University of Virginia Library

Scene VI

—Dunbar; a room opening on the courtyard. Lethington is discovered guarded by Blackadder
Lethington
So we are captives!

Blackadder
With the queen's consent: ’tis her doing.

Lethington

It was her grace's command that she should be met at Foulsbrigg, that her bridle-rein should be turned by Lord Bothwell, her people disarmed and led captive to Dunbar! All this is of her connivance!

Blackadder

Well, she provoked it. A lack of gunners on the walls gives permission to enter the keep. I pray you let not my lord find you in this temper, or, I advertise you, you will get but slaughter at his hands.

Lethington

You give honest counsel. I have already had contest for my life; if my sovereign lady had not laid her white hands upon my breast, I had perished like Riccio at her feet.

Blackadder

I must now release my lord Melvil.

Lethington

And detain an honest penman, a poor secretary, worth no man's malice? I shall scratch the stones with my sonnets if you do not deliver me.

Blackadder

I doubt not, when you have slept on this business, you will devise a method of escape. Mr. Secretary, I shall not too narrowly observe you. ’Tis the lady must be guarded for my master with all vigilance.

Exit

Lethington

Will that villain mishandle her? Morton blurted out the miscreant had hope to be her bridegroom, and I let it pass. By heaven, I am persuaded responsibility lies about the purlieus of inaction. The stripping thieves may be corrigible; the core of evil is in the eye of the Levite.(Pacing.)
A pretty adventure for St. Mark's Even, the April sunshine tracing my prison-bars against the wall. I have been an unfaithful witness; but my sovereign lady shall never know of my infamy: for I had as lief speak of the base things of my nature to God as to a woman. There are vaults for the lodging of vileness: bats are but birds of a sick conscience. Yet I know not why I should take on me the whole enormity of her perdition, seeing she is wrecked of her own nature, as our first Mother, though the snake lay in the grass. Would that Eve had been longer in the tutelage of the serpent, and refrained from blabbing to her husband of matter that, delicately handled, had secured her supremacy! But a woman can by no means keep a good thing to herself. My mistress stuffs every smile with incomparable favours. Then to repulse him!—That repulse has been her ruin. Let a woman set the man who loves her at her left hand, if she crave a fiend for her torment. Alack, she has lost God's favour, her own reputation, and the hearts of

all England, Ireland, and Scotland. All hearts? Yes, she has lost them all; but she has covered me, the chameleon, with the very hue of her misfortune. I am hers till death. She shall undo me slowly.