The Lord Treasurer had already brought the cool and detached mind of a statesman to bear upon a most difficult problem. The actors in this unhappy drama were nothing to him in themselves. Heriot was a man of family, with a considerable estate in the west of England; the girl was the daughter of Sir John Feversham, a man of good reputation, who had rendered thirty years of honest service to the Queen. The man Shakespeare was by profession an actor, and of him there was nothing more to be said. Indeed, as far as the Lord Treasurer was concerned, there was nothing more to be said of any of the persons of the drama. As mere private individuals, they had not the least interest for him; the merits of their cause concerned him but little, yet public expediency, that and only that, was a thing of paramount importance in his eyes. And when all was said, this was certainly a plaguy ill matter, and it had given my lord a very anxious night.
It seemed that Pembroke, a man whom Cecil regarded as a person of weight, had expressed a very definite opinion in regard to the case. According to Pembroke, the man Shakespeare was widely known and esteemed not in London merely, but also throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom. He had behaved with the gravest unwisdom, but Pembroke held staunchly to the view that his action was not of a character to incur the inclemency of the law. Moreover, the play-actor had the excuse that he sought an occasion to establish the innocence of a deeply wronged man.
Yet here was a very sore point with the statesmanlike soul of the Lord Treasurer. Heriot had been condemned by the Court of Star Chamber, and Cecil had not the least desire that the case should be re-heard. At the best, the whole affair constituted one of those unsavory businesses which it is ever the aim of true statecraft to keep out of the light of day. To this point of view, however, Pembroke had made the cogent rejoinder that since the whole story had been given to the world, it was no longer possible to treat it as a mystery.
Doubtless it was this fact which rendered Shakespeare’s action unpardonable in the sight of the Queen. She, too, had a faculty of statesmanship, and she was well able to appreciate the point involved; but also she had a woman’s power of illogical resentment, and in her view not the least part of the player’s crime was the inconvenience it caused.
Cecil, having duly taken all the circumstances into account, was already strongly in favor of mercy. It would be wise, in his view, to grant a pardon to the player. The pressure of public opinion was likely to be great, and in the opinion of Cecil that was a cardinal matter. But the Queen was obdurate. She was incensed by the audacity of the man. Great care had been used to keep the whole of this ugly business a close secret, but all precaution had been rendered nugatory by this man’s amazing indiscretion in regard to things that did not well bear the light of day.
“My lord,” said the Queen, with an air of finality, “what I have said, I have said. This man shall make payment for his wicked folly.”
“Be it so, your grace,” said the minister, with a sad shake of the head.
He knew how vain it was to persist when once the Queen had made up her mind. She had all a Tudor’s despotism. The statesman shrugged his shoulders disconsolately. The man Shakespeare had certainly behaved like a stark fool, and richly merited any fate that could overtake him, for my Lord Treasurer’s was that practical order of mind that hates a fool quite as much as it hates a rogue. The one was intelligible, but the other was an affront to the human race. Still, the man Shakespeare had many highly placed friends. And if Cecil himself had little use for the order of things the man represented, he recognized, with that large grasp of mind in which none of his age excelled him, that this play-actor stood for human amenity. And that in itself was a thing that even the most cynical of statesmen cannot afford to neglect.
The Lord Treasurer was about to withdraw from the Queen’s presence, when one of her gentlemen came into the room.
“Madam,” he said, “under your good pleasure, one Richard Burbage, a tragedian, would speak with you upon a matter of great urgency.”