Scene I.
A room at the Palace. Elizabeth sits at a working table. She is upright, vigorous, with an ivory white skin and piercing eyes. Her hair is dark red and stiffly dressed. She is old, as an oak or a cliff or a cathedral is old—there is no frailty of age in her. Her gestures are measured, she moves very little, and frowns oftener than she smiles, but her smile, when it does come, is kindly. Her voice is strong, rather harsh, but clear. She speaks her words like a scholar, but her manner is that of a woman of the world, shrewd and easy. Her dress is a black-green brocade, stiff with gold and embroidered with coloured stones. Beside her stands Henslowe, ten years older, stouter and more prosperous. In the background Mary Fitton, a woman of twenty-six, sits at the virginals, fingering out a tune very faintly and lightly. She is taller than Elizabeth, pale, with black hair, a smiling mouth and brilliant eyes. She is quick and graceful as a cat, and her voice is the voice of a singer, low and full. She wears a magnificent black and white dress with many pearls. A red rose is tucked behind her ear.
Elizabeth. Money, money! Always more money! Henslowe, you’re a leech! And I’m a Gammer Gurton to let myself be bled. Let the public pay!
Henslowe. Madam, they’ll do that fast enough if we may call ourselves Your Majesty’s Players.
Elizabeth. No, no, you’re not yet proven. What do you give me? Good plays enough, but what great play? What has England, what have I, to match against them when they talk to me of their Tasso, their Petrarch, their Rabelais—of Divine Comedies and the plays of Spain? Are we to climb no higher than the Germans with their ‘Ship of Fools’?
Henslowe. ‘The Faery Queen’?
Elizabeth. Unfinished.
Henslowe. Green—Peele—Kyd—Webster—
Elizabeth. Stout English names—not names for all the world. I will pay you no more good English pounds a year and fib to my treasurer to account for them. You head a deputation, do you? You would call yourselves the Queen’s Players, and mount a crown on your curtains? Give me a great play then—a royal play—a play to set against France and Italy and Spain, and you can have your patent.
Henslowe. There’s ‘Tamburlaine’!