The Queen then administers to Essex the historical box on the ear, which so enrages the choleric nobleman that he “essays to draw his sword,” and is summarily dismissed by the Queen, who, immediately repenting upon the reflection, “How bravely did he brave me in my seat, Methought he bore him here as doth a lion,” despatches Cecil to follow and bring him back. Essex boxes Cecil’s ear, refuses to listen to his wife’s reproof, and having sent for his brother, Francis Bacon (who greets him with “Brother, to fall from heaven unto hell, To be cubbed up upon a sudden, Will kill you”----) dismisses the smug, but “rightful Prince of Wales,” and soliloquises-- ... “But I’ll use means to make my brother King; Yet as he, Francis, has neither claimed it, Or deserved it--he cannot have it! His highness ‘Francis First,’ shall repose him At the tower; fair, or not fair, I will Consign my gracious brother thereunto. Yes, he must die; he is much too noble To conserve a life in base appliances.”... Taken as poetry, or as logic, the effort is not a masterpiece; it is, presumably, one of those portions in which “the necessities for concealment” were so great as to make “artistic construction impossible.” But it certainly explains, in a way, the reason of the traitorous behaviour of Bacon towards Essex in the hour of the latter’s adversity. The poetry improves again in the next scene. By misquoting the words of Junius Brutus respecting Caius Marcus, “All speak praise of him, and the bleared sights Are spectacled to see him pass along,” &c. (it is impossible to determine whether the inaccuracies in quotation should be blamed upon Bacon or Dr. Owen), and adding thereto the jealous Richard II.’s contemptuous reference to Bolingbroke: “A brace of draymen did God-speed him well, And had the tribute of his supple knee,” &c. Bacon discloses Elizabeth’s mental attitude towards the recalcitrant Earl. Directly Essex enters, however, the Queen promises him that he will soon be known as Duke of York, and she meets his objection, “My princely brother Francis, your quondam son, tells me flatly He is the only rightful Prince of Wales,” with “The proud jack! ’tis true, if it comes to that, He is the Prince of Wales. But”.... Now Bacon must have known, as well as Elizabeth, that neither he, nor Essex, nor anybody else would be Prince of Wales unless so created by the reigning monarch. But Essex is so full of his Irish command that he overlooks such trifles, and in the next scene he sends a captain to the Queen for a thousand pounds, with the admonition, “Be secret and away, ‘_To part the blessings of this happy day_.’”