Becket And Other Plays Part 3

BECKET.

Then for thy barren jest Take thou mine answer in bare commonplace-- _Nolo episcopari_.

HENRY.

Ay, but _Nolo Archiepiscopari_, my good friend, Is quite another matter.

BECKET.

A more awful one.

Make _me_ archbishop! Why, my liege, I know Some three or four poor priests a thousand times Fitter for this grand function. _Me_ archbishop!

G.o.d's favour and king's favour might so clash That thou and I----That were a jest indeed!

HENRY.

Thou angerest me, man: I do not jest.

_Enter_ ELEANOR _and_ SIR REGINALD FITZURSE.

ELEANOR (_singing_).

Over! the sweet summer closes, The reign of the roses is done--

HENRY (_to_ BECKET, _who is going_).

Thou shalt not go. I have not ended with thee.

ELEANOR (_seeing chart on table_).

This chart with the red line! her bower! whose bower?

HENRY.

The chart is not mine, but Becket's: take it, Thomas.

ELEANOR.

Becket! O--ay--and these chessmen on the floor--the king's crown broken! Becket hath beaten thee again--and thou hast kicked down the board. I know thee of old.

HENRY.

True enough, my mind was set upon other matters.

ELEANOR.

What matters? State matters? love matters?

HENRY.

My love for thee, and thine for me.

ELEANOR.

Over! the sweet summer closes, The reign of the roses is done; Over and gone with the roses, And over and gone with the sun.

Here; but our sun in Aquitaine lasts longer. I would I were in Aquitaine again--your north chills me.

Over! the sweet summer closes, And never a flower at the close; Over and gone with the roses, And winter again and the snows.

That was not the way I ended it first--but unsymmetrically, preposterously, illogically, out of pa.s.sion, without art--like a song of the people. Will you have it? The last Parthian shaft of a forlorn Cupid at the King's left breast, and all left-handedness and under-handedness.

And never a flower at the close, Over and gone with the roses, Not over and gone with the rose.

True, one rose will outblossom the rest, one rose in a bower. I speak after my fancies, for I am a Troubadour, you know, and won the violet at Toulouse; but my voice is harsh here, not in tune, a nightingale out of season; for marriage, rose or no rose, has killed the golden violet.

BECKET.

Madam, you do ill to scorn wedded love.

ELEANOR.

So I do. Louis of France loved me, and I dreamed that I loved Louis of France: and I loved Henry of England, and Henry of England dreamed that he loved me; but the marriage-garland withers even with the putting on, the bright link rusts with the breath of the first after-marriage kiss, the harvest moon is the ripening of the harvest, and the honeymoon is the gall of love; he dies of his honeymoon. I could pity this poor world myself that it is no better ordered.

HENRY.

Dead is he, my Queen? What, altogether? Let me swear nay to that by this cross on thy neck. G.o.d's eyes! what a lovely cross! what jewels!

ELEANOR.

Doth it please you? Take it and wear it on that hard heart of yours-- there.

[_Gives it to him_.

HENRY (_puts it on_).

On this left breast before so hard a heart, To hide the scar left by thy Parthian dart.

ELEANOR.

Has my simple song set you jingling? Nay, if I took and translated that hard heart into our Provencal facilities, I could so play about it with the rhyme--

HENRY.

That the heart were lost in the rhyme and the matter in the metre. May we not pray you, Madam, to spare us the hardness of your facility?

ELEANOR.

The wells of Castaly are not wasted upon the desert. We did but jest.

HENRY.

There's no jest on the brows of Herbert there. What is it, Herbert?

_Enter_ HERBERT OF BOSHAM.

HERBERT.

My liege, the good Archbishop is no more.

HENRY.

Peace to his soul!

HERBERT.

I left him with peace on his face--that sweet other-world smile, which will be reflected in the spiritual body among the angels. But he longed much to see your Grace and the Chancellor ere he past, and his last words were a commendation of Thomas Becket to your Grace as his successor in the archbishop.r.i.c.k.

HENRY.

Ha, Becket! thou rememberest our talk!

BECKET.

My heart is full of tears--I have no answer.