University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

—Sir Thomas Lucy's parlour at Charlcote. Sir Thomas seated in an elbow chair, turned somewhat aside from the head of the table. Lady Lucy seated near him. Moles standing near the door.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
The bended back beseems the baser birth
In presence of the great ones of the earth.
Incurve thy chine with meet humility,
Then in a standing posture list to me.

Moles
[bowing awkwardly].
Aye, aye, Sir Thomas.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
Know, rude forester,
There's something rotten in the state of Charlcote.
Sound stands the mansion still, 'tis true, with roof
Impervious to the beams and rains of heaven,
Nor yet bereft of soaring pinnacle,
Or portalled lodge, or zone of stately trees;
The thicket blooms and fruits; nor hath the plough
Profaned or daisied mead or lawny dell.
But where the sylvan people? Where the troops
Of stag and doe and delicate fawn that erst
Did gambol in these groves? And, consequently,
Where be the haunch and pasty? Smoked these still
Upon the board 'twere somewhat, but the board
Is emptier than the forest avenue,
Where still a remnant lingers, which dislodged,
All should be dire depopulation.
Whence, in the name of Zernebock, this nuisance!
[Rises and approaches Moles.
Storms the Wild Huntsman with his swarthy pack
Along my woodland alleys? Do the hounds
That erst with horrid fangs Actæon tore
Seek in these shades a quadrupedal prey?
Say, doth the broom-bestriding sorceress,
Companioned with foul incubi, entwine
Her skinny arms round the reluctant deer,
And drag it to her Sabbath and her Satan?
Or twangs the bow and speeds the silver shaft
Of the Queen-Huntress? Hast thou e'er beheld
A covert-breaking stag impetuous
Burst from the brake and scour adown the glade,
Followed by a giant's shadow with a spear?

[Moles scratches his head.
Lady Lucy.
Truly, Sir Thomas, you have dazed the man,
Crushing with flowery opulence of phrase
His weak intelligence, as she of Naxos
Perished 'neath garlands heaped to honour her.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
Have I then, aiming at a lowly mark,
Despatched my arrow toward the skies? Yet, rustic,
Haply thou deem'st the gold of my discourse
By thee with diamond should be repaid:
O no! the pebble shall serve well enough.
As well array thy cap with plumes, and change
Jerkin for doublet in thy master's presence.
Rack not thy brain for tropes rhetorical,
Such do but misbecome the borrel man
Who ne'er hath learned moral philosophy,
Or the division of a battle known
More than a spinster. Yet, who wotteth not
Of some forgotten nook, some cornered cranny,
Some entrance to huge learning's labyrinth,
Where even I, our Stratford's Pittacus,
Must grope without his eyes? Thy special sphere
Is vermin, as avoucheth my barn-door,
With hawk and stoat thick tapestried by thee.
I hold thee then well seen in venery,
And in the lore of woodcraft perfected,
And now, my keeper mad, our constable
By many much suspected for a Papist,
Do seek thy oracle, as erst was sought
Dodona's oak, or Libyan Ammon's shrine.
If aught of spark celestial glow in thee,
Puff it to flame, be by contráry office
This trouble's candle and extinguisher.
What bane our board of venison bereaves?

Moles.
Sir Thomas, I be thinking it be thieves.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
Rehearse the villains' appellations.

Moles.
There is but one, his name is Everybody.
Each pounces on whatever he can find,
Wood, wheat, wool, poultry, hare and hart and hind.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
Yet must thou their iniquity bewray,
And shine the Phosphor of their reckoning day:
If frank, thy tongue my treasury unlocks:
If stockish, steel thy legs against the stocks.

Moles.
In sooth they are a goodly company!
There's Hugh the broken soldier; fiddling Jerry;
Jim the attorney's clerk, and Tim the parson's;
Lawrence who stole my sweetheart; Bill the crier;
John Combe, these ten years earmarked by the devil;
Old Grey the horses' leech; Sorrel the huntsman;
Ben Brock, the county's champion badger-skinner;
That madcap tinker, sly Christophero
(Bearwarden was his post till self-adjudged
Unmeet to carry entrails to a bear,
Uncertain if through pride or modesty);
Black Will and Shakebag; Much the miller's son;
Madge, the hoar witch who fosters ten tom-cats;
All ratcatchers save me, your loyal slave;
The charcoal-burners all, and all the beggars.

Lady Lucy.
Consider, Moles, consider, sums this all
The spotted snakes thou did'st divulge to me?

Moles.
No, murkiest ink in all the register
Writes the black name of Shakespeare, schoolmaster.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
Iniquity! hast thou more mysteries?
Shakespeare! the man aye wears a smiling face.

Lady Lucy.
A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
Aye, but I deemed his evil genius
Spirit of other sort, and him the man
To caper idly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
Clear is his brow, open his countenance,
Lively the sparkle of his hazel eye,
Liquid his speech, nor doth the woodland bird
Prolong a sweeter melody than he
When virginal or lute enraptures him.

Moles.
I know the lad, he always be sweethearting,
Yet follows he on foot the chasing pack
To the death, no match at coursing willingly
Misses, or tussle of the hawk and hern.
And though he be a main soft-hearted fellow,
You shall not stay him from a bear-baiting.

Lady Lucy.
Yet have I seen him stride with hasty steps,
Stopped on the sudden; heard him mouth anon
Sonorous resonance of syllables,
With arms flung widely forth; then roaring mirth
At some unspoken jest's hilarity;
Then drooping sad eyes toward the sod, as though
Summing its blades: or, stretched 'neath some great tree,
Poring upon the brook that babbled by.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
You paint one lunatic for love, or else
An actor, the sick kingdom's boil and blain.
We want none such; wherefore departs he not
To seek a madhouse or a theatre?

Lady Lucy.
He hath for theatre his own abode,
Where daily he enacteth tragedy.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
I partly do conceive thee, for I know him
A fellow almost damned in a fair wife.

Lady Lucy.
Fair! I have known the day thy taste was better;
A faded creature infelicitous!
Nimble and strenuous of tongue, I grant;
Rueing her lot and cursed in her conditions;
Moth, acid, rust to all that others joy in;
A withered apple, only good to pelt with.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella.
Lady, this blast that storms against the wife
Argues the husband high in your esteem.

Lady Lucy.
Even as a ruby bartered for a bead
Rateth its idiot lord, rate I Will Shakespeare.
But soft, what am I saying?

Sir Thomas Lucy.
What, alack!
Well, well, I will not doubt all's honesty.
Yet somewhat doth it stir my noble stomach
To mark you thus concerned about a vassal.

Lady Lucy.
Merely as one may watch a struggling fly
Drowning in clammy milk, or muddy beer,
Scarce caring if he scapes or perishes,
Yet indolently sorry for his plight,
And, haply, scornful of aerial wings
Soused in a stuff so gross.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
If this be all,
Wherefore so fiery-hot against the woman?

Lady Lucy.
The virtuous lady much abhorreth vice,
Abhors the vicious more, and most detests
The leman crept into the matron's place.
What! would she eat her cake and have it too?
Infringe the rules, and yet be free of the guild?
Cannot she be one thing or else the other?
If Anna were no worse than a light woman,
Despised she were, but not abominated;
But being what she is, is child of wrath.
I see thou know'st not her enormities.
This mirror of the maidenhood of Stratford,
This wan ungathered rose, this vestal ogress,
Sets cap and trap for Shakespeare, he is caught,
And frequent seeks her cot past toll of curfew.
There rapture reigns, till, one autumnal even,
Sudden the chamber swarms with angry brothers,
And cousins in a most excited state.
Poor Shakespeare hangs his head, a manifest villain,
And creeps like snail unwillingly to church,
Wishing his godsire in his infancy
Had brought him to the gallows, not the font.
And ill continues what was ill begun.
The crab upon the peach so crossly grafted
Grows none the sweeter, and the course of wedlock
Runneth no smoother than the course of love.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
No wonder, then, he hunts in others' houses
For kinder and more charitable spouses.
I do remember once to have forbid
The knave this mansion, nor was my decree
Devoid of reference to your ladyship,
Whom truly I esteemed the more in fault.

Lady Lucy.
O good Sir Thomas, haughty is your carriage,
But condescending is your jealousy,
Which stoops to pry and spy and peer, and sniffs
Scent of a wooing temerarious
If one but speaks to an inferior:
Nor, by reverse of error, takes account
Of that amazing altitude whereto
Your greatness beckoned my humility.
Love squanders not his arrows in star-shooting.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
But certain stars shoot madly from their spheres,
And, fallen to earth, each fair and radiant flame
Is turned to jellied slime. Mark, in this matter
Sir Thomas Lucy thinks with Julius Cæsar.

Lady Lucy.
Sir Thomas, striving to dispel the fume,
Misgives me I shall but incense the fire,
Yet hear me say, could I be moved for Shakespeare,
Cause had I ample both for tears and laughter,
Seeing a man (thou knowest him not as I do)
Whose future to his present lot might be
As all the woods of Arden to an acorn;
Whose growing soul outstrips to-day's condition
And leaves each yesterday a league behind it;
Who with a wand of might can summon up
Dead majesties and miracles of women,
Who, but for him, mortality should not
Imagine to itself, much less behold;—
To see this eagle, winged with might to make him
Lord of the air and neighbour of the Sun,
Penned among geese, and plucked by Anna Shakespeare,
Should not cats laugh and angels weep, and I,
Supposing me, as thy mistrust would paint me,
His scorned deserted love, should I not shout,
And sob with very ecstasy of vengeance?

[Sobs and rushes from the room.
Sir Thomas Lucy
[shouting after her].
Thou dost! Enough, and far too much, my lady!

Moles.
O honoured master, why this passion?
Be certain of thy lady's innocence.
'Twas at her bidding I denounced Will Shakespeare.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
A fine proof this! O desperate revenge!
The man is slandered, then, and thou suborned?
O poison thrice distilled!

Moles.
Not so, Sir Thomas.
I do most Christianly believe he poaches,
But would not take my Bible oath upon it.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
This must and shall be sifted. What of the night?

Moles.
What would your honour? it is broad noon-day.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
What of the night? I say.

Moles.
Your honour's meaning?

Sir Thomas Lucy.
Last night the tallest trees were swathed in mist
Even to their naked tops, and chilly dews
Soddened the last year's tattered foliage
That long ago has rustled to the earth.
But overhead the moon, though dim and wearing
Kirtle of green, and traversed oft by clouds,
Yet gave a light malign, for him most apt
Who fain would see, yet fain would not be seen.
A poacher's night.

Moles.
Ah, now I take your honour.
To-night will be the image of the last.
If Shakespeare must be poaching, now's his time.

Sir Thomas Lucy.
Go seek the cot where this boy-pedagogue
Perverts, I gravely fear, the youthful mind,
And, passing, chance to look in casually,
And fall by accident into discourse,
And hint how Hercules on such a night
Surprised the flying stag Arcadian;
Then with a band of faithful foresters
Patrol the woodland glades.

Moles.
Aye, aye, Sir Thomas.

[Exit.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
This cannot fail, for if he scape espial
'Twill evidence his most malicious craft
To satisfaction both of judge and jury,
Namely myself, who in my proper person
Combine those venerable characters,
Adding thereto the plaintiff's. Equally
I'll to the grindstone bring the villain's nose,
If he of horns bereaves, or horns bestows.

[Exit.
Re-enter Lady Lucy.
I've heard, 'tis well, 'tis best, my plot hath prospered.
Repent I now? or not? O mind of woman!
I knew the youth a prodigy, whose fame
Might fill the world, could he but have release
From sordid straits, and fields to show his mettle.
And yet I played with him, and kept him here
Adscriptus glebae, as Sir Thomas saith,
And warped and marred his destiny, till Pride,
Piercing the heart Love found impregnable,
Did unintended passage make for Love.
'Twas Ann, not William, first did move my passion.
O stinging shame! O scoff insufferable!
O Lady Lucy, thou dost jeopardise
Thy eminence and station matronly.
Thy husband (such as Heaven was pleased to make him
In wit and parts, but meaning well by thee)
To slur, and blight the fortune of thy children,
Not at thy lover's bidding, but thy foe's!
Speed, ministering Moles, thou man of rats,
And pluck thy mistress from the pit of peril;
Then Master Shakespeare shall avoid the shire,
And Mistress Shakespeare come upon the parish.

[Exit.