“A brace of draymen did God-speed him well,
And had the tribute of his supple knee,” &c.
Bacon discloses Elizabeth’s mental attitude towards the recalcitrant Earl. Directly Essex enters, however, the Queen promises him that he will soon be known as Duke of York, and she meets his objection,
“My princely brother
Francis, your quondam son, tells me flatly
He is the only rightful Prince of Wales,”
with
“The proud jack! ’tis true, if it comes to that,
He is the Prince of Wales. But”....
Now Bacon must have known, as well as Elizabeth, that neither he, nor Essex, nor anybody else would be Prince of Wales unless so created by the reigning monarch. But Essex is so full of his Irish command that he overlooks such trifles, and in the next scene he sends a captain to the Queen for a thousand pounds, with the admonition,
“Be secret and away,
‘To part the blessings of this happy day.’”
In the third act, the Queen does the sleep-walking scene from Macbeth. Essex returns to England, uttering the words used by Richard II. on his own safe arrival from Ireland, to be upbraided by the Queen in the Duke of York’s words to Bolingbroke:
“Why have those banished and forbidden legs? &c.”