University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

—Lochmaben Castle.
Robert Bruce; Robert, Thomas, and Alexander, his Sons; Martha, Macduff, and Dishington.
LORD BRUCE.
Good now—our land is king'd.—Marry, how went
The farce of kinging and of coronation?
My ears are itching for the history—
Describe the doings, ye whose eyes were there
Licking the lux'ry up.

MACDUFF.
Our eyes were there,
But did abhor, like loathsome leprosy,
The representment of that piece of pageant.
Our ears were there, but tingled, as with horror,
At words of such servility as never
Were utter'd yet on Scotland's soil of freedom.
Scoon's palace is empoison'd, and become
A scab, requiring lightnings from on high
To purge off her impurity—Heaven's fire
Alone can cleanse her, and his thunder-bolts
Avenge the guilt contracted in her walls.

MARTHA.
Woe, woe, the more for our abused land!

LORD BRUCE.
Haply, I guess the sequel of thy speech;
But tell it out, that we at once may gather
The complement of our brow-branding shame.

MACDUFF.
The day drew near, appointed for that show;
And Scotland, from her shires and seignories,
Shook out her thousand nobles, who came trooping,
Busk'd in their glossiest holiday attire,
With trains of livery'd vassals, that behind them,
Merrily glistening, trail'd their long array:
King Edward, too, th'arch-priest and ringleader
Of that blazed celebration, without whom
The total rites were dash'd and blank'd with nullity,
Stew'd in a sea of sweat, came stalking up
With tyrannous and most assumptive strides,
Meas'ring the goodly fair land not his own.
They came; and Royal Scoon was quite abash'd
At such a pomp.—Meantime the day arrived,
And now had dawn'd; but dawn was usher'd in
With blackness and with darkness, and with signs
In heaven and earth, all character'd with prodigy;
Day-light was sick, and seem'd reluctantly
Squeezed through the murky crevices of sky;
The bright-eyed sun was jaundiced; men grew pale,
But looking on his weak and washy orb;
Ravens, and birds of hideous hellish scream,
Flutter'd all night upon the palace roofs,
And linger'd in defiance of the morn;
The ground beneath the marble chair did quake,
And split, and utter groans so dismal hollow,
That thrice the nightly-rounding sentinels
Ran from their posts amazed; and 'tis said
Some wizard, or unearthly minister,
With locks of fiery red dipt in the lightning,
Stood in the porch, prohibiting ingress,
With curses of detestable import.

MARTHA.
Revered they his commission or his words?

MACDUFF.
They quash'd the curses burning from his lips;
They dragg'd him down; and in despite of heaven,
And prodigies as blackly palpable
As Egypt's plague of darkness, they usurp'd
Possession of the palace. By and by,
Began the process of inauguration,
Crowning, and baptism with the church's oil,
And buttoning on the robe of broidery,
And shouldering the golden-knobbed sceptre,
And fumbling the superb ring up the finger,
And lolling lazily i' the marble chair—.
All to a jot were nicely pageanted,
That nothing lack'd for gentle John to rise,
Steaming and sanctify'd with unctuous vapour,
A king complete, and titled to a tittle!—

LORD BRUCE.
Who handed him from the altar to the throne?
Thou, dear Macduff?—

MACDUFF.
That task had been mine own,
As it has been my fathers' since the times
Of merry Malcolm, had I not disdain'd
That day to do th'hereditary duty;
I knew the shame, and hid me from my honours;
Howbeit, there lack'd not one, a foreigner,
T'assist the King of Scotland to his throne;
John de St John, a glittering worm o'th' south,
Bespangled thick with golden frippery,
Mincing small steps of meant magnificence,
Trailed his slimy slow Pactolian track
Toward old Gathel's chair; our king, beside him,
Was blurr'd, eclipsed with th'excessive glory
Of his gay southern garments: And no sooner
Our monarch stall'd within his seat, had roll'd
Himself in't round about, than Edward, who
Sat yearning in his majesty of flesh
For that agreed occasion, summons up
Th'anointed fire-new king to do him homage:
O shame, shame, shame! (I should repeat that word
A thousand times, till Scotland's every echo
Rebound it back to our aggrieved ears;)
King John arose and knelt, and did him homage,
Even to the ground he knelt, and did him homage;
Even for his crown he knelt, and did him homage:
I saw him rise; I saw him kneel; I saw
His mean prostration, heard his words more mean,
And blush'd at once for him and for my country.

LORD BRUCE.
Dard'st thou to blush?—Tut, blushing will not do it;
Blushing is ignominious; art thou less
A chained bondsman to the King of England,
By blushing to receive his gilded chains?
I will not blush; I will be fierce with fury
At such an innovation of disgrace;
We could have born it, yea, that cousin John
Was over us preferred to the throne,
But that he, by such slavish truckling-under,
By such a villainous vile compromise,
Involving both himself and us and country,
Has damn'd himself into pre-eminence,
And cringed and crouch'd our liberties away;—
It cannot be—O heaven!—it shall not be—
Out on it, fye, O fye!

R. BRUCE, JUN.
Tell us, my lord,
How brook'd the peerage this too-bare affront?
Sat they contented-foolish on their stools,
Or in their writhen faces saw you mirror'd
Any dislike?

MACDUFF.
A few beside the throne,
Kinsmen or hirelings of King John, the Cumings,
And Abernethies, did make effort at
A feeble acclamation, which appear'd
Suppress'd to death, even in the attempted utterance.
Some hands were clapp'd; but these did squirt so weak,
So scatter'd an applause, that the poor few
Who clapp'd took shame from those that clapped not.
While farther off the throne, and all around
The hall, was heard a murmur indistinct,
As if of words up-rising in the throat,
But back within the bulwarks of the teeth
Repell'd by some strong awe; and heads gave signs
That spoke; and aged peers, ashamed, shed
Vehement tears; and men stole gladly out
To give their irrepressible disdain
Large vent in words, leaving the geminy
Of kings to gossip and confabulate
Till feasting-time come on: But, miserable,
Desolate of guests, starved of expected mouths,
Pass'd the rich banquet, all its thousand covers
Unclaim'd, save by a dozen or two that sat
Shiv'ring with ghastly vacancies between,
At the great tables: And, ere even tide,
Without formality of leave-taking,
The many had absconded and slunk off,
With grudging stomachs, to their different homes,
Where now they sit a-grumbling.

LORD BRUCE.
Better so:
Why, at this sin the very land should gape,
And utter grumbling thunders of reproof:
Come hither, O my sons, 'tis now no time
For shallow shifts and paltering policies;
Vigour and vengeance now are straining up
To th'working-pitch; and Huntington's bold blood
Begins to reel within the family-veins;—
Hither, my sons—

MARTHA.
What means my lord and husband?
And why this hot appeal?

LORD BRUCE.
My Lady Carrick,
Fear not;—thy children ne'er shall bow the knee
Ignobly:—Come, my sons; if e'er my words
Have disciplined your tender hearts to virtue,
If Scotland's name be bound up in your thoughts
With honour, her twin-sister, from the which
No separation is imaginable,
Kneel down and swear before me, by the God
Whose light illumes Earth's thousand mountain-tops,
Nourishing men's hearts with sweet life and liberty,
That never you shall stoop th'allegiant knee,
Or count him king that is not to himself
Freeman and king, but hath enthrall'd himself
T'another land, that he may rule his own,
Abjuring God, who is his only chief:
Kneel down, and swear, my children.

LADY CARRICK.
Swear, my children;
It is a righteous and a noble oath!

R. BRUCE, JUN.
O father, by the God from whom this heart
Receives life's ever-gushing kindly stream!
I swear, that never I will bow the knee
To an usurper, or to him that hath
To an usurper cringed in servile homage.
Perish the hope of reigning to our house,
But Scotland's honour, may it live for ever!

EDWARD, THOMAS, ALEXANDER.
We swear it, father, in our brother's words.

R. BRUCE, JUN.
And sooner may a fierce and bloody death
Choke in our lungs life's ever-pleasing play,
Than in our hearts die out the sentiment
Of country's independence and fair name!

MACDUFF.
I do succeed you with a loud Amen;
I and a thousand more, to whom that word
Of vassalage is more unsufferable,
More killing in its cutting ignominy,
Than murder, or men-crushing homicide.
Our nobles, all except a household few,
Hook'd to King John, are querulous, and up
In chafe that undermines their loyalty.
Already, too, th'impressive multitude
Have caught an inkling that they now are dubb'd
The thralls of England; which fast-flying news,
Like windy gust that ruffles up at once
The many green tops of a summer forest,
Excites and irritates the minds of men
To murmurs, mad remarks, and speculations.
As through the streets of Stirling I did pass,
I mark'd the sullen-brow'd and gloomy populace
Assembling fast into seditious knots;—
I saw the grimy blacksmith's face a-fire
With patriot wrath, th'inflamed weaver riving
His throat with noble oaths, and feeble tailors
Lordly and lion-like with indignation.
I heard a buzz flying from group to group,
Edward and Thraldom! Ha! such words for Scotland?
Destruction rather, thrice-repeated death!
Up, Israel, to your tents! and all the way
Southward, the market-towns and villages,
As if the news had rode on the wind's tail,
Ere my fleet steed's approach, had been apprized,
And sent their people out to th'market-crosses
To flout and rail before the public sun
At degradation of their native land.

LORD BRUCE.
There, there is Scotland's spirit! She will never,
Her plough-boys and her cottiers' sons will never,
Abide this shame: up, then, my countrymen,
Let the rage spread from end to end o'th' isle,
Let rankling discontent and sour despite
Exacerbate your milk of loyalty
To that green gall whereof is gender'd treason,
And render you as peevish and as spleeny
As are the fitful February blasts
Toward the mariner's tormented bark;
That Edward's false dominion may be wreck'd
And dash'd to pieces on your brave displeasure.
For me and for my house—we do abjure him,
And fling his misclaim'd lordship back again
Into the tainted south, where let it rot
For ever in perdition.

MACDUFF.
That it may
The sooner, it behoveth us to keep
These discontented humours ever boiling
Upon the minds of our nobility,
That Edward to his cutting cost may know
King Baliol's homage to be not a public,
But private act,—disclaim'd, repudiated,
And execrated by his countrymen.

LORD BRUCE.
And that our cousin, on his new-found throne,
Fretted and gall'd into uneasiness,
May wish that hated fealty unsworn,
Whereby he has o'ertopp'd us, and now sits
Tottering upon his dizzy summit:—But
It needs that we mature these thoughts aright:—
Much yet remains to talk and to resolve.

[Exeunt.