SHAKESPEARE. Madam, I have not slept these five nights. I do not know what you say. ELIZABETH. Or care? SHAKESPEARE. Or care, Madam, forgive me! God’s pity, Madam, open the door! ELIZABETH. It shall not serve you. SHAKESPEARE. I know it. ELIZABETH. She has sold you, man. SHAKESPEARE. I know it. Open the door! ELIZABETH. Come here, my son! Why do I hold you here, think you? SHAKESPEARE. Marlowe-- ELIZABETH. Tell me nothing! I’ll know nothing! Mr. Shakespeare, where is the work I should have from you? Where is the new play? You sold and I bought. Give me my goods! Then go! SHAKESPEARE. A play? You are Queen, Madam, you do not live our lives; so I call you not pure devilish to keep me here for so little a thing. ELIZABETH. Yet I will have it from you! There’s paper, pen-- I’ll have your roughed-out scene ere Henslowe leaves To-night. And ere the ended month this play, This English laughter, ringing all her bells, Before the pick of Europe at my court Performed, shall link our hands with Italy, With old immortal Athens. This you’ll do, For this you can. SHAKESPEARE [_crying out_]. I am to live, not write, To love, not write of love, to live my life As others do, to live a summer life As all the others do! ELIZABETH. I thought so too When I was young. Then, ’mid my state affairs And droning voices of my ministers, The people’s acclamation and the hiss Of treacheries to England and to me, Ever I heard the momentary clock Ticking away my girlhood as I reigned; While she--while she-- Mary of Scotland, Mary of delight, (I know her sweetheart names) Maybird, Mayflower, The three times married honeysuckle queen, She had her youth. Think you I’d not have changed, Sat out her twenty years a prisoner, Ridden her road from France to Fotheringay, To have her story? Am I less woman, I, That I’d not change with her? For the high way Is flowerless, and thin the mountain air And rends the lungs that breathe it; and the light Spreading from hill to everlasting hill, Welling across the sky as from a wound, A heart of blood between the breasts of the world, Is not much nearer, no, nor half as warm As the kissing sun of the valleys: and we climb (You’ll climb as I do) not because we will, Because we must. There is no virtue in it; But some pride. Fate can force but not befool me!