University of Virginia Library

SCENE V.

The Queen's Apartments in the Palace. A table spread. Queen Anne, Maids, and Attendants, at the back of the scene.
Queen Anne.
(Advancing.)
Ah, me! what fearful difference 't is, to view
The self-same object unattained, and won!
For memories are the shadows of our hopes,
That ever lengthen as our day declines,
Till death's oblivion wraps them both in night.
When, from the lowly vale of common life,
Ambition points us to the sunny tops
Of the great hills of power, whose even sides,
Ascending smoothly through the golden haze,
Appear like stepping-stones from earth to heaven—
Ah! who could tell the peril of the road
That must be braved to reach their eminence?
What stony paths—what thorny barriers—
What humble crawling under threatening rocks—
What dizzy ledges, wooing nerveless fear
To swift forgetfulness—what hungry chasms,
That picture death within their roaring jaws,
And stagger reason on his solid throne—
Must be o'erpassed, ere on the toppling heights,
Amidst the region of perpetual storms,
We stand alone in chill supremacy!
(Enter Thomas Wyatt.)
Quick, Wyatt, quick! have my poor friends a hope?

Wyatt.
But in the mercy of your enemies,
Or the most tardy justice of the king.

Queen A.
Is this your zeal? O, apathetic man!
Can you see Rochford, noble, loyal Rochford—
Your friend, your playmate—one who ever bore
His gathering honors with such humbleness
That my hot pride has chid him—can you see
George Boleyn pining in a dreary cell,
While May's warm sunshine fills the universe?
Bethink you, Wyatt, of those faithful men,
Weston, and Brereton, and Henry Norris,
Whose days, like fetters, gall their manly souls,
In the cramped limits of a prison-house,
While you are slack to free them!

Wyatt.
Gracious Heaven!—

Queen A.
Deeds would be better, sir, than windy oaths.
Lend me your manhood for a little day,
And, by my soul, I'll breach their prison doors,
Or light a blaze in England that shall scare
These skulking enemies of theirs and mine
Into a frenzy! Heaven can testify
How much it grieves me that their doleful fate
Seems woven with the tissue of my own!
For, were it not, their wrongs would muster friends,
And Heaven would launch an angry squadron down
To succor virtue such as they possess.
But I—O, God! I stand here all alone,
Shunned by mankind, and tossed by careless chance
To glut the appetite of enmity—
A helpless woman, full of wrongs and grief,
With nothing left me but the conscious power
By which the guiltless bear their martyrdom!

Wyatt.
O, woful day!

Queen A.
Have you but vain regrets?

Wyatt.
Hear me, your highness.

Queen A.
Words, and nothing more!
Has innocence no power? has justice fled
The side of right? or is it mere romance,
To prate with poets of a heavenly might
That nerves the weakness of a righteous cause?
Fie! dreamer, fie!

Wyatt.
I ask you not to laud
My wakeful labor, day and night bestowed,
Without a thought of safety for myself,
Upon this hopeless matter; all I ask
Is thankless justice for a pure intent.
I grant my efforts were of no avail—
I grant some other and more skilful hand
Might have achieved a work beyond my power;
But yet, believe, all intellectual strength,
All hidden cunning, and all bold resource,
That nature gave me, were employed in vain
Ere I despaired.

Queen A.
What was this mighty work?
Had you the labor of a Hercules,
That you so groan? Upon my life, I think
This wondrous malady will heal itself
Without your aid.—Shake not your solemn head.
The king still loves me:—I have faith in love.

Wyatt.
Ha! have you faith? then see my very heart.
My memory reaches not that early day
When I first loved you. Since remembrance threw
The bright reflections of my childish thoughts
Into the gloom of manhood's troubled hours,
There is not a gleam, howe'er remote and dim,
But owes its splendor to my love for you;
There is not a hope—

Queen A.
Hold, traitor, on your life!
Are you conspiring with my subtle foes?
My maids observe us.—Would you ruin me?
Is my last friend corrupted? Dare you, sir,
Prattle this nonsense to your queen? O, base!
Thus to presume on my defencelessness;
Implying frailty which, a week ago,
You had better died than barely hinted at!

Wyatt.
You thought me lukewarm.

Queen A.
No; I only meant
To whet the edge of blunted zeal.

[Noise without]
Wyatt.
How now?
Prophetic fear!

(Enter Duke of Norfolk, Duke of Suffolk, and other Lords of the Council, with Sir William Kingston and Guard.)
Queen A.
Good welcome, gentlemen!
Bear you a message from his majesty?
[A long pause.]
What, not a word?

Suffolk.
We do.

Queen A.
Do what, your grace?

Suf.
Bear you a message from the king.

Queen A.
Ha! ha!
[Laughing.]
Your answer lagged so far behind my query,
As quite to rupture sense.

Norfolk.
Come, Suffolk, come;
No faltering now! [Apart to Suffolk.]


Suf.
The king has ordered us
To see the person of her majesty
Placed in your hands, Sir William, until he
Makes such disposure of her as may suit
His further pleasure.

Queen A.
Back, ye urgent tears;
I'll never pay your tribute to my foes! [Aside.]

If 't is the pleasure of his majesty
To change my present lodgings for the Tower,
Like a true subject, I obey.

Wyatt.
Brave, brave!
Nature created thee from royal clay! [Aside.]


Kingston.
I will await your highness' preparation

Queen A.
I need none, sir.

Nor.
Away, away, Sir William!

Queen A.
Well said, good uncle.

[Exeunt all but Wyatt.]
Wyatt.
Now, were I a beast,
And Norfolk but another, I would tear
The bitter heart out of his spiteful breast!
But as a man—O, as a gentleman,
A Christian gentleman—I thank his grace
That he allows my littleness to crawl
'Neath God's own light, and fret my weary soul
With gazing on his huge monstrosity!
What next? what next?—Divorce! And then, poor queen,
She'll sit her down, like injured Katharine,
And feed her heart with sorrow, till the bane
Of cankering grief has poisoned every spring
That pulses life along her shattered frame;
And then she'll lapse, by scarce perceived degrees,
Into her grave; and then—why, then the world
Will roar and scramble o'er her resting-place,
And play the same stale antics which she saw,
And dash its brimming tides of ruddy life
Across her tomb, without a care for her.—
O, should we laugh or weep at human fate?
There goes to shame the only mortal thing
I ever loved, with all a poet's love,
And I ask that, in mockery of myself!

[Weeps.]
[Scene closes.]