ELIZABETH.

Ha! God's blood!

Art thou from tutor of philosophy late

Grown counsellor too and more than counsellor, thou

To appoint me where and what this hand of mine

Shall at thy beck obsequiously subscribe

And follow on thy finger? By God's death,

What if it please me now not sign at all?

This letter of my kinswoman's last writ

Hath more compulsion in it, and more power

To enforce my pity, than a thousand tongues

Dictating death against her in mine ear

Of mine own vassal subjects. Here but now

She writes me she thanks God with all her heart

That it hath pleased him by the mean of me

To make an end of her life's pilgrimage,

Which hath been weary to her: and doth not ask

To see its length drawn longer, having had

Too much experience of its bitterness:

But only doth entreat me, since she may

Look for no favour at their zealous hands

Who are first in councils of my ministry,

That only I myself will grant her prayers;

Whereof the first is, since she cannot hope

For English burial with such Catholic rites

As here were used in time of the ancient kings,

Mine ancestors and hers, and since the tombs

Lie violated in Scotland of her sires,

That so soon ever as her enemies

Shall with her innocent blood be satiated,

Her body by her servants may be borne

To some ground consecrated, there to be

Interred: and rather, she desires, in France,

Where sleep her honoured mother's ashes; so

At length may her poor body find the rest

Which living it has never known: thereto,

She prays me, from the fears she hath of those

To whose harsh hand I have abandoned her,

She may not secretly be done to death,

But in her servants' sight and others', who

May witness her obedience kept and faith

To the true church, and guard her memory safe

From slanders haply to be blown abroad

Concerning her by mouths of enemies: last,

She asks that her attendants, who so well

And faithfully through all her miseries past

Have served her, may go freely where they please,

And lose not those small legacies of hers

Which poverty can yet bequeath to them.

This she conjures me by the blood of Christ,

Our kinship, and my grandsire's memory,

Who was her father's grandsire and a king,

And by the name of queen she bears with her

Even to the death, that I will not refuse,

And that a word in mine own hand may thus

Assure her, who will then as she hath lived

Die mine affectionate sister and prisoner. See,

Howe'er she have sinned, what heart were mine, if this

Drew no tears from me: not the meanest soul

That lives most miserable but with such words

Must needs draw down men's pity.

DAVISON.

Sure it is,

This queen hath skill of writing: and her hand

Hath manifold eloquence with various voice

To express discourse of sirens or of snakes,

A mermaid's or a monster's, uttering best

All music or all malice. Here is come

A letter writ long since of hers to you

From Sheffield Castle, which for shame or fear

She durst not or she would not thence despatch,

Sent secretly to me from Fotheringay,

Not from her hand, but with her own hand writ,

So foul of import and malignity

I durst not for your majesty's respect

With its fierce infamies afire from hell

Offend your gracious eyesight: but because

Your justice by your mercy's ignorant hand

Hath her fair eyes put out, and walks now blind

Even by the pit's edge deathward, pardon me

If what you never should have seen be shown

By hands that rather would take fire in hand

Than lay in yours this writing.

 

Gives her a letter.

 

ELIZABETH.

By this light,

Whate'er be here, thou hadst done presumptuously,

And Walsingham thy principal, to keep

Aught from mine eyes that being to me designed

Might even with most offence enlighten them.

Here is her hand indeed; and she takes up

 

Reading.

 

In gracious wise enough the charge imposed

By promise on her and desire of ours,

How loth soe'er she be, regretfully

To bring such things in question of discourse,

Yet with no passion but sincerity,

As God shall witness her, declares to us

What our good lady of Shrewsbury said to her

Touching ourself in terms ensuing; whereto

Answering she chid this dame for such belief,

And reprehended for licentious tongue,

To speak so lewdly of us: which herself

Believes not, knowing the woman's natural heart

And evil will as then to usward. Here

She writes no more than I would well believe

Of her as of the countess. Ha!

DAVISON.

Your grace

Shall but defile and vex your eyes and heart

To read these villainies through.

ELIZABETH.

God's death, man! peace:

Thou wert not best incense me toward thine own,

Whose eyes have been before me in them. What!

Was she not mad to write this? One that had

Your promise – lay with you times numberless –

All license and all privateness that may

Be used of wife and husband! yea, of her

And more dead men than shame remembers. God

Shall stand her witness – with the devil of hell

For sponsor to her vows, whose spirit in her

Begot himself this issue. Ha, the duke!

– Nay, God shall give me patience – and his knave,

And Hatton – God have mercy! nay, but hate,

Hate and constraint and rage have wrecked her wits,

And continence of life cut off from lust,

– This common stale of Scotland, that has tried

The sins of three rank nations, and consumed

Their veins whose life she took not – Italy,

France that put half this poison in her blood,

And her own kingdom that being sick therewith

Vomited out on ours the venomous thing

Whose head we set not foot on – but may God

Make my fame fouler through the world than hers

And ranker in men's record, if I spare

The she-wolf that I saved, the woman-beast,

Wolf-woman – how the Latin rings we know,

And what lewd lair first reared her, and whose hand

Writ broad across the Louvre and Holyrood

Lupanar – but no brothel ever bred

Or breathed so rank a soul's infection, spawned

Or spat such foulness in God's face and man's

Or festered in such falsehood as her breath

Strikes honour sick with, and the spirit of shame

Dead as her fang shall strike herself, and send

The serpent that corruption calls her soul

To vie strange venoms with the worm of hell

And make the face of darkness and the grave

Blush hotter with the fires wherein that soul

Sinks deeper than damnation.

DAVISON.

Let your grace

Think only that but now the thing is known

And self-discovered which too long your love

Too dangerously hath cherished; and forget

All but that end which yet remains for her,

That right by pity be not overcome.

ELIZABETH.

God pity so my soul as I do right,

And show me no more grace alive or dead

Than I do justice here. Give me again

That warrant I put by, being foolish: yea,

Thy word spake sooth – my soul's eyes were put out –

I could not see for pity. Thou didst well –

I am bounden to thee heartily – to cure

My sight of this distemper, and my soul.

Here in God's sight I set mine hand, who thought

Never to take this thing upon it, nor

Do God so bitter service. Take this hence:

And let me see no word nor hear of her

Till the sun see not such a soul alive.

 

 

Act V

Mary Stuart
Scene I. Mary's Chamber in Fotheringay Castle

Mary Stuart and Mary Beaton.

 

MARY STUART.

 

Sings.

 

O Lord my God,

I have trusted in thee;

O Jesu my dearest one,

Now set me free.

In prison's oppression,

In sorrow's obsession,

I weary for thee.

With sighing and crying

Bowed down as dying,

I adore thee, I implore thee, set me free!

 

Free are the dead: yet fain I would have had

Once, before all captivity find end,

Some breath of freedom living. These that come,

I think, with no such message, must not find,

For all this lameness of my limbs, a heart

As maimed in me with sickness. Three years gone,

When last I parted from the earl marshal's charge,

I did not think to see his face again

Turned on me as his prisoner. Now his wife

Will take no jealousy more to hear of it,

I trust, albeit we meet not as unfriends,

If it be mortal news he brings me. Go,

If I seem ready, as meseems I should,

And well arrayed to bear myself indeed

None otherwise than queenlike in their sight,

Bid them come in.

 

Exit Mary Beaton.

 

I cannot tell at last

If it be fear or hope that should expect

Death: I have had enough of hope, and fear

Was none of my familiars while I lived

Such life as had more pleasant things to lose

Than death or life may now divide me from.

'Tis not so much to look upon the sun

With eyes that may not lead us where we will,

And halt behind the footless flight of hope

With feet that may not follow: nor were aught

So much, of all things life may think to have,

That one not cowardly born should find it worth

The purchase of so base a price as this,

To stand self-shamed as coward. I do not think

This is mine end that comes upon me: but

I had liefer far it were than, were it not,

That ever I should fear it.

 

Enter Kent, Shrewsbury, Beale, and Sheriff.

 

Sirs, good day:

With such good heart as prisoners have, I bid

You and your message welcome.

KENT.

Madam, this

The secretary of the council here hath charge

To read as their commission.

MARY STUART.

Let me hear

In as brief wise as may beseem the time

The purport of it.

BEALE.

Our commission here

Given by the council under the great seal

Pronounces on your head for present doom

Death, by this written sentence.

MARY STUART.

Ay, my lords?

May I believe this, and not hold myself

Mocked as a child with shadows? In God's name,

Speak you, my lord of Shrewsbury: let me know

If this be dream or waking.

KENT.

Verily,

No dream it is, nor dreamers we that pray,

Madam, you meetly would prepare yourself

To stand before God's judgment presently.

MARY STUART.

I had rather so than ever stand again

Before the face of man's. Why speak not you,

To whom I speak, my lord earl marshal? Nay,

Look not so heavily: by my life, he stands

As one at point to weep.