Unto my prison, where I may wail and weep

All that I may. Give leave, madam,

That these slaves of thine may take me to my death.
Q. E. Go! feed not thyself with fond persuasion.
Assuredly thou shalt not a succession

Or a successor upon us impose.

Q. M. I know not that, but of this I am assur'd, That death ends all, and I can die but once! Leicester, farewell.

L. L. Not yet, your grace, I'll bear you on your way.
Q. E. Stop, my lord, this must not be!

Thou may'st not take this railer into Shrewsbury.
Where are the warriors brave, that with this plague
Did come? Let them amain towards Shrewsbury march,
And take this great-grown traitor with them:
Hence with her! Come, sir, thou must walk by us,

While we do bend our course unto the Tower;

After this night's perilous task, good supporters must we have,

On other hand, our soldiers that are below.

Come, sir, away! Farewell, thou plague.

21

(ELIZABETH starts to leave, leaning on the shoulder of LEICESTER-MARY springs from her seat.)

Q. M. My lord, I tell you that you're a base-born

And abject swain, and weel I wot, you seem
Like to the almanac of the old year with the new.
You coward! to save your paltry life you have made
Me smart. Surely, all the glory you have won

21. "And the ruthless, unrelenting Queen would have left the poor, foolish and pernicious woman sitting on the floor. As soon as she beheld the Queen pass, leaning on the shoulder. of his lordship, from the ground lightly upstarting, she did begin, with nods and smiles to scorn him:

By your insulting tyranny is guilty shame.
Oh, monstrous treachery, can this be so
That in alliance, amity and oaths,

There should be found such false, dissembling guile?
Life's sweet to me: oh, shame to you, base knight!
You dastard, that before a stroke is given,
Like to a coward squire doth run away!

For your malicious practices, your foes

Should tear the garter from your craven leg,
Because unworthily you are install'd

In that high degree. Such cowards as you, I vow,
Ought not to wear that ornament of knighthood:
Yea, when the truth is known, the world will say,
That I was thus surpris'd, was infamous,
And ill-beseeming any man, in fact,

Much more a knight, a captain, and a leader.
When first this Order was ordained,
Knights of the Garter were of noble birth;
Valiant and virtuous, full of haughty courage,
Such as were grown to credit by the wars:
Not fearing death nor shrinking for distress,
But always resolute in most extremes:
He then, that is not furnish'd in this sort,
Doth but usurp the sacred name of knight,
Profaning this most honorable Order,
And should, if I were worthy to be judge,
Be quite degraded, like a hedge-born swain,
That doth presume to boast of gentle blood.
Ignoble lord, stain to your countrymen,
Follow, I pray, your desperate paramour,
As Icarus did of old his sire of Crete;
Yet, what a peevish fool was that of Crete

That taught his son the office of a fowl!

Indeed, for all his wings the fool was drown'd:
Rather am I Dedalus; you, the poor boy
Icarus; and she, the sun that seared

The wings of that sweet boy, or else the sea,
Whose envious gulf did swallow up his life.
Sure am I, sir, you are well kiss'd, and that
She will dissolve you yet: her sister slew
The Earl of Northumberland, your father,
And, coupled in bonds of perpetuity,

Two Dudleys, soon, will through the lither sky
Have wing'd their flight. 22

Q. E. Lo, my dear lord,

(ELIZABETH laughs in scorn.)

These words of hers draw life-blood from our heart!
Art weary of thy life? If thou dost make us stay,
'Tis but the shortening of thy life one day!

Thou hear'st thy doom; be packing, therefore, straight;
Thou tempt'st the fury of our three attendants-

Lean famine, quartering steel and climbing fire:

Thou ominous and fearful owl of death,

Thy nation's terror and their bloody scourge,
The period of thy tyranny approaches.
Moved with compassion of thy country's wrack,
Together with the pitiful complaints

Of such as thy oppression feeds upon,
We have, upon a special cause, concluded
To root thee up, and spill the base,
Contaminated, misbegotten blood

Of thine that is polluted with thy lusts,
Stain'd with the guiltless blood of innocents,

22. "Here Elizabeth laughed in scorn and said:

Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices:
And then, with colours spread to march

With all our English troops following after us,

To lay thy stately, air-braving towers even with the earth,
And give unto thy son chastisement for this abuse,
And let him perceive how ill we brook his mother's

treason.

My lord, take leave of this fair giglot wench;

Come, side by side together will we leave.

Q. M. Go; do what you will! I command you, go! Flight shall not clear you from this murd'rous stain! No more can I be sever'd from your side, No more can you yourselves in twain divide. (The EARL's servants form a lane,

through which the QUEENS make exit.) 23

23. "At the Queen's going away, the Earl's servants stood in a seemly manner in their livery coats, and cognizancies, ranged on both sides, and made the Queen a lane; then forth, through the city to the Tower gates, they marched; from whence, unto the valiant Earl of Shrewsbury, their fair prisoner was straight dispatched.

(BACON AND THE DECIPHERER.)

"Now sir, if you, the writer of this narrative, will again read o'er the lines, you will see that I have changed my style, and compiled this tragic history as a play, and, act by act, tell the event."

"How many acts are there?"

"Five, wherein I purpose to speak actively, without dilating or digressing. Turn backward, and single out the play and the players."

"What am I to do when I find out where the tragedy begins?"

"Bring it forth. Faithfully transcribed, it 'discloses the author of the plays, because, if I, Master Francis Bacon, set down the history of my father, my mother, and the Queen of Scots, as a play, and did mask it in plays, then I did write them all. In my judgment, though some may speak openly against my books, when they come to read the play—which is of a self-same colour as King John, Henry the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, and, Henry the Sixth on the one side, and Cæsar, Othello, and the Comedies on the other, it will prove me, Francis Bacon, to have been the author of these narrations, and satisfy the mountebanks, that represent you as full of knavish impostures. When your auditors hear and see this play, in which are lines, that with the most excellent of the others are parallel, they will leave no sour annoy for you. Even the youths that thunder at a play-house will, with their loud applause and aves vehement, cut off all ill-affected speech. And here, I hope, begins your lasting joy; aye, in my heart of hearts I do; for behold! you, yourself, do take a taking part." "What's here? I take no part in this, but that of the maid's-I dance to another's music."

"Not so. One scene of it, you will find, is Bacon with his scholar; the lines his pupil speaks are no other than the