Who was my father's bastard-born. By heaven!
I had rather have his head loose at my foot
Than his tongue's counsel rounded in mine ear.”
This is only her fourth speech in the play. It does not seem to have impressed Rizzio sufficiently; for, turning a page, we find her still railing at the subject of her wrath in this vigorous style:
... “By my hand,
Too little and light to hold up his dead head,
It was my hope to dip it in his life
Made me ride iron-mailed and soldieress.”
With occasional spurts of this nature the queen enlivens her somewhat tedious colloquy of thirteen pages with Rizzio concerning Murray. She is candid enough to say in one place of her half-brother, whom the Mary of history really believed in too long and too blindly for her own happiness:
“I am gay of heart, light as a spring south wind,