King: Oh, Henrietta!

Money we have none:And all the expedients of my Lord of StraffordWill scarcely meet the arrears.

LAUD:Without delayAn army must be sent into the north;Followed by a Commission of the Church,With amplest power to quench in fire and blood,And tears and terror, and the pity of hell,The intenser wrath of Heresy. God will giveVictory; and victory over Scotland giveThe lion England tamed into our hands.That will lend power, and power bring gold.

COTTINGTON:MeanwhileWe must begin first where your Grace leaves off.Gold must give power, or--

LAUD:I am not averseFrom the assembling of a parliament.Strong actions and smooth words might teach them soonThe lesson to obey. And are they notA bubble fashioned by the monarch's mouth,The birth of one light breath? If they serve no purpose,A word dissolves them.

STRAFFORD:The engine of parliamentsMight be deferred until I can bring overThe Irish regiments: they will serve to assureThe issue of the war against the Scots.And, this game won--which if lost, all is lost--Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels,And call them, if you will, a parliament.

KING:Oh, be our feet still tardy to shed blood.Guilty though it may be! I would still spareThe stubborn country of my birth, and wardFrom countenances which I loved in youthThe wrathful Church's lacerating hand.Have you o'erlooked the other articles?

LAUD:Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane,Cromwell, and other rebels of less note,Intend to sail with the next favouring windFor the Plantations.

ARCHY:Where they think to foundA commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the play,Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic.

KING:What's that, sirrah?

ARCHY:New devil's politics.Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths:Lucifer was the first republican.Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three'In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full,Shall sail round the world, and come back again:Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull,And come back again when the moon is at full:'--When, in spite of the Church,They will hear homilies of whatever lengthOr form they please.

So please your Majesty to sign this orderFor their detention.

KING:If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely;But in this case--[WRITING]. Here, my lord, take the warrant,And see it duly executed forthwith.--That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished.

QUEEN:Is the rain over, sirrah?

KING:When it rainsAnd the sun shines, 'twill rain again to-morrow:And therefore never smile till you've done crying.

ARCHY:But 'tis all over now: like the April anger of woman, the gentle skyhas wept itself serene.

QUEEN:What news abroad? how looks the world this morning?

ARCHY:Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There's a rainbowin the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for

'A rainbow in the morningIs the shepherd's warning;'

KING:The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; andthe shepherd, the wolves for their watchdogs.

QUEEN:But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of thedeluge are gone, and can return no more.

QUEEN:Who taught you this trash, sirrah?

KING:Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience.

ARCHY:Then conscience is a fool.--I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. Iheard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that thevery mice were consulting on the manner of her death.

QUEEN:Archy is shrewd and bitter.ARCHY:Like the season,So blow the winds.--But at the other end of the rainbow, where thegray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tenderinterfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, whatthink you that I found instead of a mitre?

KING:Vane's wits perhaps.

ARCHY:Something as vain. I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditchover the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and brokendishes--the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out andthe ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects toenter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost ofthis ass.

QUEEN:Enough, enough! Go desire Lady JaneShe place my lute, together with the musicMari received last week from Italy,In my boudoir, and--

KING:I'll go in.

QUEEN:MY beloved lord,Have you not noted that the Fool of lateHas lost his careless mirth, and that his wordsSound like the echoes of our saddest fears?What can it mean? I should be loth to thinkSome factious slave had tutored him.

KING:Oh, no!He is but Occasion's pupil. Partly 'tisThat our minds piece the vacant intervalsOf his wild words with their own fashioning,--As in the imagery of summer clouds,Or coals of the winter fire, idlers findThe perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:And partly, that the terrors of the timeAre sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;And in the lightest and the least, may bestBe seen the current of the coming wind.

QUEEN:Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.Come, I will sing to you; let us go tryThese airs from Italy; and, as we passThe gallery, we'll decide where that CorreggioShall hang--the Virgin MotherWith her child, born the King of heaven and earth,Whose reign is men's salvation. And you shall seeA cradled miniature of yourself asleep,Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;Liker than any Vandyke ever made,A pattern to the unborn age of thee,Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joyA thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow,Did I not think that after we were deadOur fortunes would spring high in him, and thatThe cares we waste upon our heavy crownWould make it light and glorious as a wreathOf Heaven's beams for his dear innocent brow.