No More Learning

ALICE. Goodly enough, your Grace, and yet, methinks,
I have seen goodlier.

MARY. Ay; some waxen doll
Thy baby eyes have rested on, belike;
All red and white, the fashion of our land.
But my good mother came (God rest her soul)
Of Spain, and I am Spanish in myself,
And in my likings.

ALICE. By your Grace's leave
Your royal mother came of Spain, but took
To the English red and white. Your royal father
(For so they say) was all pure lily and rose
In his youth, and like a lady.

MARY. O, just God!
Sweet mother, you had time and cause enough
To sicken of his lilies and his roses.
Cast off, betray'd, defamed, divorced, forlorn!
And then the King--that traitor past forgiveness,
The false archbishop fawning on him, married
The mother of Elizabeth--a heretic
Ev'n as _she_ is; but God hath sent me here
To take such order with all heretics
That it shall be, before I die, as tho'
My father and my brother had not lived.
What wast thou saying of this Lady Jane,
Now in the Tower?

ALICE.
Why, Madam, she was passing
Some chapel down in Essex, and with her
Lady Anne Wharton, and the Lady Anne
Bow'd to the Pyx; but Lady Jane stood up
Stiff as the very backbone of heresy.
And wherefore bow ye not, says Lady Anne,
To him within there who made Heaven and Earth?
I cannot, and I dare not, tell your Grace
What Lady Jane replied.

MARY. But I will have it.

ALICE. She said--pray pardon me, and pity her--
She hath harken'd evil counsel--ah! she said,
The baker made him.

MARY. Monstrous! blasphemous!
She ought to burn. Hence, thou (_Exit_ ALICE). No--being traitor
Her head will fall: shall it? she is but a child.
We do not kill the child for doing that
His father whipt him into doing--a head
So full of grace and beauty!