I held it with him in his English halls,
His day, with all his rooftree ringing ‘Harold,’
Before he fell into the snare of Guy;
When all men counted Harold would be king,
And Harold was most happy.
WILLIAM.
Thou art half English
Take them away!
Malet, I vow to build a church to God
Here on the hill of battle; let our high altar
Stand where their standard fell . . . where these two lie.
Take them away, I do not love to see them.
Pluck the dead woman off the dead man, Malet!
MALET.
Faster than ivy. Must I hack her arms off?
How shall I part them?
WILLIAM.
Leave them. Let them be!
Bury him and his paramour together.
He that was false in oath to me, it seems
Was false to his own wife. We will not give him
A Christian burial: yet he was a warrior,
And wise, yea truthful, till that blighted vow
Which God avenged to-day.
Wrap them together in a purple cloak
And lay them both upon the waste sea-shore
At Hastings, there to guard the land for which
He did forswear himself — a warrior — ay,
And but that Holy Peter fought for us,
And that the false Northumbrian held aloof,
And save for that chance arrow which the Saints
Sharpen’d and sent against him — who can tell? —
Three horses had I slain beneath me: twice
I thought that all was lost. Since I knew battle,
And that was from my boyhood, never yet —
No, by the splendour of God — have I fought men
Like Harold and his brethren, and his guard
Of English. Every man about his king
Fell where he stood. They loved him: and, pray God
My Normans may but move as true with me
To the door of death. Of one self-stock at first,
Make them again one people — Norman, English;
And English, Norman; we should have a hand
To grasp the world with, and a foot to stamp it . . .
Flat. Praise the Saints, It is over. No more blood!
I am king of England, so they thwart me not,
And I will rule according to their laws.
(To ALDWYTH.) Madam, we will entreat thee with all honour.
ALDWYTH.
My punishment is more than I can bear.
BECKET
CONTENTS
Dramatis Personæ
Prologue
Act I
Scene I
Scene II
Scene III
Scene IV
Act II
Scene I
Scene II
Act III
Scene I
Scene II
Scene III
Act IV
Scene I
Scene II
Act V
Scene I
Scene II
Scene III
Dramatis Personæ
HENRY II. (son of the Earl of Anjou).
THOMAS BECKET, Chancellor of England, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
GILBERT FOLIOT, Bishop of London.
ROGER, Archbishop of York.
Bishop of Hereford.
HILARY, Bishop of Chichester.
JOCELYN, Bishop of Salisbury.
JOHN OF SALISBURY friend of Becket.
HERBERT OF BOSHAM friend of Becket.
WALTER MAP, reputed author of ‘Golias,’ Latin poems against the priesthood.
KING LOUIS OF FRANCE.
GEOFFREY, son of Rosamund and Henry.
GRIM, a monk of Cambridge.
SIR REGINALD FITZURSE }
SIR RICHARD DE BRITO } the four knights of the King’s household, enemies of Becket.
SIR WILLIAM DE TRACY }
SIR HUGH DE MORVILLE }
DE BROC OF SALTWOOD CASTLE.
LORD LEICESTER.
PHILIP DE ELEEMOSYNA.
TWO KNIGHT TEMPLARS.
JOHN OF OXFORD (called the Swearer).
ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE, Queen of England (divorced from Louis of France).
ROSAMUND DE CLIFFORD.
MARGERY.
Prologue
A Castle in Normandy. Interior of the Hall. Roofs of a City seen thro’ Windows.
HENRY and BECKET at chess.
HENRY.
So then our good Archbishop Theobald
Lies dying.
BECKET.
I am grieved to know as much.
HENRY.
But we must have a mightier man than he
For his successor.
BECKET.
Have you thought of one?
HENRY.
A cleric lately poison’d his own mother,
And being brought before the courts of the Church,
They but degraded him. I hope they whipt him.
I would have hang’d him.
BECKET.
It is your move.
HENRY. Well — there.
[Moves.
The Church in the pell-mell of Stephen’s time
Hath climb’d the throne and almost clutch’d the crown;
But by the royal customs of our realm
The Church should hold her baronies of me,
Like other lords amenable to law.
I’ll have them written down and made the law.
BECKET.
My liege, I move my bishop.
HENRY.
And if I live,
No man without my leave shall excommunicate
My tenants or my household.
BECKET.
Look to your king.
HENRY.
No man without my leave shall cross the seas
To set the Pope against me — I pray your pardon.
BECKET.
Well — will you move?
HENRY.
There.
[Moves.
BECKET.
Check — you move so wildly.
HENRY.
There then!
[Moves.
BECKET.
Why — there then, for you see my bishop
Hath brought your king to a standstill. You are beaten.
HENRY (kicks over the board).
Why, there then — down go bishop and king together.
I loathe being beaten; had I fixt my fancy
Upon the game I should have beaten thee,
But that was vagabond.
BECKET.
Where, my liege? With Phryne,
Or Lais, or thy Rosamund, or another?
HENRY.
My Rosamund is no Lais, Thomas Becket;
And yet she plagues me too — no fault in her —
But that I fear the Queen would have her life.
BECKET.
Put her away, put her away, my liege!
Put her away into a nunnery!
Safe enough there from her to whom thou art bound
By Holy Church. And wherefore should she seek
The life of Rosamund de Clifford more
Than that of other paramours of thine?
HENRY.
How dost thou know I am not wedded to her?
BECKET.
How should I know?
HENRY.
That is my secret, Thomas.
BECKET.
State secrets should be patent to the statesman
Who serves and loves his king, and whom the king
Loves not as statesman, but true lover and friend.
HENRY.
Come, come, thou art but deacon, not yet bishop,
No, nor archbishop, nor my confessor yet.
I would to God thou wert, for I should find
An easy father confessor in thee.
BECKE
T.
St. Denis, that thou shouldst not. I should beat
Thy kingship as my bishop hath beaten it.
HENRY.
Hell take thy bishop then, and my kingship too!
Come, come, I love thee and I know thee, I know thee,
A doter on white pheasant-flesh at feasts,
A sauce-deviser for thy days of fish,
A dish-designer, and most amorous
Of good old red sound liberal Gascon wine:
Will not thy body rebel, man, if thou flatter it?
BECKET.
That palate is insane which cannot tell
A good dish from a bad, new wine from old.
HENRY.
Well, who loves wine loves woman.
BECKET. So I do.
Men are God’s trees, and women are God’s flowers;
And when the Gascon wine mounts to my head,
The trees are all the statelier, and the flowers
Are all the fairer.
HENRY.
And thy thoughts, thy fancies?
BECKET.
Good dogs, my liege, well train’d, and easily call’d
Off from the game.
HENRY.
Save for some once or twice,
When they ran down the game and worried it.
BECKET.
No, my liege, no! — not once — in God’s name, no!
HENRY.
Nay, then, I take thee at thy word — believe thee
The veriest Galahad of old Arthur’s hall.
And so this Rosamund, my true heart-wife,
Not Eleanor — she whom I love indeed
As a woman should be loved — Why dost thou smile
So dolorously?
BECKET.
My good liege, if a man
Wastes himself among women, how should he love
A woman, as a woman should be loved?
HENRY.
How shouldst thou know that never hast loved one?
Come, I would give her to thy care in England
When I am out in Normandy or Anjou.
BECKET.
My lord, I am your subject, not your ——
HENRY. Pander.
God’s eyes! I know all that — not my purveyor
Of pleasures, but to save a life — her life;
Ay, and the soul of Eleanor from hell-fire.
I have built a secret bower in England, Thomas,
A nest in a bush.
BECKET.
And where, my liege?
HENRY (whispers). Thine ear.
BECKET.
That’s lone enough.
HENRY (laying paper on table).
This chart here mark’d ‘Her Bower,’
Take, keep it, friend. See, first, a circling wood,
A hundred pathways running everyway,
And then a brook, a bridge; and after that
This labyrinthine brickwork maze in maze,
And then another wood, and in the midst
A garden and my Rosamund. Look, this line —
The rest you see is colour’d green — but this
Draws thro’ the chart to her.
BECKET.
This blood-red line?
HENRY.
Ay! blood, perchance, except thou see to her.
BECKET.
And where is she? There in her English nest?
HENRY.
Would God she were — no, here within the city.
We take her from her secret bower in Anjou
And pass her to her secret bower in England.
She is ignorant of all but that I love her.
BECKET.
My liege, I pray thee let me hence: a widow
And orphan child, whom one of thy wild barons ——
HENRY.
Ay, ay, but swear to see to her in England.
BECKET.
Well, well, I swear, but not to please myself.
HENRY.
Whatever come between us?
BECKET.
What should come
Between us, Henry?
HENRY.
Nay — I know not, Thomas.
BECKET.
What need then? Well — whatever come between us.
[Going.
HENRY.
A moment! thou didst help me to my throne
In Theobald’s time, and after by thy wisdom
Hast kept it firm from shaking; but now I,
For my realm’s sake, myself must be the wizard
To raise that tempest which will set it trembling
Only to base it deeper. I, true son
Of Holy Church — no croucher to the Gregories
That tread the kings their children underheel —
Must curb her; and the Holy Father, while
This Barbarossa butts him from his chair,
Will need my help — be facile to my hands.
Now is my time. Yet — lest there should be flashes
And fulminations from the side of Rome,
An interdict on England — I will have
My young son Henry crown’d the King of England,
That so the Papal bolt may pass by England,
As seeming his, not mine, and fall abroad.
I’ll have it done — and now.
BECKET.
Surely too young
Even for this shadow of a crown; and tho’
I love him heartily, I can spy already
A strain of hard and headstrong in him. Say,
The Queen should play his kingship against thine!
HENRY.
I will not think so, Thomas. Who shall crown him?
Canterbury is dying.
BECKET.
The next Canterbury.
HENRY.
And who shall he be, my friend Thomas? Who?
BECKET.
Name him; the Holy Father will confirm him.
HENRY (lays his hand on BECKET’S shoulder).
Here!
BECKET.
Mock me not. I am not even a monk.
Thy jest — no more. Why — look — is this a sleeve
For an archbishop?
HENRY.
But the arm within
Is Becket’s, who hath beaten down my foes.
BECKET.
A soldier’s, not a spiritual arm.
HENRY.
I lack a spiritual soldier, Thomas —
A man of this world and the next to boot.
BECKET.
There’s Gilbert Foliot.
HENRY.
He! too thin, too thin.
Thou art the man to fill out the Church robe;
Your Foliot fasts and fawns too much for me.
BECKET.
Roger of York.
HENRY.
Roger is Roger of York.
King, Church, and State to him but foils wherein
To set that precious jewel, Roger of York.
No.
BECKET.
Henry of Winchester?
HENRY.
Him who crown’d Stephen —
King Stephen’s brother! No; too royal for me.
And I’ll have no more Anselms.
BECKET.
Sire, the business
Of thy whole kingdom waits me: let me go.
HENRY.
Answer me first.
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!
God’s favour and king’s favour might so clash
That thou an
d 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 passion, 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. God’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.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series Page 156