To leave you, sire? 

PHILIP: I mean not like to live. Elizabeth

To Philibert of Savoy, as you know,

We meant to wed her; but I am not sure

She will not serve me better so my Queen

Would leave me as my wife. 

FERIA:                       Sire, even so. 

PHILIP: She will not have Prince Philibert of Savoy. 

FERIA: No, sire. 

PHILIP:          I have to pray you, some odd time,

To sound the Princess carelessly on this;

Not as from me, but as your phantasy;

And tell me how she takes it. 

FERIA:                         Sire, I will. 

PHILIP: I am not certain but that Philibert

Shall be the man; and I shall urge his suit

Upon the Queen, because I am not certain:

You understand, Feria. 

FERIA:                 Sire, I do. 

PHILIP: And if you be not secret in this matter,

You understand me there, too? 

FERIA:                        Sire, I do. 

PHILIP: You must be sweet and supple, like a Frenchman.

She is none of those who loathe the honeycomb. 

                                      [Exit FERIA] 
 

    Enter RENARD 
 

RENARD: My liege, I bring you goodly tidings. 

PHILIP: Well? 

RENARD: There will be war with France, at last, my liege;

Sir Thomas Stafford, a bull-headed ass,

Sailing from France, with thirty Englishmen,

Hath taken Scarboro' Castle, north of York;

Proclaims himself protector, and affirms

The Queen has forfeited her right to reign

By marriage with an alien other things

As idle; a weak Wyatt! Little doubt

This buzz will soon be silenced; but the Council

(I have talk'd with some already) are for war.

This the fifth conspiracy hatch'd in France;

They show their teeth upon it; and your Grace,

So you will take advice of mine, should stay

Yet for awhile, to shape and guide the event. 

PHILIP: Good! Renard, I will stay then. 

RENARD:                                 Also, sire,

Might I not say to please your wife, the Queen? 

PHILIP: Ay, Renard, if you care to put it so. 

[Exeunt.] 
 

Scene II. A ROOM IN THE PALACE. 
 

MARY, sitting: a rose in her hand. LADY CLARENCE. ALICE in the

background. 
 

MARY: Look! I have play'd with this poor rose so long

I have broken off the head. 

LADY CLARENCE: Your Grace hath been

More merciful to many a rebel head

That should have fallen, and may rise again. 

MARY: There were not many hang'd for Wyatt's rising. 

LADY CLARENCE: Nay, not two hundred. 

MARY:                                I could weep for them

And her, and mine own self and all the world. 

LADY CLARENCE: For her? for whom, your Grace? 
 

    Enter USHER. 
 

USHER: The Cardinal. 
 

    Enter CARDINAL POLE. (MARY rises.) 
 

MARY: Reginald Pole, what news hath plagued thy heart?

What makes thy favour like the bloodless head

Fall'n on the block, and held up by the hair?

Philip?  

POLE:    No, Philip is as warm in life

As ever. 

MARY:    Ay, and then as cold as ever.

Is Calais taken? 

POLE:            Cousin, there hath chanced

A sharper harm to England and to Rome,

Than Calais taken. Julius the Third

Was ever just, and mild, and father-like;

But this new Pope Caraffa, Paul the Fourth,

Not only reft me of that legateship

Which Julius gave me, and the legateship

Annex'd to Canterbury nay, but worse

And yet I must obey the Holy Father,

And so must you, good cousin; worse than all,

A passing bell toll'd in a dying ear

He hath cited me to Rome, for heresy,

Before his Inquisition. 

MARY:                   I knew it, cousin,

But held from you all papers sent by Rome,

That you might rest among us, till the Pope,

To compass which I wrote myself to Rome,

Reversed his doom, and that you might not seem

To disobey his Holiness. 

POLE:                    He hates Philip;

He is all Italian, and he hates the Spaniard;

He cannot dream that I advised the war;

He strikes thro' me at Philip and yourself.

Nay, but I know it of old, he hates me too;

So brands me in the stare of Christendom

A heretic!

Now, even now, when bow'd before my time,

The house half-ruin'd ere the lease be out;

When I should guide the Church in peace at home,

After my twenty years of banishment,

And all my lifelong labour to uphold

The primacy a heretic. Long ago,

When I was ruler in the patrimony,

I was too lenient to the Lutheran,

And I and learned friends among ourselves

Would freely canvass certain Lutheranisms.

What then, he knew I was no Lutheran.

A heretic!

He drew this shaft against me to the head,

When it was thought I might be chosen Pope,

But then withdrew it. In full consistory,

When I was made Archbishop, he approved me.

And how should he have sent me Legate hither,

Deeming me heretic? and what heresy since?

But he was evermore mine enemy,

And hates the Spaniard fiery-choleric,

A drinker of black, strong, volcanic wines,

That ever make him fierier. I, a heretic?

Your Highness knows that in pursuing heresy

I have gone beyond your late Lord Chancellor,

He cried Enough! enough! before his death.

Gone beyond him and mine own natural man

(It was God's cause); so far they call me now,

The scourge and butcher of their English church. 

MARY: Have courage, your reward is Heaven itself. 

POLE: They groan amen; they swarm into the fire

Like flies for what? no dogma. They know nothing;

They burn for nothing. 

MARY:                  You have done your best. 

POLE: Have done my best, and as a faithful son,

That all day long hath wrought his father's work,

When back he comes at evening hath the door

Shut on him by the father whom he loved,

His early follies cast into his teeth,

And the poor son turn'd out into the street

To sleep, to die I shall die of it, cousin. 

MARY: I pray you be not so disconsolate;

I still will do mine utmost with the Pope.

Poor cousin!

Have not I been the fast friend of your life

Since mine began, and it was thought we two

Might make one flesh, and cleave unto each other

As man and wife? 

POLE:            Ah, cousin, I remember

How I would dandle you upon my knee

At lisping-age. I watch'd you dancing once

With your huge father; he look'd the Great Harry,

You but his cockboat; prettily you did it,

And innocently. No we were not made

One flesh in happiness, no happiness here;

But now we are made one flesh in misery;

Our bridemaids are not lovely Disappointment,

Ingratitude, Injustice, Evil-tongue,

Labour-in-vain. 

MARY:           Surely, not all in vain.

Peace, cousin, peace! I am sad at heart myself. 

POLE: Our altar is a mound of dead men's clay,

Dug from the grave that yawns for us beyond;

And there is one Death stands behind the Groom,

And there is one Death stands behind the Bride  

MARY: Have you been looking at the 'Dance of Death'? 

POLE: No; but these libellous papers which I found

Strewn in your palace. Look you here the Pope

Pointing at me with 'Pole, the heretic,

Thou hast burnt others, do thou burn thyself,

Or I will burn thee;' and this other; see!

'We pray continually for the death

Of our accursed Queen and Cardinal Pole'

This last I dare not read it her.    [Aside.] 

MARY:                              Away!

Why do you bring me these?

I thought you knew better. I never read,

I tear them; they come back upon my dreams.

The hands that write them should be burnt clean off

As Cranmer's, and the fiends that utter them

Tongue-torn with pincers, lash'd to death, or lie

Famishing in black cells, while famish'd rats

Eat them alive. Why do they bring me these?

Do you mean to drive me mad? 

POLE:                        I had forgotten

How these poor libels trouble you. Your pardon,

Sweet cousin, and farewell! 'O bubble world,

Whose colours in a moment break and fly!'

Why, who said that? I know not true enough! 

    [Puts up the papers, all but the last, which falls.]

     

Exit POLE. 
 

ALICE: If Cranmer's spirit were a mocking one,

And heard these two, there might be sport for him.    [Aside.] 

MARY: Clarence, they hate me; even while I speak

There lurks a silent dagger, listening

In some dark closet, some long gallery, drawn,

And panting for my blood as I go by. 

LADY CLARENCE: Nay, Madam, there be loyal papers too,

And I have often found them. 

MARY:                        Find me one! 

LADY CLARENCE: Ay, Madam; but Sir Nicholas Heath, the Chancellor,

Would see your Highness. 

MARY:                    Wherefore should I see him? 

LADY CLARENCE: Well, Madam, he may bring you news from Philip 

MARY: So, Clarence. 

LADY CLARENCE:      Let me first put up your hair;

It tumbles all abroad. 

MARY:                  And the gray dawn

Of an old age that never will be mine

Is all the clearer seen. No, no; what matters?

Forlorn I am, and let me look forlorn. 
 

    Enter SIR NICHOLAS HEATH. 
 

HEATH: I bring your Majesty such grievous news

I grieve to bring it. Madam, Calais is taken. 

MARY: What traitor spoke? Here, let my cousin Pole

Seize him and burn him for a Lutheran. 

HEATH: Her Highness is unwell. I will retire. 

LADY CLARENCE: Madam, your Chancellor, Sir Nicholas Heath. 

MARY: Sir Nicholas! I am stunn'd Nicholas Heath?

Methought some traitor smote me on the head.

What said you, my good Lord, that our brave English

Had sallied out from Calais and driven back

The Frenchmen from their trenches? 

HEATH:                             Alas! no.

That gateway to the mainland over which

Our flag hath floated for two hundred years

Is France again. 

MARY:            So; but it is not lost

Not yet. Send out: let England as of old

Rise lionlike, strike hard and deep into

The prey they are rending from her ay, and rend

The renders too. Send out, send out, and make

Musters in all the counties; gather all

From sixteen years to sixty; collect the fleet;

Let every craft that carries sail and gun

Steer toward Calais. Guisnes is not taken yet? 

HEATH: Guisnes is not taken yet. 

MARY:                            There yet is hope. 

HEATH: Ah, Madam, but your people are so cold;

I do much fear that England will not care.

Methinks there is no manhood left among us. 

MARY: Send out; I am too weak to stir abroad:

Tell my mind to the Council to the Parliament:

Proclaim it to the winds. Thou art cold thyself

To babble of their coldness. O would I were

My father for an hour! Away now Quick! 

                                   [Exit HEATH] 

I hoped I had served God with all my might!

It seems I have not. Ah! much heresy

Shelter'd in Calais. Saints I have rebuilt

Your shrines, set up your broken images;

Be comfortable to me. Suffer not

That my brief reign in England be defamed

Thro' all her angry chronicles hereafter

By loss of Calais. Grant me Calais. Philip,

We have made war upon the Holy Father

All for your sake: what good could come of that? 

LADY CLARENCE: No, Madam, not against the Holy Father;

You did but help King Philip's war with France,

Your troops were never down in Italy. 

MARY: I am a byword. Heretic and rebel

Point at me and make merry. Philip gone!

And Calais gone! Time that I were gone too! 

LADY CLARENCE: Nay, if the fetid gutter had a voice

And cried I was not clean, what should I care?

Or you, for heretic cries? And I believe,

Spite of your melancholy Sir Nicholas,

Your England is as loyal as myself. 

MARY: (seeing the paper draft by POLE).

There! there! another paper! Said you not

Many of these were loyal? Shall I try

If this be one of such? 

LADY CLARENCE:          Let it be, let it be.

God pardon me! I have never yet found one.    [Aside.] 

MARY: (reads). 'Your people hate you as your husband hates you.'

Clarence, Clarence, what have I done? what sin

Beyond all grace, all pardon? Mother of God,

Thou knowest never woman meant so well,

And fared so ill in this disastrous world.

My people hate me and desire my death. 

LADY CLARENCE: No, Madam, no. 

MARY: My husband hates me, and desires my death. 

LADY CLARENCE: No, Madam; these are libels. 

MARY: I hate myself, and I desire my death. 

LADY CLARENCE: Long live your Majesty! Shall Alice sing you

One of her pleasant songs? Alice, my child,

Bring us your lute (ALICE goes). They say the gloom of Saul

Was lighten'd by young David's harp. 

MARY:                                Too young!

And never knew a Philip. 

    Re-enter ALICE 

                         Give me the lute.

He hates me!

                (She sings.) 

    Hapless doom of woman happy in betrothing!

    Beauty passes like a breath and love is lost in loathing:

    Low, my lute; speak low, my lute, but say the world is nothing

    Low, lute, low! 

    Love will hover round the flowers when they first awaken;

    Love will fly the fallen leaf, and not be overtaken;

    Low, my lute! oh low, my lute! we fade and are forsaken

    Low, dear lute, low! 

Take it away! not low enough for me! 

ALICE: Your Grace hath a low voice. 

MARY:                               How dare you say it?

Even for that he hates me. A low voice

Lost in a wilderness where none can hear!

A voice of shipwreck on a shoreless sea!

A low voice from the dust and from the grave

    (Sitting on the ground).

There, am I low enough now? 

ALICE: Good Lord! how grim and ghastly looks her Grace,

With both her knees drawn upward to her chin.

There was an old-world tomb beside my father's,

And this was open'd, and the dead were found

Sitting, and in this fashion; she looks a corpse. 
 

    Enter LADY MAGDALEN DACRES. 
 

LADY MAGDALEN: Madam, the Count de Feria waits without,

In hopes to see your Highness. 

LADY CLARENCE: (pointing to MARY).

Wait he must

Her trance again. She neither sees nor hears,

And may not speak for hours. 

LADY MAGDALEN:               Unhappiest

Of Queens and wives and women! 

ALICE: (in the foreground with LADY MAGDALEN).

                               And all along

Of Philip. 

LADY MAGDALEN: Not so loud! Our Clarence there

Sees ever such an aureole round the Queen,

It gilds the greatest wronger of her peace,

Who stands the nearest to her. 

ALICE:                         Ay, this Philip;

I used to love the Queen with all my heart

God help me, but methinks I love her less

For such a dotage upon such a man.

I would I were as tall and strong as you. 

LADY MAGDALEN: I seem half-shamed at times to be so tall. 

ALICE: You are the stateliest deer in all the herd

Beyond his aim but I am small and scandalous,

And love to hear bad tales of Philip. 

LADY MAGDALEN:                        Why?

I never heard him utter worse of you

Than that you were low-statured. 

ALICE:                           Does he think

Low stature is low nature, or all women's

Low as his own? 

LADY MAGDALEN:  There you strike in the nail.

This coarseness is a want of phantasy.

It is the low man thinks the woman low;