SCENE I.
The Queen's Cabinet at Windsor.
Enter Eleanor with a letter.
Eleanor.
What says our correspondent, the Archbishop?
This patch'd-up truce between the King and him
Which has allow'd his late return to England,
And re-instatement in full power and pride,
Leaves them as bitter enemies as before.
Either would juggle, or jugulate the other,
Could he do so with safeness. But let's see.
(Reading).
“Sovereign Madam,
In answer to your Highness's letter
touching a certain Dædalean work of my careless days, to
wit the Labyrinth called of Woodstock, accept this: I can
be an open antagonist to a king, but a secret one to no man;
neither can petty intrigues of the royal bower concern the
Primate of all England. Nevertheless,
“Your Highness's well-wisher,
“Thomas Canterbury.”
—Thomas Canterbury, what a Saint you are! Pride makes
him traitor on a large scale, yet keeps him true to his little
allegiance! But for his pride alone, he would love to
pinch the King's heart by this corner just as much as I do.
—Now, what's to be done? If the dwarf comes back like
others from their voyage of discovery, with the skin of an
unknown weasel, and an extraordinary cockle-shell found on
the coast, my own brain must work. Rather than lose the
occasion, now Henry's abroad, I'll sack Woodstock itself,
even if my Regent son will not wink at it; and I am sowing
a little rebellion-seed in his mind against his to me disloyal
father. Yes, Eleanor will risk imprisonment for the rest of
her life, but this “Dædalean work” of our Archbishop shall
lay open itself and its monster. What! baffle the Queen's
Majesty!
[Exit.
