Part 1 (1/2)

Oliver Cromwell.

by John Drinkwater.

SCENE I

_CROMWELL'S house at Ely, about the year 1639. An early summer evening.

The window of the room opens on to a smooth lawn, used for bowling, and a garden full of flowers._

_OLIVER'S wife, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, is sitting at the table, sewing. In a chair by the open window MRS. CROMWELL, his mother, is reading. She is eighty years of age._

_Mrs. Cromwell:_ Oliver troubles me, persuading everywhere. Restless like this.

_Elizabeth:_ He says that the time is uneasy, and that we are part of it.

_Mrs. Cromwell:_ There's a man's house. It's enough surely.

_Elizabeth:_ I know. But Oliver must be doing. You know how when he took the magistracy he would listen to none of us. He knows best.

_Mrs. Cromwell:_ What time is John coming?

_Elizabeth:_ By nightfall he said. Henry Ireton is coming with him.

_Mrs. Cromwell:_ John Hampden is like that, too. He excites the boy.

_Elizabeth:_ Yes, but mother, you will do nothing with Oliver by thinking of him as a boy.

_Mrs. Cromwell:_ Of course he's a boy.

_Elizabeth:_ He's forty.

_Mrs. Cromwell:_ Methuselah.

_Elizabeth:_ What?

_Mrs. Cromwell:_ I said Methuselah.

_Elizabeth:_ He says John's the bravest man in England.

_Mrs. Cromwell:_ Just because he won't pay a tax. How if everybody refused to pay taxes?

If you don't have taxes, I don't see how you are to have a government.

Though I can't see that it governs anybody, except those that don't need it.

_Elizabeth:_ Oliver says it's a wrong tax, this s.h.i.+p money.

_Mrs. Cromwell:_ There's always something wrong. It keeps men busy, I suppose.

_Elizabeth:_ But it was brave of John.

_Mrs. Cromwell:_ I know, I know. But why must he come here to-night of all in the year?