The Books: “Mary of Scotland” (Maxwell Anderson)

Next script on my script shelf:

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is Mary of Scotland, by Maxwell Anderson

Awesome play. First produced by the Theatrical Guild in 1930 with Helen Hayes playing Mary of Scotland. It’s in verse. It’s kick-ass. I’ve worked on the last scene before in acting class – it’s between Elizabeth and Mary – Mary’s imprisoned, Elizabeth comes to visit her. Historically inaccurate but HUGELY theatrical, and devastating to both characters – it’s a vicious scene, absolutely fantastic – two women circling one another, trying to win. You think Elizabeth has the upper hand, and then Mary seizes it … you think Mary is winning, and then Elizabeth seizes the reins back … it’s great great stuff for actors. Of course, because of the title of the play – Mary ends up being the emotional victor in the play – even though Elizabeth wins in the eyes of the real world.

I’ll excerpt from that scene – it’s the very end of the play.

EXCERPT FROM Mary of Scotland, by Maxwell Anderson

MARY. I have seen but a poor likeness, and yet I believe
This is Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH.
I am Elizabeth.
May we be alone together?

[At a sign from Mary the maids go out. Elizabeth enters and the doors swing to behind her]

MARY.
I had hoped to see you.
When last you wrote you were not sure.

ELIZABETH.
If I’ve come
So doubtfully and tardigrade, my dear,
And break thus in upon you, it’s not for lack
Of thinking of you. Rather because I’ve thought
Too long, perhaps, and carefully. Then at last
It seemed if I saw you near, and we talked as sisters
Over these poor realms of ours, some light might break
That we’d never see apart.

MARY.
Have I been so much
A problem?

ELIZABETH.
Have you not? When the winds blow down
The houses, and there’s a running and arming of men,
And a great cry of praise and blame, and the center
Of all this storm’s a queen, she beautiful —
As I see you are —

MARY. Nay —

ELIZABETH.
Aye, with the Stuart mouth.
And the high forehead and French ways and thoughts —
Well, we must look to it. — Not since that Helen
We read of in dead Troy, has a woman’s face
Stirred such a confluence of air and waters
To beat against the bastions. I’d thought you taller,
But truly, since that Helen, I think there’s been
No queen so fair to look on.

MARY. You flatter me.

ELIZABETH.
It’s more like envy. You see this line
Drawn down between my brows? No wash or ointments
Nor wearing of straight plasters in the night
Will take that line away. Yet I’m not much older
Than you, and had looks, too, once.

MARY.
I had wished myself
For a more regal beauty such as yours,
More fitting for a queen.

ELIZABETH.
Were there not two verses
In a play I remember!
“Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair” –?
They must die young if they’d die fair, my cousin.
Brightness falls from them but not from you yet,
believe me,
It’s envy, not flattery.

MARY.
Can it be — as I’ve hoped —
Can it be that you come to me as a friend —
Wishing me well?

ELIZABETH. Would you have me an enemy?

MARY. Oh! if that were so, if that were so.

ELIZABETH. Aye?

MARY.
I have great power to love! Let them buzz forever
Between us, these men with messages and lies,
You’ll find me still there, and smiling, and open-hearted,
Unchanging while the cusped hills wear down!

ELIZABETH.
Nay, pledge
Not too much, my dear, for in these uncertain times
It’s slippery going for all of us. I, who seem now
So firm in my footing, well I know one mis-step
Could make me a most unchancy friend. If you’d keep
Your place on this rolling ball, let the mountains slide
And slip to the valleys. Put no hand to them
Or they’ll pull you after.

MARY.
But does this mean you can lend
No hand to me, or I’ll pull you down?

ELIZABETH.
I say it
Recalling how I came to my throne as you did,
Some five or six years before, beset as you were
With angry factions — and came there young, loving truth,
As you did. This was many centuries since,
Or seems so to me, I’m so old by now
In shuffling tricks and the huckstering of souls
For lands and pensions. I learned to play it young,
Must learn it or die. — It’s thgus if you would rule;
Give up good faith, the word that goes with the heart,
The heart that clings where it loves. Give these up, and love
Where your interest lies, and should your interest change
Let your love follow it quickly. This is queen’s porridge
And however little stomach she has for it
A queen must eat it.

MARY.
I, too, Elizabeth,
Have read my Machiavelli. His is a text-book
Much studied in the French court. Are you serious
To read me this lesson?

ELIZABETH.
You have too loving a heart,
I fear, and too bright a face to be a queen.

MARY.
That’s not what’s charged againt me.
I’ve been traduced as a murderess and adultress
And nothing I could have said, and nothing done
Would have warded the blow. What I seek now is only
My freedom, so that I may return and prove
In open court, and before my witnesses,
That I am guiltless. You are the Queen of England,
And I am held prisoner in England. Why am I held,
And who is it holds me?

ELIZABETH.
It was to my interest, child,
To protect you, lest violence be offered to a princess
And set a precedent. Is there anyone in England
Who could hold you against my will?

MARY.
Then I ask you as a sovereign,
Speaking to you as an equal, that I be allowed
To go and fight my own battles.

ELIZABETH. It would be madness.

MARY. May I not be judge of that?

ELIZABETH. See, here is our love!

MARY.
If you wish my love and good-will you shall have it freely
When I am free.

ELIZABETH.
You will never govern, Mary. If I let you go
There will be long broils again in Scotland, dangers,
And ripe ones, to mym peace at home. To be fair
To my own people, this must not be.

MARY.
Now speak once
What your will is, and what behind it! You wish me here,
You wish me in prison — have we come to that?

ELIZABETH. It’s safer.

MARY. Who do you wish to rule in Scotland,
If not my Stuart line?

ELIZABETH.
Have I said, my dear,
That I’d bar the Stuarts from Scotland, or bar your reign
If you were there, and reigned there? I say only
You went the left way about it, that since it’s so
And has fallen out so, it were better for both our kingdoms
If you remained my guest.

MARY. For how long?

ELIZABETH.
Until
The world is quieter.

MARY. And who will rule in my place?

ELIZABETH. Why, who rules now? Your brother.

MARY. He rules by stealth!

ELIZABETH.
But all this could be arranged,
Or so I’m told, if your son were to be crowned king,
And Moray made regent.

MARY.
My son in Moray’s hands —
Moray in power —

ELIZABETH. Is there any other way?

[A pause]

MARY.
Elizabeth — I have been here a long time
Already — it seems so. If it’s your policy
To keep me — shut me up — I can argue no more —
No — I beg now. There’s one I love in the north,
You know that — and my life’s there, my throne’s
there, my name
To be defended — and I must lie here darkened
From news and from the sun — lie here impaled
On a brain’s agony — wondering even sometimes
If I were what they said me — a carrion thing
In my desires — can you understand this? — I speak it
Too brokenly to be understood, but I beg of you
As you are a woman and I am — and our brightness falls
Soon enough at best — let me go, let me have my life
Once more — and my dear health of mind again —
For I rot away here in my mind — in what
I think of myself — some death-tinge falls over one
In prisons —

ELIZABETH.
It will grow worse, not better. I’ve known
Strong men shut up alone for years — it’s not
Their hair turns white only; they sicken within
And scourge themselves. If you would think like a queen
This is no place for you. The brain taints here
Till all desires are alike. Be advised and sign
The abdication.

MARY.
Stay now a moment. I begin to glimpse
Behind this basilisk mask of yours. It was this
You’ve wanted from the first.

ELIZABETH. This what I wanted?

MARY.
It was you sent Lord Throgmorton long ago
When first I’d have married Bothwell. All this while
Some evil’s touched my life at every turn.
To cripple what I’d do. And now — why, now —
Looking on you — I see it incarnate before me —
It was your hand that touched me. Reaching out
In little ways — here, a word, there an action — this
Was what you wanted. I thought perhaps a star —
Wildly I thought it — perhaps a star might ride
Astray — or a crone that burned an image down
In wax — filling the air with curses on me
And slander; the murder of Rizzio, Moray in that
And you behind Moray — the murder of Darnley,
Throgmorton
Behind that too, you with them — and that winged scandal
You threw at us when we were married. Proof I have none
But I’ve felt it — would know it anywhere — in your eyes —
There — before me.

ELIZABETH.
What may become a queen
Is to rule her kingdom. Had you ruled yours I’d say
She has her ways, I mine. Live and let live
And a merry world for those who have it. But now
I must think this over — sadness has touched your brain.
I’m no witch to charm you, make no incantations:
You came here by your own road.

MARY.
I see how I came.
Back, back, each step the wrong way, and each sign followed
As you’d have me go, till the skein picks up and we stand
Face to face here. It was you forced Bothwell from me —
You there, and always. Oh, I’m to blame in this, too!
I should have seen your hand.

ELIZABETH.
It has not been my use
To speak mcuh or spend my time —

MARY.
How could I have been
Mistaken in you for an instant?

ELIZABETH.
You were not mistaken.
I am all women I must be. One’s a young girl,
Young and harrowed as you are — one who could weep
To see you here — and one’s a bitterness
At what I have lost and can never have, and one’s
The basilisk you saw. This last stands guard
And I obey it. Lady, you came to Scotland
A fixed and subtle enemy, more dangerous
To me than you’ve ever known. This could not be borne,
And I set myself to cull you out and down,
And down you are.

MARY. When was I your enemy?

ELIZABETH.
Your life was a threat to mine, your throne to my throne,
Your policy a threat.

MARY. How? Why?

ELIZABETH.
It was you or I.
Do you know that?
The one of us must win
And I must always win.
The Lords have brought a parchment
For you to sign. Sign it and live.

MARY.
If I sign it
Do I live where I please? Go free?

ELIZABETH.
Nay, I would you might,
But you’d go to Bothwell, and between you two
You might be too much for Moray. You’ll live with me
In London. There are other loves, my dear.
You’ll find amusement there in the court. I assure you
It’s better than a cell.

MARY.
And if I will not sign
This abdication?

ELIZABETH.
You’ve tasted prison. Try
A diet of it.

MARY.
And so I will. I wait for Bothwell —
And wait for him here.

ELIZABETH.
Where you will wait, bear in mind,
Is for me to say. Give up Bothwell,
Give up your throne if you’d have
A life worth living.

MARY.
I will not.
This trespass
Against God’s right will be known. The nations will know it,
Mine and yours. They will see you as I see you
And pull you down.

ELIZABETH.
Child, child, I’ve studied this gambit
Before I play it. I will send each year
This paper to you. Not signing, you will step
From one cell to another, step lower always,
Till you reach the last, forgotten, forgotten of men,
Forgotten among causes, a wraith that cries
To fallen gods in another generation
That’s lost your name. Wait then for Bothwell’s rescue.
It will never come.

MARY. I may never see him?

ELIZABETH.
Never.
It would not be wise.

MARY.
Oh! Oh! —
And suppose indeed you won
Within our lifetime, still looking down from the heavens
And up from men around us, God’s spies that watch
The fall of the great and little, they will find you out —
I will wait for that, wait longer than a life,
Till men and the times unscroll you, study the tricks
You play, and laugh, as I shall laugh, being known
Your better, haunted by your demon, driven
To death or exile by you, unjustly. Why,
When all’s done, it’s my name I care for, my name and heart,
To keep them clean.
Win now, take your triumph now,
For I’ll win men’s hearts in the end — though the sifting takes
This hundred years — or a thousand.

ELIZABETH.
And you are gulled
By what men write in histories, this or that,
And never true? I am careful of my name
As you are, for this day and longer. It’s not what happens
That matters, no, not even what happens that’s true,
But what men believe to have happened.
What will be said about us in after years
By men to come, I control that, being who I am.
It will be said of me that I governed well,
And wisely, but of you, cousin, that your life,
Shot through with ill-loves, battened on lechery, made you
An ensign of evil, that men tore down and trampled.
Shall I call for the Lords’ parchment?

MARY.
And still I win.
This crooked track
You’ve drawn me on, cover it, let it not be believed
That a woman was a fiend. Yes, cover it deep,
And heap my infamy over it, lest men peer
And catch sight of you as you were and are. In myself
I know you to be an eater of dust. Leave me here
And set me lower this year by year, as you promise,
Till the last an oubliette, and my name inscribed
On the four winds. Still, still I win! I have been
A woman, and I have loved as a woman loves,
Lost as a woman loses. I have borne a son,
And he will rule Scotland — and England. You have
no heir!
A devil has no children.

ELIZABETH.
You shall suffer
For this.

MARY.
And that I can do. A woman
Can do that. Come turn the key. I have a hell
For you in my mind, where you will burn and feel it,
Live where you like, and softly.

ELIZABETH.
Once more I ask you,
And patiently. Give up your throne.

MARY.
No, devil.
My pride is stronger than yours, and my heart beats blood
Such as yours has never known. And in this dungeon, I win here, alone.

ELIZABETH. [turning]
Good night, then.

MARY. Aye, good night.
[Elizabeth goes to the door]
Beaton!

ELIZABETH.
You will not see your maids again,
I think. It’s said they bring you news from the north.

MARY.
I thank you for all kindness.

[Elizabeth goes out. Mary stands for a moment in thought, then, going to the window, she sits again in her old place and looks out into the darkness]

CURTAIN