As the dead limbs beneath, and will unbending
As this hard stone that shuts her from the world.”
Thus we are fully prepared for anything she may do; yet, in fact, she proves singularly innocuous.
The play opens with a discussion between Gardiner and Fakenham on the subject of the queen’s marriage. Both are agreed that she ought to marry, for the good of State and Church; but either has his eye on a very different candidate for her hand. The abbot’s candidate is Reginald Cardinal Pole—a character to whom our author does full justice as among the loftiest of his time. Fakenham thus describes him as a “student at Padua”:
“A nobler presence
Never embodied a more gracious soul:
Ardent, yet thoughtful; in the search of knowledge
Unwearied, yet most temperate in its use.
Whate’er he learned he wore with such an ease,
It seemed incorporated with his substance;