STRAFFORD

Insolent! You shall have your coat turned and be whipped out of the palace for this.

ARCHY

When all the fools are whipped, and all the protestant writers, while the knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch a thief. If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy would be disgraced in good company. Let the knaves whip the fools, and all the fools laugh at it. [Let the] wise and godly slit each other's noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their craft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to Bedlam, to entreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic contemplations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest men who lie penned up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody of the pursuivants of the High-Commission Court, marshal them.

Enter Secretary LYTTLETON, with papers

KING (looking over the papers)

These stiff Scots

His Grace of Canterbury must take order

To force under the Church's yoke. You, Went

worth,

Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add

Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy,

To what in me were wanting. -My Lord Weston, Look that those merchants draw not without loss

Their bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment
Of ship-money, take fullest compensation
For violation of our royal forests,

Whose limits, from neglect, have been o'ergrown
With cottages and cornfields. The uttermost
Farthing exact from those who claim exemption
From knighthood; that which once was a reward
Shall thus be made a punishment, that subjects
May know how majesty can wear at will
The rugged mood. - My Lord of Coventry,
Lay my command upon the Courts below
That bail be not accepted for the prisoners
Under the warrant of the Star Chamber.
The people shall not find the stubbornness
Of Parliament a cheap or easy method
Of dealing with their rightful sovereign;
And doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry,
We will find time and place for fit rebuke. —
My Lord of Canterbury.

ARCHY

The fool is here.

LAUD

I crave permission of your Majesty
To order that this insolent fellow be
Chastised; he mocks the sacred character,
Scoffs at the state, and

KING

What, my Archy?

He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears,

Yet with a quaint and graceful license.

Prithee

For this once do not as Prynne would, were he
Primate of England. With your Grace's leave,
He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot
Hung in his gilded prison from the window
Of a queen's bower over the public way,

Blasphemes with a bird's mind; his words, like

arrows

Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit,
Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy.

(To ARCHY)

Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence
Ten minutes in the rain; be it your penance
To bring news how the world goes there.

Archy!

- Poor

[Exit ARCHY.

He weaves about himself a world of mirth
Out of the wreck of ours.

LAUD

I take with patience, as my Master did,

All scoffs permitted from above.

KING

My lord,

Pray overlook these papers. Archy's words
Had wings, but these have talons.

QUEEN

And the lion

That wears them must be tamed. My dearest lord, I see the new-born courage in thine eye

124 this, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

thine, Rossetti || your, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

Armed to strike dead the spirit of the time,
Which spurs to rage the many-headed beast.
Do thou persist; for, faint but in resolve,
And it were better thou hadst still remained
The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like

curs

The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer ;
And Opportunity, that empty wolf,
Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions
Even to the disposition of thy purpose,

And be that tempered as the Ebro's steel;
And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak,
Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace,
And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss,
As when she keeps the company of rebels,
Who think that she is Fear. This do, lest we
Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle

In a bright dream, and wake, as from a dream,
Out of our worshipped state.

KING

Beloved friend,

God is my witness that this weight of power,
Which he sets me my earthly task to wield
Under his law, is my delight and pride
Only because thou lovest that and me.
For a king bears the office of a God
To all the under world; and to his God
Alone he must deliver up his trust,
Unshorn of its permitted attributes.
[It seems] now as the baser elements
Had mutinied against the golden sun
That kindles them to harmony, and quells

Their self-destroying rapine. The wild million
Strike at the eye that guides them; like as humors
Of the distempered body that conspire

Against the spirit of life throned in the heart,-
And thus become the prey of one another,
And last of death.

STRAFFORD

That which would be ambition in a subject
Is duty in a sovereign; for on him,
As on a keystone, hangs the arch of life,
Whose safety is its strength. Degree and form,
And all that makes the age of reasoning man
More memorable than a beast's, depend on this
That Right should fence itself inviolably

With power; in which respect the state of England

From usurpation by the insolent commons

Cries for reform.

Get treason, and spare treasure.

Fee with coin

The loudest murmurers; feed with jealousies
Opposing factions, be thyself of none;

-

And borrow gold of many, for those who lend
Will serve thee till thou payest them; and thus
Keep the fierce spirit of the hour at bay,
Till time, and its coming generations

Of nights and days unborn, bring some one chance,

Or war or pestilence or Nature's self,

By some distemperature or terrible sign,
Be as an arbiter betwixt themselves.

Nor let your Majesty

Doubt here the peril of the unseen event.