“Belike, sirrah,” she said, “your play may prove a comedy, after all.”
The playwright stood before her in silence with bent head. In the strong frame, with its tense outlines, was a profound humility which the Queen was wholly at a loss to understand.
“How say you, sirrah? Would you not have it so?”
“Life is never a comedy, your grace,” said the playwright, speaking very gently, almost as one who thinks aloud.
“A dark saying,” said the Queen, “How say you, Mary?” She turned, with an ironical air, to the young woman who was working so busily upon the sampler. “Perhaps Master Shakespeare will expound it for us out of the infinite store of his wisdom. You don’t find life a very tragic matter, eh, my girl, you who have the whole world at your feet?”
The august lady gave her gentlewoman a light box on the ear.
Mistress Fytton, whose dark and brilliant beauty had its sinister aspect, rose from her stool with a sigh and a little laugh.
“It is the business of a poet, your grace, to be melancholy,” said Mistress Mary.
“Yes, I had not thought of that,” said the Queen. “But I suspect, Miss Malapert, you know more of poets than I do.”
“God forbid, your grace,” Mistress Mary made a deep but mocking curtsy.