University of Virginia Library

SCENE III.

The Gate of the Tower, surrounded by a crowd of Citizens, endeavoring to enter, who are kept back by a guard of men-at-arms. Enter, from the Tower, First Citizen.
Citizens.
What news, what news?

First Citizen.
What news can you expect?

Second Citizen.
The queen's deliverance.

First C.
Nonsense! where the king
Is chief accuser?

Third Citizen.
Ay; but justice, sir.

First C.
Speak not so loud ere the lords might overhear,
And lose their loyalty.

Third C.
What mean you, friend?

First C.
Her highness is prejudged, and, save in form,
Doomed ere her cause be heard.

Second C.
Made she defence?

First C.
O yes, most eloquent and strongly knit:
Beauty and truth came hand in hand together,
To breathe their essence in each modest word.—
But what avails an angel's purity
Where devils judge? 'T is a bare legal form,
This solemn meeting of her enemies,
Disguising hate in ermined justice' gown.

Second C.
This is blunt talk.

First C.
But true.

Third C.
But dangerous,
To speak and hear.

First C.
What are state trials now,
More than the whetting of the headsman's axe?
We English people have forgot the rights
Which God and nature give to every man:
Our common justice is a common drab—
A pliant doxy, openly deboshed—
That winks beneath her twisted blind at lords,
Doffs it for kings—

Citizens.
Forbear, forbear!

First C.
Pshaw, sirs!
I am a careless, melancholy man,
Who would not change a notion for my life.
I sought this trial of her majesty
To escape myself for a brief interval;
But, as I live, it crowded in such thoughts
Upon my proper griefs, that I would rather
Be damned to wear the memory of a fiend,
Than witness such another.

Third C.
Friends, away!
This man is vile, upon his own confession.
Lord, sirs, what words were these!

First C.
Slink, cowards, slink!
Get to your slavish homes! Brush up your caps!
Practise your loyal lungs! Make ready all
To startle Heaven, when good Queen Anne dies,
With “God preserve Queen Jane!”

Third C.
This man is mad.

Second C.
Nay, sirs, but simple.

First C.
O! that all of you,
Two-legged crawlers to ignoble graves,
Were half so mad as I!

[Exit.]
Third C.
Poor soul, poor soul!
Where is his keeper? He may come to harm.

Second C.
Let us take the fool's advice, and hurry home;
For there 's no chance of entrance to the Tower.

[Exeunt.]