Elizabeth. Why, not a keel Grounds on the Cornish pebbles, but the jar Thrills through all English earth home to my feet. No riderless horse snuffs blood and gallops home To a girl widowed, but I the sparking hoofs Hear pound as her heart pounds, waiting; for my spies Are everywhere. Do not my English swifts Report to me at dusk, eavesdropping low, The number of my English primroses In English woods all spring? The gulls on Thames Scream past the Tower “Storm in Channel! Storm!” And if I hear not, sudden my drinking glass Rings out “Send help, lest English sailors drown!” The lantern moon swings o’er unvisited towns Signalling “Peace!” or a star shoots out of the west Across my window, flashing “Danger here!” And is it Ireland rising, or a child On chalk-pit roof after the blackberries, I’m warned, and bid my human servants haste. The flat-worn stones, the echoes of the streets At night when drunkards tumble, citizens In the half silence and half light trot home, Reveal the well, the ill in my own land. I am its eyes, its pulse, its finger-tips, The wakeful partner of its married soul. I know what darkness does, what dawn discovers In all the English country. I am the Queen. You have done my errand? Shakespeare the player is with you?
Henslowe. He waits without.
Elizabeth. Then he too was at Deptford last night.
Henslowe. None knows it.
Elizabeth. That’s well! But was it he, Henslowe—he?
Henslowe. No, no, no! I’ll swear it.
Elizabeth. But will he swear it?
Henslowe. He’s dazed, he will say anything—yes—no— Just as you prompt him, as if one blow had struck His soul and Marlowe’s body. Madam, he’s not his witness! Yet, if t’were true, if he has lost us Marlowe, Must we lose him? Then has the English stage Lost both her hands and cannot feed herself, Starves, Madam!
Elizabeth. You’re honest, Henslowe! Your son’s son one day May help a king to thread a needle’s eye. But do you think he did it?
Henslowe. No, though he says it, For he loved him.