Part 18 (1/2)

PHILIP. True; the provinces Are hard to rule and must be hardly ruled; Most fruitful, yet, indeed, an empty rind, All hollow'd out with stinging heresies; And for their heresies, Alva, they will fight; You must break them or they break you.

ALVA (_proudly_). The first.

PHILIP. Good!

Well, Madam, this new happiness of mine?

[_Exeunt_.

_Enter_ THREE PAGES.

FIRST PAGE. News, mates! a miracle, a miracle! news!

The bells must ring; Te Deums must be sung; The Queen hath felt the motion of her babe!

SECOND PAGE. Ay; but see here!

FIRST PAGE. See what?

SECOND PAGE. This paper, d.i.c.kon.

I found it fluttering at the palace gates:-- 'The Queen of England is delivered of a dead dog!'

THIRD PAGE. These are the things that madden her. Fie upon it!

FIRST PAGE. Ay; but I hear she hath a dropsy, lad, Or a high-dropsy, as the doctors call it.

THIRD PAGE. Fie on her dropsy, so she have a dropsy!

I know that she was ever sweet to me.

FIRST PAGE. For thou and thine are Roman to the core.

THIRD PAGE. So thou and thine must be. Take heed!

FIRST PAGE. Not I, And whether this flash of news be false or true, So the wine run, and there be revelry, Content am I. Let all the steeples clash, Till the sun dance, as upon Easter Day.

[_Exeunt_.

SCENE III.--GREAT HALL IN WHITEHALL.

_At the far end a dais. On this three chairs, two under one canopy for_ MARY _and_ PHILIP, _another on the right of these for_ POLE.

_Under the dais on_ POLE'S _side, ranged along the wall, sit all the Spiritual Peers, and along the wall opposite, all the Temporal. The Commons on cross benches in front, a line of approach to the dais between them. In the foreground_, SIR RALPH BAGENHALL _and other Members of the Commons_.

FIRST MEMBER. St. Andrew's day; sit close, sit close, we are friends.

Is reconciled the word? the Pope again?

It must be thus; and yet, c.o.c.ksbody! how strange That Gardiner, once so one with all of us Against this foreign marriage, should have yielded So utterly!--strange! but stranger still that he, So fierce against the Heads.h.i.+p of the Pope, Should play the second actor in this pageant That brings him in; such a cameleon he!

SECOND MEMBER. This Gardiner turn'd his coat in Henry's time; The serpent that hath slough'd will slough again.

THIRD MEMBER. Tut, then we all are serpents.

SECOND MEMBER. Speak for yourself.