Prologue - Page 2

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.

BECKET: 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