Shakespeare. A play? You are Queen, Madam, you do not live our lives; so I call you not pure devilish to keep me here for so little a thing.
Elizabeth. Yet I will have it from you! There’s paper, pen— I’ll have your roughed-out scene ere Henslowe leaves To-night. And ere the ended month this play, This English laughter, ringing all her bells, Before the pick of Europe at my court Performed, shall link our hands with Italy, With old immortal Athens. This you’ll do, For this you can.
Shakespeare [crying out]. I am to live, not write, To love, not write of love, to live my life As others do, to live a summer life As all the others do!
Elizabeth. I thought so too When I was young. Then, ’mid my state affairs And droning voices of my ministers, The people’s acclamation and the hiss Of treacheries to England and to me, Ever I heard the momentary clock Ticking away my girlhood as I reigned; While she—while she— Mary of Scotland, Mary of delight, (I know her sweetheart names) Maybird, Mayflower, The three times married honeysuckle queen, She had her youth. Think you I’d not have changed, Sat out her twenty years a prisoner, Ridden her road from France to Fotheringay, To have her story? Am I less woman, I, That I’d not change with her? For the high way Is flowerless, and thin the mountain air And rends the lungs that breathe it; and the light Spreading from hill to everlasting hill, Welling across the sky as from a wound, A heart of blood between the breasts of the world, Is not much nearer, no, nor half as warm As the kissing sun of the valleys: and we climb (You’ll climb as I do) not because we will, Because we must. There is no virtue in it; But some pride. Fate can force but not befool me! I am not drunken with religious dream Like the poor blissful fools of kingdom come: I know the flesh is sweetest, when all’s said, And summer’s heyday and the love of men: I know well what I lose. I’m head of the Church And stoop my neck on Sunday—to what Christ? The God of little children? I have none. The God of love? What love has come to me? The God upon His ass? I am not meek, Nor is he meek, the stallion that I ride, The great white horse of England. I’ll not bow To the gentle Jesus of the women, I— But to the man who hung ’twixt earth and heaven Six mortal hours, and knew the end (as strength And custom was) three days away, yet ruled His soul and body so, that when the sponge Blessed his cracked lips with promise of relief And quick oblivion, he would not drink: He turned his head away and would not drink: Spat out the anodyne and would not drink. This was a god for kings and queens of pride, And him I follow.
Shakespeare. Whither?
Elizabeth. The alley’s blind. For the cross rules us or we rule the cross, Yet the cross wins in the end. For night is older than the daylight is: The slack string will not quiver for the hand Of cunningest musician. Does the cross care, a chafer on a pin, Whether Barabbas writhe, or very God? All’s one to the dead wood! Dead wood, dead wood, It coffins us in the end. God, you and me And everyone—the dead wood baffles all. And why I care I know not, but I know That I’ll die fighting—and the fight goes on. Yet not uncaptained shall the assault go on Against dead wood fencing the hearts of men. For this I chose you. I am a barren woman. Mary’s child Reigns after me in England. Yet, to-night, I crown my heir. I, England, crown my son.
Shakespeare. There was a better man but yesterday— To him the crown! King was he of all song.
Elizabeth. He’s king now of the silence after song, When the last bell-note hovers, like a high And starry rocket that dissolves in stars, Lost ere they reach us. He is lord of that For ever.
Shakespeare. He—he had the luck; but I, But England was not lucky.
Elizabeth. Be assured Had England chosen Marlowe, here to-night England had crowned him, and you in Surrey ditch Had lain where he lies, dead, my dead son, dead. Take you the kingship on you!