The Death of the Queen - Act IV, Scene I

ACT IV

SCENE I

Two years have passed since the humiliation and execution of Robert Devereux. Sir Robert Cecil paces in the library of Richmond Palace waiting for news of the Queen from her doctors. The Queen is dying and has not spoken in many days.

RC. Alas poor woman! She is piteous to behold, a hairless, toothless wraith, a grotesque. All her noble bearing and habit of royal dignity surrendered to vapours vile and unnatural putrescence. How her room smells of rot, piss and filth, my gorge rising when I attend her daily and most unwillingly.

'Mark you now in matters of succession to persuade her,' my father warned me, 'she must name one 'fore the end.' To this end alone have I labored since you died, my lord, and left this final task undone as a noxious burden for thy unworthy son.

But I have not thy wit and wisdom, father, but rather a baser cunning and ruthless guile. I pray that thou not upbraid and haunt thy tardy son from the grave for I have taken what remedial action I can in secret with coded missives to King James of Scotland.

I pleaded that he in faire and subservient letters commend his goodwil to the Queen like a loving son to his regal Mother. If he acquiesced in this, I swore to His majesty that I would stir the Queen's virtu to the great cause of his succession and pave a smooth path in the Privy Council. Oh what a trap I have laid for my unwitting soul!

Before the Queen's sudden illness, she smiled upon the King's goodwill but his succession she stil did not name.

Instead, She repented the execution of her cousin Mary and even of the traitor Robert Devereux, seeking for him in the dust as passionately as she once did Robert Dudley.

But the Queen's solemn melancholia has turned to brooding and brooding to dirge and finally to silence and abandonment of her toilet. She eats not at all.

And in all this woe I have not wrung from Her Majesty any word nor sign for her succession. She defies time and reason and threatens to defile the English crown and our grave nation with bloody battles as a dozen pretenders prepare to brawl for divine right of succession.

I am lost in this great task, father, and beg of thee a sign from thy gilded porch in heaven. Neither can I let a successor go unnamed nor should I place unspoken words in the Queen's royal lips.

Might Christ forgive the lie if for England's goode and to the avoid the spilling of the blood of innocent Britons? Will the scales o' justice in the latter days mark this contemplated sin or wipe it clean with the goode intent o' my heart?

But my heart is an arrant knave, a villain to deceive even my immortal soul. I know not what to do and yet I needs must. Do it! Do it! Or not?

He kneels and fold his hands to pray.

RC. Mercy, mercy, my dear Lord in the heavens above. I know thou promiseth to make my paths straight and thy wil known. But stil I know it not!

The Queen will not speak; the Queen will make no sign. But how can I let this be and put the English countryside to fire, cannonade and blade?

Test me not in this, my Lord, I thee beg. What horrors might a lie in this great moment incite and what devilish creatures my sin unfold to cruelly batten my soul at the pealing of the chimes at midnight?

A knock sounds on the door and then opens as the queen's maid enters.

P. My Lord, come quickly, the queen is awake!

Sir Robert slowly stands and exits with his head bowed after the maid.