... Heaven has crept
Into my ancient thoughts, and done the deed,
I, David,—;I half-prompted in my prayers,
When I besought God’s pity on your soul.
I am a guilty woman....
Act III, Scene 7
And again, when she is thinking of Bothwell’s wooing and her growing love for him:
I never shall grow holy among men,
And yet I wish them ever good, not evil,
And long to give them pleasure of such portion
Of wit or beauty as were made my dower.
It is significant, too, that Mary’s motherhood is seen to be a deep force in her, and therefore in the tragedy. She is found to be an instinctive mother, not only in the primary fact of rejoicing to bear a child, but in a profound sense of the value of life and an urgent impulse to protect it. Hence the supreme villainy of David Riccio’s murder is seen by our poet to lie in the fact that he is struck down in Mary’s presence, and desperately clinging to her for help, when she is within a few weeks of the birth of her child. And this by the husband whose sacred duty was to protect her. That is perceived to be Darnley’s unpardonable sin, and it prepares for much that follows. But observe how the poet has indicated the greatness of a mother-instinct which leaps to parry even a shattering blow like this. Mary sees that she is hemmed in by plots, that her life is in danger; and she makes a swift plan to escape through the vaults of the ruined Abbey of Holyrood. But it is a daunting project:
... If I were struck stone-dead
For horror at the grim, distorted tombs;
If I should bring forth a strange, spectral child,
To catch the bats that flit from roof to roof,
And wink at daylight! God, it shall not be!
For I will nurse him royally with my soft,
Wild, wayward songs, and he shall lie and laugh
Across my knees, until the happy tune
Drop off into a drowse.
Act I, Scene 3
There is much to illustrate this aspect of Mary’s womanhood; but one other short quotation must suffice. It is after the birth of her son, and she has forgiven and reinstated Darnley. Lethington has presented another petition to her, and she replies:
I live now but to pardon and make peace,
I am a mother.
Technically, the drama must, of course, be considered as a chronicle-play; and this cancels a criticism which might otherwise hold, that the end of the play, when Mary gives herself up and Bothwell flees, is weak. But the five acts go with a swing till that point is reached, and the energy of movement gets into the verse. That is often vehement to the measure of the vehement passions it expresses; and the relief of a character like Lethington, ironical, subtle, sceptical of the whole world but the innocence of his queen, is proportioned to the emotional intensity of the play as a whole. Bothwell is a finely contrasted study, compelling our belief in his lawless force, and in his mere physical reaction to Mary’s influence. His psychology, true as hers, chimes responsive to the masculine instinct of resentment in moments of mental crisis: when passion pulls fate down upon him, he is, in his angry conviction, the wronged one, and wronged by the woman. Thus Mary, to him, is a temptress love,
The infamous soft creature with her sighs,
Her innocence and wonder!
and he has been damned by her love. There is a scene between Bothwell and his wife, Jane Gordon, which is good in itself for its dramatic truth and its utility in the action, but which has the further interest of revealing the Queen as she looks through such different eyes. In Mary’s womanhood, seen thus from perhaps a dozen different angles, there is in truth an “infinite variety,” no gusty variation on the single theme of passion.