Death of the Queen - Act II, Scene 1

ACT II.

SCENE I.

Sir Francis Bacon sits on the porch of his home and writes upon a stack of parchment. A servant announces the Baron Burghley and he enters. Francis rises and bows.

F.B. How now, my lord. You are most welcome to Gorhambury. What tidings from our honor'd cousin the Queen?

B.B. She is much recovered from her shock at the death of the Earl of Leicester after much to-do and not without controversy. Sadly, many in the commonweal regard'd him with contemptible gaze, some now whisper he'll take no rest in Hell's flames.

F.B. Nay, surely, he's not in Hell. This is a veery grievous wrong. When we regard our betters bearing such o'er familiar woes, scarcely should we think their miseries as foes. His oppressed nature hath pain'd and whelmed, his widow struck down by mercenary grief. Who then to frail mortality shall trust, but limns the water or but writes in dust?

I sat with him at his ending. "My faults,' he whispered, "they lie before Him who gracious and goode will cancel them for I am most heartily sorry." And then he passed this mortal coil to meet the Father o'er us all.

I am sick at heart when I contemplate those counterfeits who swear fealty to the crown and yet plunder the rectitude of the Queen in contemptible secr’t.

When a bee stings, he dies. He cannot sting and live. When men sting, their better selves die. Every sting kills a better instinct.

They are loathsome as boil-back'd toads! Would that they should burst!

B.B. Aye, these are treacherou's days, Sir Francis. We seek to draw out all such false friends to our sovereign Majesty. For this England hath need of your services.

F.B. I commend myself to the Queen's need and in all things wilt obey.

B.B. D'rect thy servants to the village with thy purse to replenish the lard'r. The queen travels secretly e'en now to Gorhambury. We must in readiness prepare.

F.B. My lord.

He bows and exits. The baron walks to the writing desk and picks up the unfinished parchment.

B.B. (Reading aloud) It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth, a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene, and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mist, and tempests in the vale below.

Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

He returns the parchment to the desk.

B.B. Sir Francis is possessed of both wit and an elegant, enterprising tongue. How I envy his pursuits and leisure.

But I have no time, the Queen grows old and declares a successor not and faire England stands at the precipice! I fear the unwillingness of her majesty to have such a person known will stay the matter.

Oh, that my designs on freedom from this burden may be met, that I might, like Sir Francis, tarry amongst learned books as I did in my youth, the collected wisdom of a thousand ages to delight and strike me againe with wonder.

What joys have I remembered of St John's, and tutelage under Roger Ascham, the Queen's own tutor. What mastery won over Latin and Greek and with the long bow - an innocent, salutary, and useful diversion.

Aye. From Roger I learned to reason and to discipline body and mind. But how injured in body and soul was I when my youthful idyls ended. "You are not your own man," my father upbraid'd.

I'm am the Queen's, now and forever. Yet, sometymes I wish it not so.

My duty ever is to Queen and Protestant England, to husband both to glory and renown, to frustrate the Spanish tyrant. But our enemies be many. That arrogant knave, Marlowe, should e'en now ha' infiltrated the traitor William Stanley's followers. Instead, he lazes in Newgate like a cream faced loon. I am sick when I think of that sodden-witted lout!

Enter Sir Francis.

F.B. All is in preparation, my Lord.

B.B. I am cold.

F.B. My lord?

B.B. I'm sorry, Sir Francis, I am weary and would retire. Lend me your cloak?

Sir Francis drapes his cloak gently about the Baron's shoulders.

F.B. Tis goode for us to love our present pains. Shall I attend to your lodging, my lord? I have a comfortable couch in the library where you can take your ease.

B.B. Library? Have you many ancient volumes?

F.B. Euclid's geometry, works by Ovid and Virgil, extant plays by Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes. The Greek philosophers from Acrion to Xenophon. The Stoics to include Marcus Aurelius Antonius' Meditations.

As he wrote, "We can't be happy, but we can be goode..."

B.B. "Let us therefor pretend that, so long as we are goode, it doesn't matter being unhappy."

F.B. You know the werk!

B.B. Aye. I long to examine your bookes. I am quite revived by the thought o' it!

F.B. Then I will lead and we shall tarry there whilst we wait upon Her Majesty's pleasure.

They exit together.