University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

The Queen's Closet, Whitehall.
Enter Queen and Cardinal.
CARDINAL.
I tell you this is wrong; your course is wicked.
Ay, wicked—I must speak. O Mary! shrink not.
This duty, trust me, is an agony.

QUEEN.
Go on, my lord.

CARDINAL.
Rogers died first: what then?
Keener Fanaticism from his ashes
Sprang up, a new-born Phœnix. Hooper, Ridley,
The venerable Latymer; now Cranmer—
You kindle fires to torture dying men:
These fires are lighting living hearts.

QUEEN.
What mean you?
Think you I love to kill? It is—It is—
A terrible duty! Pole, I cannot sleep:
Yet dreams are not more hideous than my thoughts.

CARDINAL.
Sometimes I hope you know not what fiends do,
Armed with your name.

QUEEN.
I know the men you named
Died, obstinate in crime.

CARDINAL.
The men I named!
The poor, by thousands, perish in your flames!

QUEEN.
The poor! the ignorant! I slay not these.

CARDINAL.
Yet these die daily.

QUEEN.
Would that I were dead!
The faculty of power slips from my grasp:
And I remain the servile tool of wrong.
Would I were dead!—It will soon be—What means this?
Enter Gardiner.
My lord of Winton. Does the Council doom
Our people without warrant from ourself?

GARDINER.
None but the obdurate in heresy.
For this we have our warrant: and no less
Will satisfy the Church. To stem the course
Of justice, Madam, trust me, shall endanger
Your precious soul:—nor would it now avail.
The Holy See in this hath masterdom.

QUEEN.
Mean you to menace?

GARDINER.
God forbid! But one
Sits on the Roman throne who knows its rights.

QUEEN.
Rights?

GARDINER.
Interdict and excommunication.

CARDINAL.
Trust me, my lord, the people will not bear
These dire severities.

GARDINER.
We'll look to that.
The people?—ever preaching of the people!
My lord, if they but budge, we'll ride them down.

CARDINAL.
I shame to hear you.

GARDINER.
Wherefore?

CARDINAL.
They are men!
What fills your treasury? The people's hands;
Which labour at the loom, the plough, the helm.
What nerves your power? The thews of common men.
Ye can transmute the peasant's blood to gold:
Refine his sweat to silken sheen and gems.
What then to you is basis of all gain?
The poor serf's heart, who smiles amid his labours,
And kisses every hand that spreads his dole;—
Yet, roused by wrong, in blindness of his strength,
Can pull the pillars of your temples down
In righteous ruin.

QUEEN.
Pole, thou speakest well.

GARDINER.
Under your leave, my liege, his Eminence
Speaks scholarly, not practically, well.
Wise sayings are the playthings of the wise.
As abstract propositions, in their closets,
Men sport with maxims which, in act, would peril
Their heads, and shake down kingdoms.

QUEEN.
Let this cease.
You named but now the Archbishop. He is safe
In recantation.

GARDINER.
He retracts the same.

CARDINAL.
Not so. Renewed persuasion binds him faster.

GARDINER.
I say the recreant shall retract once more,
When urged by hope, not fear.

CARDINAL.
A weak, good man.

GARDINER.
'Twere well to test this instability.
Therefore, upon the ground of his backsliding,
He shall be thoroughly probed.

QUEEN.
No torture, Sir!

GARDINER.
None—surely none—save torture of the mind.

CARDINAL.
Your meaning?

GARDINER.
Simply thus. He hath relapsed:
And therefore merits death. With due permission,
I purpose to prepare him for the stake:
The fear whereof will madden him. We, then,
May hint—that if he shall profess repentance,
From the high pulpit of Saint Mary's church,
The doom he hath incurred may be remitted.
Their leader's palinode shall scandalize
His faction sorely. What says my lord to this?

CARDINAL.
You study the sage Florentine. Your scheme
Is worthy Macchiavelli, and his “Tyrant.”

GARDINER.
The scholar will break out! You better suit
The cloister than the court. Time presses, Madam.

CARDINAL.
Madam, you speak not. Then 'tis time I go.

QUEEN.
Desert me not.

CARDINAL.
Desert not thou thyself.
I have once spoken plainly—twice to speak
Is once too often, when we speak in vain.
[Exit Cardinal.

GARDINER.
Now think, and act, as shall become a Queen;
Enervated no more by this man's folly!

QUEEN.
Presume not thou to slur the Cardinal.

GARDINER.
My liege, the time hath come when duty forces
Words from my lips which may affect my life.
Slay me, but hear me first: hear the King's voice—
The word a husband speaks; who will renounce you,
(In this I speak commissioned) if unheeded:
The word the Church, through me, her minister,
Pronounces; which can excommunicate
(I speak commissioned) all who disobey:
The word our venerable law declares,
Saying, the Sovereign who abandons duty
(I speak commissioned still) forfeits the rights
Accorded to her by her subjects' oaths;
Then when her oath gave pledge reciprocal.
[He kneels.
You are moved! O blame me not or strike me dead—
The death were welcome that might win you back
To the right path, whence if you now depart
You perish.

QUEEN
[much agitated].
I will do what you judge best.

GARDINER.
Nay what the Council judge—then you are safe.

[Exeunt.