No More Learning

PAGE. My lord! thou art white as death.

HAROLD. With looking on the dead. Am I so white?
Thy Duke will seem the darker. Hence, I follow.

[_Exeunt_.




ACT III.


SCENE I. --THE KING'S PALACE. LONDON.

KING EDWARD _dying on a couch, and by him standing the_ QUEEN, HAROLD,
ARCHBISHOP STIGAND, GURTH, LEOFWIN, ARCHBISHOP ALDRED, ALDWYTH, _and_
EDITH.


STIGAND.
Sleeping or dying there? If this be death,
Then our great Council wait to crown thee King--
Come hither, I have a power; [_To_ HAROLD.
They call me near, for I am close to thee
And England--I, old shrivell'd Stigand, I,
Dry as an old wood-fungus on a dead tree,
I have a power!
See here this little key about my neck!
There lies a treasure buried down in Ely:
If e'er the Norman grow too hard for thee,
Ask me for this at thy most need, son Harold,
At thy most need--not sooner.

HAROLD. So I will.

STIGAND. Red gold--a hundred purses--yea, and more!
If thou canst make a wholesome use of these
To chink against the Norman, I do believe
My old crook'd spine would bud out two young wings
To fly to heaven straight with.

HAROLD. Thank thee, father!
Thou art English, Edward too is English now,
He hath clean repented of his Normanism.

STIGAND. Ay, as the libertine repents who cannot
Make done undone, when thro' his dying sense
Shrills 'lost thro' thee. ' They have built their castles here;
Our priories are Norman; the Norman adder
Hath bitten us; we are poison'd: our dear England
Is demi-Norman.