tenders to Mary's hand, who in the fourth scene is shown making advances to Elizabeth. In the last scene, the climax of the act, Mary, sitting with Philip's miniature, expects the decision of the Council on the marriage; and pending their judgment, gives audience to Gardiner, Noailles, and Renard, each of whom she questions respecting the person and character of Philip. Gardiner and Noailles, depreciating these, are dismissed with displeasure; while the Queen's infatuation for Philip is brought out in the colloquy with Renard, who advises the execution of Lady Jane Grey :—

• RENARD. Too much mercy is a want of mercy,
And wastes more life. Stamp out the fire, or this
Will smoulder or re-flame, and burn the throne
Where you should sit with Philip: he will not come
Till she be gone.

'MARY.

Indeed, if that were true—
But I must say farewell. I am somewhat faint
With our long talk. Tho' Queen, I am not Queen
Of mine own heart, which every now and then
Beats me half dead: yet stay, this golden chain-
My father on a birthday gave it me,

And I have broken with my father-take

And wear it as a memorial of a morning

Which found me full of foolish doubts, and leaves me
As hopeful.

'REN. (aside). Whew-the folly of all follies

Is to be love-sick for a shadow.'

The Queen meets her Council, who consent to the marriage; and Mary, quitting them, sinks into a chair, concluding the first act with the passionate exclamation—

In the second act the poet, still holding the thread of the Spanish marriage, shows the public indignation embodying itself in Wyatt's revolt, the loyalty of the citizens of London, and the energetic conduct of Mary in crushing the rebellion. At the close of the act, Mary determines to send Elizabeth to the Tower, a step which Gardiner opposes, out of consideration for Courtenay. Once more Renard steps forward, recalling his innuendo of the previous act :

REN. (advancing). I trust by this your Highness will allow
Some spice of wisdom in my telling you,
When last we talk'd, that Philip would not come
Till Guildford Dudley, and the Duke of Suffolk,
And Lady Jane had left us.

C MARY.

'MARY.

They shall die.

She shall die.

REN. And your so loving sister?

'MARY.

My foes are at my feet, and Philip King.'

Mary has now reached the climax of her fortune. She is married to Philip, and she expects a child, a hope to which she gives expression in the following speech:

He hath awaked! he hath awaked!

He stirs within the darkness!

Oh, Philip, husband! now thy love to mine

Will cling more close, and those bleak manners thaw,
That make me shamed and tongue-tied in my love.

The second Prince of Peace

The great unborn defender of the Faith,
Who will avenge me of mine enemies—
He comes, and my star rises.

The stormy Wyatts and Northumberlands,
The proud ambitions of Elizabeth,
And all her fieriest partisans-are‍pale

Before my star!

The light of this new learning wanes and dies:

The ghosts of Luther and Zuinglius fade

Into the deathless hell which is their doom

Before my star.

His sceptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind!

His sword shall hew the heretic peoples down!
His faith shall clothe the world that will be his,
Like universal air and sunshine! Open,

Ye everlasting gates! The King is here!—
My star, my son!'

To crown her private happiness with public joy, Pole, the Legate, pronounces the absolution of the realm. But the tide of fortune now begins to turn. At the opening of the third act, Bagenhall, who has related the pitiful death of Lady Jane Grey, gives utterance to his forebodings for the future. During the absolution he alone refuses to kneel, and his foresight is proved by the dissensions that arise between Gardiner and Pole; while the star of Elizabeth, who is summoned from Woodstock, at Philip's instance, to marry Philibert of Savoy, begins to be in the ascendant. On the other hand, Philip himself signifies his intention of leaving the Queen, and, in answer to her earnest entreaties, barely grants her the reprieve of a single day :

'PHILIP. Then one day more to please her Majesty. 'MARY. The sunshine sweeps across my life again. O if I knew you felt this parting, Philip,

As I do!

'PHILIP.

And now, disappointed and doubtful of her husband's love, Mary seems to have hardened her heart, and gives commands that, in spite of his recantation, Cranmer shall be burned; a sentence which meets the approval of Pole. The fourth act is the most stirring and vigorous in the play. After Mary's decision we are shown Cranmer in prison, where, insulted by Bonner and comforted by Thirlby, he strengthens himself to endure the fire, and represses the natural promptings of his imagination :

• Fire-inch by inch to die in agony! Latimer,
Had a brief end-not Ridley. Hooper burn'd
Three-quarters of an hour. Will my faggots
Be wet as his were? It is a day of rain.
I will not muse upon it.'

He is then brought into St. Mary's Church, and ‘set on a scaffold before the people.' Cole calls on him to make proclamation of his faith, to which appeal he replies in a fine speech, opening as follows:—

' And that I will. O God, Father of Heaven!
O Son of God, redeemer of the world!

O Holy Ghost! proceeding from them both,
Three persons and one God, have mercy on me,
Most miserable sinner, wretched man.

I have offended against heaven and earth
More grievously than any tongue can tell.
Then whither should I flee for any help?
I am ashamed to lift my eyes to heaven,
And I can find no refuge upon earth.
Shall I despair then ?—God forbid! O God,
For thou art merciful, refusing none
That come to Thee for succour, unto Thee,
Therefore, I come; humble myself to Thee;
Saying, O Lord God, although my sins be great,
For thy great mercy have mercy! O God the Son,
Nor for slight faults alone, who thou becamest
Man in the Flesh, was the great mystery wrought;
Oh God the Father, not for little sins

Didst thou yield up thy Son to human death;

But

But for the greatest sin that can be sinn'd,
Yea, even such as mine, incalculable,
Unpardonable,sin against the light,

The truth of God, which I have proven and known,
Thy mercy must be greater than all sin.
Forgive me, Father, for no merit of mine,
But that thy name by man be glorified,

And thy most blessed Son's, who died for man.'

Then follows his last sermon and confession of faith, after which he is led away to be burned. His death is related by Peters, and commented on by Tib, a country-wife, who prophesies that the burning of the owld Archbishop 'ill burn the Pwoap out o' this 'ere land vor iver and iver.'

6

The fifth act is the last. Disappointed of her hope of bearing children, disappointed in her schemes for the conversion of the kingdom, disappointed in her love of Philip, the close of Mary's tragedy approaches. Once more, in spite of her entreaties, her husband leaves her. Then, as the forerunner of her own end, Pole comes to her with the news that all his grand hopes have fallen, that he has been deprived of his legateship, and cited to Rome for heresy. I have done my best,' he says

Have done my best, and as a faithful son,

That all day long hath wrought his father's work,
When back he comes at evening hath the door
Shut on him by the father whom he loved,
His early follies cast into his teeth,

And the poor son turn'd out into the street
To sleep, to die-I shall die of it, cousin.'

Presently comes the news of the taking of Calais, and in the bitterness of her heart Mary exclaims :—

I am a byword. Heretic and rebel

Point at me and make merry. Philip gone!

And Calais gone! Time that I were gone too!'

The Comte de Feria arrives from the Netherlands, and even then the Queen looks for some comfort :

'I am not well, but it will better me,

Sir Count, to read this letter which you bring.

This is the last stroke. Quite broken down, and knowing that Feria is in reality commissioned to Elizabeth, Mary sends for that Princess

• Tell her to come and close my dying eyes,
And wear my crown, and dance upon my grave.'

Then

Then follows a scene of policy between Feria and Elizabeth, in which the former makes covert advances, on behalf of his master, for the hand of the heiress-apparent; she on her side replying enigmatically, till Feria discloses to her her sister's state, when, breaking off the colloquy by an impulse of natural affection, she hastens to the side of the Queen. In the last scene, Mary is discovered talking with her ladies before Philip's portrait, which brings into her mind all the cruelties of which she has been guilty for his sake, and of the unworthy return he has made her:

'Women, when I am dead,

Open my heart, and there you will find written
Two names, Philip and Calais; open his,--
So that he have one,—

You will find Philip only, policy, policy,

Ay, worse than that-not one hour true to me!
Foul maggots crawling on a fester'd vice!
Adulterous to the very heart of Hell.

Hast thou a knife?

'ALICE.

Ay, Madam, but o' God's mercy

'MARY. Fool, think'st thou I would peril mine own soul
By slaughter of the body? I could not, girl,
Not this way-callous with a constant stripe,
Unwoundable. Thy knife!

'ALICE.

The blade is keen as death.

'MARY.

Take heed, take heed!

This Philip shall not

Stare in upon me in my haggardness;

Old, miserable, diseased,

Incapable of children. Come thou down.

[Cuts out the picture, and throws it down.

Lie there (wails). O God, I have killed my Philip!'

Elizabeth arrives in time to witness the last moments of her sister, and the drama ends with her recital of the death-bed scene, and the acclamation that hails the new Queen of England.

Such is an outline of the plot of Queen Mary.' The reader will, we think, have perceived that, whatever merit the poem possesses, it does not in the least resemble a historical play of Shakespeare. In a Shakespearian sense it is neither historical nor dramatic. It is not historical, for history is merely concerned with the actions and motives of men as far as they are exhibited on the stage of public affairs; it condescends not to follow them into their closets, or to pry into the personal secrets of their hearts. And accordingly we find that Shakespeare