Act IV

SCENE I.--IN NORTHUMBRIA.

ARCHBISHOP ALDRED, MORCAR, EDWIN, and FORCES. Enter HAROLD. The standard of the golden Dragon of Wessex preceding him.

HAROLD. What! are thy people sullen from defeat? Our Wessex dragon flies beyond the Humber, No voice to greet it.

EDWIN. Let not our great king Believe us sullen--only shamed to the quick Before the king--as having been so bruised By Harold, king of Norway; but our help Is Harold, king of England. Pardon us, thou! Our silence is our reverence for the king!

HAROLD. Earl of the Mercians! if the truth be gall, Cram me not thou with honey, when our good hive Needs every sting to save it.

VOICES. Aldwyth! Aldwyth!

HAROLD. Why cry thy people on thy sister's name?

MORCAR. She hath won upon our people thro' her beauty, And pleasantness among them.

VOICES. Aldwyth, Aldwyth!

HAROLD. They shout as they would have her for a queen.

MORCAR. She hath followed with our host, and suffer'd all.

HAROLD. What would ye, men?

VOICE. Our old Northumbrian crown, And kings of our own choosing.

HAROLD. Your old crown Were little help without our Saxon carles Against Hardrada.

VOICE. Little! we are Danes, Who conquer'd what we walk on, our own field.

HAROLD. They have been plotting here! [Aside.

VOICE. He calls us little!

HAROLD. The kingdoms of this world began with little, A hill, a fort, a city--that reach'd a hand Down to the field beneath it, 'Be thou mine, Then to the next, 'Thou also!' If the field Cried out 'I am mine own;' another hill Or fort, or city, took it, and the first Fell, and the next became an Empire.

VOICE. Yet Thou art but a West Saxon: we are Danes!

HAROLD. My mother is a Dane, and I am English; There is a pleasant fable in old books, Ye take a stick, and break it; bind a score All in one faggot, snap it over knee, Ye cannot.

VOICE. Hear King Harold! he says true!

HAROLD. Would ye be Norsemen?

VOICES. No!

HAROLD. Or Norman?

VOICES. No!

HAROLD. Snap not the faggot-band then.

VOICE. That is true!

VOICE. Ay, but thou art not kingly, only grandson To Wulfnoth, a poor cow-herd.

HAROLD. This old Wulfnoth Would take me on his knees and tell me tales Of Alfred and of Athelstan the Great Who drove you Danes; and yet he held that Dane, Jute, Angle, Saxon, were or should be all One England, for this cow-herd, like my father, Who shook the Norman scoundrels off the throne, Had in him kingly thoughts--a king of men, Not made but born, like the great king of all, A light among the oxen.

VOICE. That is true!

VOICE. Ay, and I love him now, for mine own father Was great, and cobbled.

VOICE. Thou art Tostig's brother, Who wastes the land.

HAROLD. This brother comes to