University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

Richmond.
Walsingham and Davison.
Walsingham.
It is God's wrath, too sure, that holds her hand;
His plague upon this people, to preserve
By her sole mean her deadliest enemy, known
By proof more potent than approof of law
In all points guilty, but on more than all
Toward all this country dangerous. To take off
From the court held last month at Fotheringay
Authority with so full commission given
To pass upon her judgment—suddenly
Cut short by message of some three lines writ
With hurrying hand at midnight, and despatched
To maim its work upon the second day,
What else may this be in so wise a queen
But madness, as a brand to sear the brain
Of one by God infatuate? yea, and now
That she receives the French ambassador
With one more special envoy from his king,
Except their message touch her spleen with fire
And so undo itself, we cannot tell
What doubt may work upon her. Had we but
Some sign more evident of some private seal
Confirming toward her by more personal proof
The Scottish queen's inveteracy, for this
As for our country plucked from imminent death
We might thank God: but with such gracious words
Of piteous challenge and imperial plea
She hath wrought by letter on our mistress' mind,
We may not think her judgment so could slip,
Borne down with passion or forgetfulness,
As to leave bare her bitter root of heart
And core of evil will there labouring.

Davison.
Yet
I see no shade of other surety cast
From any sign of likelihood. It were
Not shameful more than dangerous, though she bade,
To have her prisoner privily made away;
Yet stands the queen's heart wellnigh fixed hereon
When aught may seem to fix it; then as fast
Wavers, but veers to that bad point again
Whence blowing the wind blows down her honour, nor
Brings surety of life with fame's destruction.

Walsingham.
Ay,
We are no Catholic keepers, and his charge
Need fear no poison in our watch-dog's fang,
Though he show honest teeth at her, to threat
Thieves' hands with loyal danger.

Enter Queen Elizabeth, attended by Burghley, Leicester, Hunsdon, Hatton, and others of the Council.
Elizabeth.
No, my lords,
We are not so weak of wit as men that need
Be counselled of their enemies. Blame us not
That we accuse your friendship on this cause
Of too much fearfulness: France we will hear,
Nor doubt but France shall hear us all as loud
As friend or foe may threaten or protest,
Of our own heart advised, and resolute more
Than hearts that need men's counsel. Bid them in.
Enter Châteauneuf and Bellièvre, attended.
From our fair cousin of France what message, sirs?

Bellièvre.
I, madam, have in special charge to lay
The king's mind open to your majesty,
Which gives my tongue first leave of speech more free
Than from a common envoy. Sure it is,
No man more grieves at what his heart abhors,
The counsels of your highness' enemies,
Than doth the king of France: wherein how far
The queen your prisoner have borne part, or may
Seem of their works partaker, he can judge
Nought: but much less the king may understand
What men may stand accusers, who rise up
Judge in so great a matter. Men of law
May lay their charges on a subject: but
The queen of Scotland, dowager queen of France,
And sister made by wedlock to the king,
To none being subject, can be judged of none
Without such violence done on rule as breaks
Prerogative of princes. Nor may man
That looks upon your present majesty
In such clear wise apparent, and retains
Remembrance of your name through all the world
For virtuous wisdom, bring his mind to think
That England's royal-souled Elizabeth,
Being set so high in fame, can so forget
Wise Plato's word, that common souls are wrought
Out of dull iron and slow lead, but kings
Of gold untempered with so vile alloy
As makes all metal up of meaner men.
But say this were not thus, and all men's awe
Were from all time toward kingship merely vain,
And state no more worth reverence, yet the plea
Were nought which here your ministers pretend,
That while the queen of Scots lives you may live
No day that knows not danger. Were she dead,
Rather might then your peril wax indeed
To shape and sense of heavier portent, whom
The Catholic states now threat not, nor your land,
For this queen's love, but rather for their faith's,
Whose cause, were she by violent hand removed,
Could be but furthered, and its enterprise
Put on more strong and prosperous pretext; yea,
You shall but draw the invasion on this land
Whose threat you so may think to stay, and bring
Imminence down of inroad. Thus far forth
The queen of Scots hath for your person been
Even as a targe or buckler which has caught
All intercepted shafts against your state
Shot, or a stone held fast within your hand,
Which, if you cast it thence in fear or wrath
To smite your adversary, is cast away,
And no mean left therein for menace. If
You lay but hand upon her life, albeit
There were that counselled this, her death will make
Your enemies weapons of their own despair
And give their whetted wrath excuse and edge
More plausibly to strike more perilously.
Your grace is known for strong in foresight: we
These nineteen years of your wise reign have kept
Fast watch in France upon you: of those claims
Which lineally this queen here prisoner may
Put forth on your succession have you made
The stoutest rampire of your rule: and this
Is grown a byword with us, that their cause
Who shift the base whereon their policies lean
Bows down toward ruin: and of loyal heart
This will I tell you, madam, which hath been
Given me for truth assured of one whose place
Affirms him honourable, how openly
A certain prince's minister that well
May stand in your suspicion says abroad
That for his master's greatness it were good
The queen of Scots were lost already, seeing
He is well assured the Catholics here should then
All wholly range them on his master's part.
Thus long hath reigned your highness happily,
Who have loved fair temperance more than violence: now,
While honour bids have mercy, wisdom holds
Equal at least the scales of interest. Think
What name shall yours be found in time far hence,
Even as you deal with her that in your hand
Lies not more subject than your fame to come
In men's repute that shall be. Bid her live,
And ever shall my lord stand bound to you
And you for ever firm in praise of men.

Elizabeth.
I am sorry, sir, you are hither come from France
Upon no better errand. I appeal
To God for judge between my cause and hers
Whom here you stand for. In this realm of mine
The queen of Scots sought shelter, and therein
Hath never found but kindness; for which grace
In recompense she hath three times sought my life.
No grief that on this head yet ever fell
Shook ever from mine eyes so many a tear
As this last plot upon it. I have read
As deep I doubt me in as many books
As any queen or prince in Christendom,
Yet never chanced on aught so strange and sad
As this my state's calamity. Mine own life
Is by mere nature precious to myself,
And in mine own realm I can live not safe.
I am a poor lone woman, girt about
With secret enemies that perpetually
Lay wait for me to kill me. From your king
Why have not I my traitor to my hands
Delivered up, who now this second time
Hath sought to slay me, Morgan? On my part,
Had mine own cousin Hunsdon here conspired
Against the French king's life, he had found not so
Refuge of me, nor even for kindred's sake
From the edge of law protection: and this cause
Needs present evidence of this man's mouth.

Bellièvre.
Madam, there stand against the queen of Scots
Already here in England on this charge
So many and they so dangerous witnesses
No need can be to bring one over more:
Nor can the king show such unnatural heart
As to send hither a knife for enemies' hands
To cut his sister's throat. Most earnestly
My lord expects your resolution: which
If we receive as given against his plea,
I must crave leave to part for Paris hence.
Yet give me pardon first if yet once more
I pray your highness be assured, and so
Take heed in season, you shall find this queen
More dangerous dead than living. Spare her life,
And not my lord alone but all that reign
Shall be your sureties in all Christian lands
Against all scathe of all conspiracies
Made on her party: while such remedies' ends
As physic states with bloodshedding, to cure
Danger by death, bring fresh calamities
Far oftener forth than the old are healed of them
Which so men thought to medicine. To refrain
From that red-handed way of rule, and set
Justice no higher than mercy sits beside,
Is the first mean of kings' prosperity
That would reign long: nor will my lord believe
Your highness could put off yourself so much
As to reverse and tread upon the law
That you thus long have kept and honourably:
But should this perilous purpose hold right on,
I am bounden by my charge to say, the king
Will not regard as liable to your laws
A queen's imperial person, nor will hold
Her death as but the general wrong of kings
And no more his than as his brethren's all,
But as his own and special injury done,
More than to these injurious.

Elizabeth.
Doth your lord
Bid you speak thus?

Bellièvre.
Ay, madam: from his mouth
Had I command what speech to use.

Elizabeth.
You have done
Better to speak than he to send it. Sir,
You shall not presently depart this land
As one denied of mere discourtesy.
I will return an envoy of mine own
To speak for me at Paris with the king.
You shall bear back a letter from my hand,
And give your lord assurance, having seen,
I cannot be so frighted with men's threats
That they shall not much rather move my mind
To quicken than to slack the righteous doom
Which none must think by menace to put back,
Or daunt it with defiance. Sirs, good day.
[Exeunt Ambassadors.
I were as one belated with false lights
If I should think to steer my darkling way
By twilight furtherance of their wiles and words.
Think you, my lords, France yet would have her live?

Burghley.
If there be other than the apparent end
Hid in this mission to your majesty,
Mine envoys can by no means fathom it,
Who deal for me at Paris: fear of Spain
Lays double hand as 'twere upon the king,
Lest by removal of the queen of Scots
A way be made for peril in the claim
More potent then of Philip; and if there come
From his Farnese note of enterprise
Or danger this way tending, France will yet
Cleave to your friendship though his sister die.

Elizabeth.
So, in your mind, this half-souled brother would
Steer any way that might keep safe his sail
Against a southern wind, which here, he thinks,
Her death might strengthen from the north again
To blow against him off our subject straits,
Made servile then and Spanish? Yet perchance
There swells behind our seas a heart too high
To bow more easily down, and bring this land
More humbly to such handling, than their waves
Bow down to ships of strangers, or their storms
To breath of any lord on earth but God.
What thinks our cousin?

Hunsdon.
That if Spain or France
Or both be stronger than the heart in us
Which beats to battle ere they menace, why,
In God's name, let them rise and make their prey
Of what was England: but if neither be,
The smooth-cheeked French man-harlot, nor that hand
Which holp to light Rome's fires with English limbs,
Let us not keep to make their weakness strong
A pestilence here alive in England, which
Gives force to their faint enmities, and burns
Half the heart out of loyal trust and hope
With heat that kindles treason.

Elizabeth.
By this light,
I have heard worse counsel from a wise man's tongue
Than this clear note of forthright soldiership.
How say you, Dudley, to it?

Leicester.
Madam, ere this
You have had my mind upon the matter, writ
But late from Holland, that no public stroke
Should fall upon this princess, who may be
By privy death more happily removed
Without impeach of majesty, nor leave
A sign against your judgment, to call down
Blame of strange kings for wrong to kingship wrought
Though right were done to justice.

Elizabeth.
Of your love
We know it is that comes this counsel; nor,
Had we such friends of all our servants, need
Our mind be now distraught with dangerous doubts
That find no screen from dangers. Yet meseems
One doubt stands now removed, if doubt there were
Of aught from Scotland ever: Walsingham,
You should have there intelligence whereof
To make these lords with us partakers.

Walsingham.
Nay,
Madam, no more than from a trustless hand
Protest and promise: of those twain that come
Hot on these Frenchmen's heels in embassy,
He that in counsel on this cause was late
One with my lord of Leicester now, to rid
By draught of secret death this queen away,
Bears charge to say as these gone hence have said
In open audience, but by personal note
Hath given me this to know, that howsoe'er
His king indeed desire her life be spared
Much may be wrought upon him, would your grace
More richly line his ragged wants with gold
And by full utterance of your parliament
Approve him heir in England.

Elizabeth.
Ay! no more?
God's blood! what grace is proffered us at need,
And on what mild conditions! Say I will not
Redeem such perils at so dear a price,
Shall not our pensioner too join hands with France
And pay my gold with iron barter back
At edge of sword he dares not look upon,
They tell us, for the scathe and scare he took
Even in this woman's womb when shot and steel
Undid the manhood in his veins unborn
And left his tongue's threats handless?

Walsingham.
Men there be,
Your majesty must think, who bear but ill,
For pride of country and high-heartedness,
To see the king they serve your servant so
That not his mother's life and once their queen's
Being at such point of peril can enforce
One warlike word of his for chance of war
Conditional against you. Word came late
From Edinburgh that there the citizens
With hoot and hiss had bayed him through the streets
As he went heartless by; of whom they had heard
This published saying, that in his personal mind
The blood of kindred or affinity
So much not binds us as the friendship pledged
To them that are not of our blood: and this
Stands clear for certain, that no breath of war
Shall breathe from him against us though she die,
Except his titular claim be reft from him
On our succession: and that all his mind
Is but to reign unpartnered with a power
Which should weigh down that half his kingdom's weight
Left to his hand's share nominally in hold:
And for his mother, this would he desire,
That she were kept from this day to her death
Close prisoner in one chamber, never more
To speak with man or woman: and hereon
That proclamation should be made of her
As of one subject formally declared
To the English law whereby, if she offend
Again with iterance of conspiracy,
She shall not as a queen again be tried,
But as your vassal and a private head
Live liable to the doom and stroke of death.

Elizabeth.
She is bounden to him as he long since to her,
Who would have given his kingdom up at least
To his dead father's slayer, in whose red hand
How safe had lain his life too doubt may guess,
Which yet kept dark her purpose then on him,
Dark now no more to usward. Think you then
That they belie him, whose suspicion saith
His ear and heart are yet inclined to Spain,
If from that brother-in-law that was of ours
And would have been our bridegroom he may win
Help of strange gold and foreign soldiership,
With Scottish furtherance of those Catholic lords
Who are stronger-spirited in their faith than ours,
Being harried more of heretics, as they say,
Than these within our borders, to root out
The creed there stablished now, and do to death
Its ministers, with all the lords their friends,
Lay hands on all strong places there, and rule
As prince upon their party? since he fain
From ours would be divided, and cast in
His lot with Rome against us too, from these
Might he but earn assurance of their faith,
Revolting from his own. May these things be
More than mere muttering breath of trustless lies,
And half his heart yet hover toward our side
For all such hope or purpose?

Walsingham.
Of his heart
We know not, madam, surely; nor doth he
Who follows fast on their first envoy sent,
And writes to excuse him of his message here
On her behalf apparent, but in sooth
Aimed otherwise; the Master I mean of Gray,
Who swears me here by letter, if he be not
True to the queen of England, he is content
To have his head fall on a scaffold: saying,
To put from him this charge of embassy
Had been his ruin, but the meaning of it
Is modest and not menacing: whereto
If you will yield not yet to spare the life
So near its forfeit now, he thinks it well
You should be pleased by some commission given
To stay by the way his comrade and himself,
Or bid them back.

Elizabeth.
What man is this then, sent
With such a knave to fellow?

Walsingham.
No such knave,
But still your prisoner's friend of old time found:
Sir Robert Melville.

Elizabeth.
And an honest man
As faith might wish her servants: but what pledge
Will these produce me for security
That I may spare this dangerous life and live
Unscathed of after practice?

Walsingham.
As I think,
The king's self and his whole nobility
Will be her personal pledges; and her son,
If England yield her to his hand in charge,
On no less strait a bond will undertake
For her safe keeping.

Elizabeth.
That were even to arm
With double power mine adversary, and make him
The stronger by my hand to do me hurt—
Were he mine adversary indeed: which yet
I will not hold him. Let them find a mean
For me to live unhurt and save her life,
It shall well please me. Say this king of Scots
Himself would give his own inheritance up
Pretended in succession, if but once
Her hand were found or any friend's of hers
Again put forth upon me for her sake,
Why, haply so might hearts be satisfied
Of lords and commons then to let her live.
But this I doubt he had rather take her life
Himself than yield up to us for pledge: and less,
These men shall know of me, I will not take
In price of her redemption: which were else,
And haply may in no wise not be held,
To this my loyal land and mine own trust
A deadlier stroke and blast of sound more dire
Than noise of fleets invasive.

Walsingham.
Surely so
Would all hearts hold it, madam, in that land
That are not enemies of the land and yours;
For ere the doom had been proclaimed an hour
Which gave to death your main foe's head and theirs
Yourself have heard what fire of joy brake forth
From all your people: how their church-towers all
Rang in with jubilant acclaim of bells
The day that bore such tidings, and the night
That laughed aloud with lightning of their joy
And thundered round its triumph: twice twelve hours
This tempest of thanksgiving roared and shone
Sheer from the Solway's to the Channel's foam
With light as from one festal-flaming hearth
And sound as of one trumpet: not a tongue
But praised God for it, or heart that leapt not up,
Save of your traitors and their country's: these
Withered at heart and shrank their heads in close,
As though the bright sun's were a basilisk's eye,
And light, that gave all others comfort, flame
And smoke to theirs of hell's own darkness, whence
Such eyes were blinded or put out with fire.

Elizabeth.
Yea, I myself, I mind me, might not sleep
Those twice twelve hours thou speak'st of. By God's light,
Be it most in love of me or fear of her
I know not, but my people seems in sooth
Hot and anhungered on this trail of hers:
Nor is it a people bloody-minded, used
To lap the life up of an enemy's vein
Who bleeds to death unweaponed: our good hounds
Will course a quarry soldierlike in war,
But rage not hangmanlike upon the prey,
To flesh their fangs on limbs that strive not: yet
Their hearts are hotter on this course than mine,
Which most was deadliest aimed at.

Walsingham.
Even for that
How should not theirs be hot as fire from hell
To burn your danger up and slay that soul
Alive that seeks it? Thinks your majesty
There beats a heart where treason hath not turned
All English blood to poison, which would feel
No deadlier pang of dread more deathful to it
To hear of yours endangered than to feel
A sword against its own life bent, or know
Death imminent as darkness overhead
That takes the noon from one man's darkening eye
As must your death from all this people's? You
Are very England: in your light of life
This living land of yours walks only safe,
And all this breathing people with your breath
Breathes unenslaved, and draws at each pulse in
Freedom: your eye is light of theirs, your word
As God's to comfort England, whose whole soul
Is made with yours one, and her witness you
That Rome or hell shall take not hold on her
Again till God be wroth with us so much
As to reclaim for heaven the star that yet
Lights all your land that looks on it, and gives
Assurance higher than danger dares assail
Save in this lady's name and service, who
Must now from you take judgment.

Elizabeth.
Must! by God,
I know not must but as a word of mine,
My tongue's and not mine ear's familiar. Sirs,
Content yourselves to know this much of us,
Or having known remember, that we sent
The Lord of Buckhurst and our servant Beale
To acquaint this queen our prisoner with the doom
Confirmed on second trial against her, saying
Her word can weigh not down the weightier guilt
Approved upon her, and by parliament
Since fortified with sentence. Yea, my lords,
Ye should forget not how by message then
I bade her know of me with what strong force
Of strenuous and invincible argument
I am urged to hold no more in such delay
The process of her execution, being
The seed-plot of these late conspiracies,
Their author and chief motive: and am told
That if I yield not mine the guilt must be
In God's and in the whole world's suffering sight
Of all the miseries and calamities
To ensue on my refusal: whence, albeit
I know not yet how God shall please to incline
My heart on that behalf, I have thought it meet
In conscience yet that she should be forewarned,
That so she might bethink her of her sins
Done both toward God offensive and to me
And pray for grace to be true penitent
For all these faults: which, had the main fault reached
No further than mine own poor person, God
Stands witness with what truth my heart protests
I freely would have pardoned. She to this
Makes bitter answer as of desperate heart
All we may wreak our worst upon her; whom
Having to death condemned, we may fulfil
Our wicked work, and God in Paradise
With just atonement shall requite her. This
Ye see is all the pardon she will ask,
Being only, and even as 'twere with prayer, desired
To crave of us forgiveness: and thereon
Being by Lord Buckhurst charged on this point home
That by her mean the Catholics here had learnt
To hold her for their sovereign, on which cause
Nor my religion nor myself might live
Uncharged with danger while her life should last,
She answering gives God thanks aloud to be
Held of so great account upon his side,
And in God's cause and in the church of God's
Rejoicingly makes offering of her life;
Which I, God knows how unrejoicingly,
Can scarce, ye tell me, choose but take, or yield
At least for you to take it. Yet, being told
It is not for religion she must die,
But for a plot by compass of her own
Laid to dethrone me and destroy, she casts
Again this answer barbed with mockery back,
She was not so presumptuous born, to aspire
To two such ends yet ever: yea, so far
She dwelt from such desire removed in heart,
She would not have me suffer by her will
The fillip of a finger: though herself
Be persecuted even as David once
And her mishap be that she cannot so
Fly by the window forth as David: whence
It seems she likens us to Saul, and looks
Haply to see us as on Mount Gilboa fallen,
Where yet, for all the shooters on her side,
Our shield shall be not vilely cast away,
As of one unanointed. Yet, my lords,
If England might but by my death attain
A state more flourishing with a better prince,
Gladly would I lay down my life; who have
No care save only for my people's sake
To keep it: for myself, in all the world
I see no great cause why for all this coil
I should be fond to live or fear to die.
If I should say unto you that I mean
To grant not your petition, by my faith,
More should I so say haply than I mean:
Or should I say I mean to grant it, this
Were, as I think, to tell you of my mind
More than is fit for you to know: and thus
I must for all petitionary prayer
Deliver you an answer answerless.
Yet will I pray God lighten my dark mind
That being illumined it may thence foresee
What for his church and all this commonwealth
May most be profitable: and this once known,
My hand shall halt not long behind his will.