AMORE ET VIRTUTE
W. Raleigh
Crest of Sir Walter Raleigh
Hamilton Cottier4 Orchard Circle,Princeton.Jan. 25, 1949.
Raleigh THE SHEPHERD OF THE OCEAN
Whom I asked from what place he came,And how he hight, himself he did ycleepe“The Shepherd of the Oceän” by name,And said he came far from the main-sea deep.
Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
PORTRAIT OF RALEIGH IN “THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD,” 1617
The only portrait of him published during his lifetime
RaleighTHE SHEPHERD OF THE OCEANA Pageant-DramaBYFREDERICK HENRY KOCHProfessor of Dramatic Literature in the Universityof North Carolina
vignetteDesigned to Commemorate the Tercentenary ofthe Execution of Sir Walter Raleigh With a Foreword byEdwin Greenlaw PRINTED ATRaleigh, North CarolinaBY EDWARDS & BROUGHTON PRINTING CO.MCMXX
Copyright, 1920, by FREDERICK HENRY KOCH
All rights reserved, including acting rights and motion picture rights
To THE CITIZENS OF THE “CITIE OF RALEGH”
in North Carolina
Inheritors of the Brave Spirit of the Pioneer Colonizer
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
WHO WROTE JUST BEFORE HIS FALL.
“I shall yet live to see it an English nation”
Contents
| PAGE | |
| The Raleigh Tercentenary | 9 |
| Foreword | 13 |
| Characters Represented | 21 |
| The Prologue | 25 |
| The First Part | 27 |
| Episode I | 27 |
| Interlude | 42 |
| Episode II | 43 |
| The Interlude | 57 |
| The Second Part | 59 |
| Episode I | 61 |
| Interlude | 66 |
| Episode II | 67 |
| Interlude | 75 |
| Episode III | 77 |
| The Epilogue | 87 |
| The Directors of the Pageant | 93 |
| The Committees of the Pageant | 94 |
| The Principal Players of the Pageant | 95 |
List of Illustrations
Cover Design:The Arms of Sir Walter Raleigh, with Autograph.
The arms from the Heralds’ College, London.
The autograph—facsimile in letter to Mr. R. Duke, July 26, 1584.
Sir Walter Raleigh . . . . . . . . Frontispiece
Portrait of Raleigh in the Third Edition of The History of the World, 1617.
| FACING PAGE | |
| The Birthplace of Walter Raleigh | 23 |
| From a photograph. | |
| Queen Elizabeth | 29 |
| From painting by Zucchero in the National Portrait Gallery. | |
| Indian Chiefs of Roanoke Island | 35 |
| From the John White Pictures. | |
| The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588 | 41 |
| From Tapestry Hangings of the House of Lords, engraved by J. Pine, 1739. | |
| The Arrival of the English at Roanoke Island | 53 |
| From the John White Pictures. | |
| Raleigh's Cell in the Bloody Tower | 61 |
| From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer, 1851. | |
| The Site of Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island | 81 |
| From the painting by Jacques Busbee. |
“I SHALL yet live to see it an English nation!” So wrote Sir Walter Raleigh, with far-seeing vision, just before his fall, concerning his “Lost Colony” of Roanoke and his Citie of Ralegh in America.
Today the figure of Sir Walter Raleigh appears the more imposing in the perspective of the years—the complete embodiment of the talents of the versatile age in which he lived. Courtier, soldier, sea-captain, statesman, explorer, scientist, historian, poet—he was, perhaps, the most representative man of his time. But chiefly he was the pioneer colonizer of the New World of America.
It is especially fitting that Raleigh, The Shepherd of the Ocean, be produced at this particular time, as the contribution of the State of North Carolina to the celebrations being held conjointly both in England and in the United States in 1920-21, to commemorate the correlated occurrences which mark the beginnings and the development of our free English institutions. In this international celebration the landing on Roanoke Island in July, 1584, of the colonists of Sir Walter Raleigh—the first English settlers in America—holds a unique place. It is the pioneer English settlement in America, a heritage which may well be cherished along with the better known later settlements at Jamestown and at Plymouth Rock.
Raleigh, The Shepherd of the Ocean, is designed, not merely to present some of the shining incidents in the life of the man, but also to suggest something of the larger significance of his contribution. Sir Walter Raleigh is here conceived as representing the struggle of the English people for freedom from tyrant rule, as blazing the way for those who came after him to inherit the fruition of his vision of a brave New World—the proved reality of his dream of a new “English nation” in America.
In writing this play of Raleigh, The Shepherd of the Ocean, I have enriched the text, wherever it was practicable, with the vivid phrases of Raleigh himself—adapting various passages from his principal prose-writings, and including in the final scene his beautiful and haunting verses, Even such is time, etc., found in his Bible in the gatehouse at Westminster, and said to have been written by him the night before his execution.
This Raleigh pageant-drama was devised and written originally for the commemoration of the Tercentenary of the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh on October 29, 1918, as planned by the State Literary and Historical Association of North Carolina. But the original plan was thwarted by the epidemic of influenza, and now it is our purpose to produce it on the evenings of October 19th, 20th and 21st in a spacious Theatre of Nature in the suburbs of the City of Raleigh.
In the preparation of the text of the play I am deeply indebted to two of my former co-workers in community drama: to Dr. Orin Grant Libby, Professor of History in the University of North Dakota, for necessary historical data and for his inspiration in interpreting them; and to Margaret Plank Ganssle, one of the group of writers of our first Dakota communal drama, A Pageant of the North-West, in 1914, for her important collaboration in the lyrics. I beg, also, to acknowledge my indebtedness for the song, God Save Britannia's Queen, to the Shakespeare Tercentenary Masque, Shakespeare, The Playmaker, written likewise in collaboration under my direction by a group of twenty members of The Dakota Playmakers in 1916, and published originally in the Quarterly Journal of the University of North Dakota.
I desire to express my appreciation of the admirable civic spirit of those who have made possible the present production. Without the whole-hearted cooperation of the various organizations of the city of Raleigh, the original design of Mr. R. D. W. Connor, Secretary of the State Literary and Historical Association of North Carolina, and of my esteemed colleague in the University of North Carolina, Dr. Edwin Greenlaw, could not have become a reality.
Frederick H. Koch.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina,
August 8, 1920.
Foreword
TO the school-boy, and often to those who think only now and then of the more serious side of their youthful training, the Founders of America seem a sober people who braved the terrors of the sea and of the wilderness in order that they might worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. If we seek an imaginative background for visualizing these venerable people, we find it in the poem by Mrs. Hemans about the stern and rock-bound coast; in the first Thanksgiving of Puritan men and women, making their way through the snow to the meeting-house and protected against the Devil by the Holy Book and against the Indians by their muskets. The sombre tales of Hawthorne deepen the picture—“The Minister's Black Veil,” “The Gentle Boy,” and “Merrymount.” To these we add our slender remembrances of early history—the expulsion of Roger Williams, the witchcraft delusion, Jonathan Edwards preaching his fiery sermon on “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and finish the chapter with the scene of the embattled farmers at Concord at the outbreak of the Revolution. It is true that a few stories of colonial New York and Pennsylvania linger in our memories long after school days are over, and that even in middle age we sometimes try to recapture the delicious romantic thrill once felt in the story of
Pocahontas and Captain John Smith. But we are apt to feel that these are excursions into the land of romance and that what Whitman calls the real real is to be found chiefly in the stern New England life with its pioneer hardships, its sermons three hours long, its long prayers, and the New England Primer.
Now there is much that is true and commendable in this attitude. But it is not the whole truth. The foundations of America are not to be found solely in the England of Cromwell, but also in the England of Elizabeth. So long as the New England tradition dominated American literature, American life, and to a certain extent American theories of government, it was only natural that schoolboys and girls in other parts of the country as well as in the neighborhood of Boston and New York should be brought up with such an imaginative background. The New England idea contributed the town meeting, freedom of thought and discussion, a lofty religious and ethical tradition. But it also contributed, from the nature of the events of our history from the landing of the Mayflower to the Revolution, certain Hebraic conceptions of nationality—an abiding consciousness of sin, a consciousness also of being a peculiar people, set apart from all others under the special charge of God, while from this apartness and from the necessities of the long struggle there sprang a hatred of England that has lasted for generations.
The New England tradition, fine as it is, and deeply interwoven in the strands of our national life, is after all but one strand. The America of the last half century is far nearer the earlier English tradition than to the tradition of Cromwell's time. It is in the sense of adventure in modern life, in the romance of the conquest of far-flung prairies and of mountains made to yield their treasure, in the building of giant industries, in the color brought by emigrants from every corner of the Old World, in the irrepressible confidence of youth finding it an easy leap to pluck honor from the pale-faced moon, that we find our thought of America today. And the first-beginnings of this multifarious life we find in the adventure, the romance, the daring accomplishment, the color, and the youth of Elizabethan England. Not in Cotton Mather's vast learning or Jonathan Edwards's sermons or in Endicott's repression of heresy or the evolution of an ideal of religious and civil liberty do we come upon the sources of that which now seems most truly American; but in Shakespeare's England, and in the England of Drake and Gilbert and Walter Raleigh. To re-create in our imagination that England, to see that the Puritan tradition is but a part of a complex and fascinating whole, that it is from this whole that the America of today has sprung—this is both sound history and sound patriotism.
The Raleigh Tercentenary Masque which Professor
Koch has written will aid in this imaginative re-creation of our past. It gives little pictures of the background of English life from which sprang the whole impulse to create a new English nation across the seas. As we read, or as we look upon the players who revive this old life for us, the mist of the years is lifted and we are translated to the scenes in which Sidney and Raleigh and Drake played their parts upon the world's great stage, with the crowd of town and country folk eager to show respect to a beloved sovereign and to hear tidings brought from mysterious stretches of ocean; among them, too, the keen observer of all this life who wove so much of its spirit into the great dramas which are our richest heritage. There are some liberties in chronology and fact, yet the picture as a whole has that deeper truth which it is the object of the literature of the imagination to convert into reality. This applies not only to the host of minor characters with which Mr. Koch has peopled his stage, or to the portraits of the great dramatist and his fellows, but in such incidents, for example, as the one in which we see our hero, under the spell of a mighty enchantment, shed his years like a garment and stand forth clad in the beauty and strength of his youth. The symbol is profoundly true in its revelation of Raleigh's character; in its expression of the power of his personality over the imagination of England, to whom he indeed seemed
one whom age could not wither; and in its revelation of the national spirit itself.
For a third of a century Walter Raleigh held nearest his heart the idea of an English nation in America. He put his private fortune into attempts to realize this plan. He saw in it the only way to countervail the sinister power of Spain. When he was at liberty he organized colonies or went himself over the trackless wastes of ocean. Like Chaucer's shipman, he had been shaken in many a tempest. When he was in prison, he wrote of the great idea, in essays, state papers, and stories of travel. His language has in it the tang of the salt-water, the vision of vast uncharted seas. He sought not merely by argument but by appeal to the imagination of all the English people to inflame them with enthusiasm for this great new world. His field was as boundless as that of Bacon. The one had taken all knowledge to be his province and sought to inspire men to bring nature under subjection. The other took the new world and all the seas that laved its shores to be his province, and sought to inspire men to carry the high traditions of England to far-off lands. It was for civilization, not for conquest. In the twelve years of his prison life, he helped to convert the jail into England's best university, a university far more nearly related to the destinies of his people than Oxford and Cambridge. Libraries, students and inquirers, high talk of matters
charged with human destiny, were found in the Tower where prisoners like Raleigh, Northumberland, and others spent year after year. Of kings such as the blinded despot who ruled England Raleigh left a record in his “History of the World,” written in prison, showing forth a mighty masque of those whom he called “great conquerors, and other troublers of the world,” all of them brought in the end to the contempt and failure that they deserved. In his laboratory he conducted experiments for the advancement of scientific knowledge. For twelve years legally dead, his property taken from him, his faithful wife forbidden, after a time, to visit him, this wonderful man never ceased to dream of the Grail which was as much an object of desire to him as to any knight of Arthur's court.
All this Professor Koch has finely and truthfully expressed in his Masque. In the symbol of Orinoco we have a conception not only marked by poetic and dramatic imagination, but one true at the same time to the spirit of allegory so constantly met in Elizabethan England and to the facts of Raleigh's life. The Masque here presented is not merely an example of antiquarian zeal. It is not merely a series of scenes from the life and time of this great ancestor of ours. It is an interpretation of the vision out of which the English nation in America was to come. It would be pleasant, more satisfactory perhaps to our desire for
concreteness and order, if we could look upon Raleigh as the actual founder of the city in the New World that today bears his name, could think of him as an actual pioneer, like Bradford or John Smith. But the empire of the spirit of man transcends the physical realm of fact. The English nation that Raleigh saw in vision in his lonely cell or in the watches of the night when he kept vigil on the little vessel that plowed the vast Atlantic, is greater and far more powerful than it could ever have entered his mind to conceive. It is enough for us that he saw the first step that was to be taken in a mighty evolution, saw it when every consideration of worldly prudence bade him deny it, held to it in imprisonment, in disgrace and poverty, and died for it at last. This fundamental truth is ready for us as we look upon this Masque of the Shepherd of the Ocean. On the one hand the narrow and selfish policy of the king and his ministers; the certainty to all who read the records that no one of his judges and accusers caught the faintest understanding of his vision of England's destiny; the fear of the untried path and the expediency of narrow politicians. On the other the shining vision, the never-failing courage, the sense of a destiny against which king and party, apparently all powerful, yet strive in vain. On earth his reward was prison, poverty, death on the scaffold. Yet that scaffold swayed the future. He was not alone.
Others had caught the same vision, and with him fired the imaginations of men.
From these beginnings, behold how mighty a nation has sprung! And as we look from our city of Raleigh in North America upon this fragmentary interpretation of the beginnings of one of earth's greatest evolutions, we may gain, once more, the truth that out of faithfulness to an ideal against whatever odds, out of willingness to think new thoughts and even to venture, if need be, upon seas yet uncharted, a new victory may be won, provided only that the end of all our striving be the glory of God and the relief of man's estate. Democracy, born in experiment, is itself a continued experiment. The America of 1920 may have its vision as well as the England of Elizabeth and James. And we who are the America of today may sit at the feet of the Stuart king or, with Raleigh, press on to new worlds.
Edwin Greenlaw.
Characters RepresentedTHE PROLOGUE, THE INTERLUDES, AND THE EPILOGUE
The Heralds
The Spirit of Youth
The Chorus of Shepherds
THE FIRST PART: RALEIGH, THE SHEPHERD OF THE OCEANEpisode I: The Spanish Armada, 1588
Sir Walter Raleigh
Queen Elizabeth
The Earl of Essex
Sir Francis Drake
Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton
William Shakespeare
Edmund Spenser
John White, Governor of Virginia
Manteo and Wanchese, natives from Virginia
The Master of Ceremonies
Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Burleigh, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Martin Frobisher, The Usher of the Black Rod, Gentlemen Pensioners, Elizabeth Throgmorton and other Ladies-in-Waiting, Pages, and a Jester.
Merchants and tradesmen of London, their wives and sweethearts and children; the Host of “The Boar's Head”; soldiers and mariners of England.
Episode II: Raleigh's Vision of the New World, 1596Sir Walter Raleigh
The Earl of Essex
William Shakespeare
The Lord Mayor of London
Sea-captains of the Victory of Cadiz: Sir George Carew, Sir Francis Vere, Sir Edward Wingfield, Captain Bagnoll, Captain Medick; soldiers and mariners.
Poets and Playmakers: Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Edmund Spenser, Francis Bacon.
The Festival Group: Townspeople and country-folk, including morris dancers, peddlers, pastry-cooks, fruit venders, a Dragon, a Hobbyhorse, a Bedlam beggar, a gypsy dancer, a puppet-master, an alchemist, a tapster, woodsmen, milkmaids, a chimney-sweep, a juggler, a Puritan, a Jack-in-the-Green, Robin Hood, Will Stukely, Friar Tuck, and Maid Marian.
THE SECOND PART: THE MARTYRDOM OF RALEIGHEpisode I: The Lure of the Orinoco, 1617
Sir Walter Raleigh
An Old Servant
Venezuela, Queen of the Carribean
The Spirit of the Orinoco, a water-sprite
Pantomime Figures: Raleigh, the courtier, and Queen Elizabeth; Elizabeth Throgmorton; Governor White of Virginia; Manteo and Wanchese; Lady Raleigh and her children; a group of sea-captains of Cadiz.
Episode II: Raleigh's Last Venture, 1617Sir Walter Raleigh
Walter Raleigh, his oldest son
A Herald
King James the First
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham
The Company of Raleigh, consisting of sixty gentlemen of rank, sea-captains, soldiers, and mariners.
A Group of Courtiers, in attendance on the King
The Spirit of the Orinoco, a water-sprite
Episode III: The Sacrifice, October 29, 1618Sir Walter Raleigh
The Dean of Westminster
A Spy of the Government
Several Gentlemen, friends of Raleigh
The Bellman
THE BIRTHPLACE OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH
Hayes Barton, near Budleigh-Salterton, Devon
THE PROLOGUE
The defeat of the Invincible Armada was the opening event in the history of the United States. It was the event that made all the rest possible. Without it the attempts at Jamestown and Plymouth could hardly have had more success than the attempt at Roanoke Island. An infant colony is like an army at the end of a long line of communication; it perishes if the line is cut. Before England could plant thriving states in America she must control the ocean routes. The far-sighted Raleigh understood the conditions of the problem. When he smote the Spaniards at Cadiz he knew it was a blow struck for America. He felt the full significance of the defeat of the Armada, and in spite of all his disappointments in Virginia, he never lost heart.—[Fiske: Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, Vol. I, p. 39.]
The Prologue[The Pageant is announced by three trumpet calls from theHeralds.]
[EnterThe Chorus of Shepherds,representing the children of Raleigh. Their kirtles are white, the white of promise. Over these rude sheep skins are worn.]
Youth, Youth, Spirit of Youth,The world yearns for theeAs the blind yearn to see;Youth, Youth, speak of the Truth.[The Spirit of Youthenters in response to the chant of theChorus.In his hand he bears a shepherd's crook. His step is lithe and free. He speaks with radiant tones—the spirit of indomitable life.]
The Spirit of YouthChildren of Youth, believers in Youth,Lovers of Youth's heart of flame,Behold from out the Gates of YesterdayThere comes the gallant figure of a knight,Whose bravery and fame once stirred the world,Sir Walter Raleigh—knight indeed was he—A knight of high adventure, courage sure;A knight, who, to the end of time, shall beA leader in the hazardous advanceOf dauntless Youth, forever blazing trailsThat lead to spacious lands of higher hope.Old England's son was he, and proud to boastThat England's air had vivified his dust.He interspersed the sea with channels wide,Through which, as from a mother's teeming breast,
We gained our nurture straight from English source,Our love of justice, democratic rule.And we, the children of Old England, now,Today, commemorate with English kinThe execution of our gallant Raleigh,Who, noble-hearted to his tragic ending,Alone on God's highway fared bravely forth.We, conscious of the debt which children oweUnto the parent who has suckled them,Join now our hands today across the sea—With English brothers over all the seas—Making this anniversary to serveA two-fold purpose,—praise to Walter Raleigh,And with fair England,—union, brotherhood.The Chorus of Shepherds
Youth, Youth, Spirit of Youth,The world yearns for theeAs the blind yearn to see;Youth, Youth, speak of the Truth.THE FIRST PART
Raleigh, the Shepherd of the Ocean
Thus on the sand banks that guard the eastern shores of North Carolina the English race laid its first firm grasp on the North American continent. How unconscious were those obscure English sailors that they were enacting one of the greatest scenes in the world's history! Three hundred years have gone yet even we, after all the tremendous results that have followed in their train, cannot yet fully appreciate the vast significance of that simple ceremony. For then and there, on the North Carolina coast, Englishmen first set foot on American soil with a view to permanent possession, and that event, rather than the defeat of the Invincible Armada, “was the opening event in the history of the United States.”—Connor: The Beginnings of English America, p. 11.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
From the painting by Zucchero in the National Portrait Gallery
The Spanish Armada, 1588
Time: The eve of the “Invincible Armada,” in the summer of 1588.
Scene: Harrow Field on the Thames River in the suburbs of London. The front of the Boar's Head Inn is visible at the left. Preparations have been made for the review of the troops by Queen Elizabeth as a part of the comprehensive war-plan for the defense of the realm, made necessary by the threatened invasion of England by the Spanish Armada of Philip II. At the right on a dais, erected for the occasion, is a high gilded throne bearing the arms of England. It is appropriately festooned with many-colored flowers.
[The scene opens with a happy concourse of representative townsfolk flocking in—merchants and tradesmen of London, with their wives and sweethearts, and a host of trooping children—all in holiday dress. There is also a group of sailor lads, a company of young girls, their arms filled with garlands of field flowers, which they are busily adding to the decorations of the scene, and a ubiquitousJesterwith his madcap quirks. All have been rehearsing the songs and dances, prepared in honor of the goodQueen Bessfor this occasion—the review byThe Queen,of the seamen and soldiers of the realm, in the final preparations for the impending grapple with the navy of Spain.]
[The Master of Ceremoniesnow marshals the people hurriedly to their appointed places for the rehearsal of the song, God Save Britannia's Queen, which they have prepared especially for this occasion.The Jesterdarts about interrupting the arrangements with his pranks, leaving confusion in his wake.]
The Master of Ceremonies
[At the conclusion of the song] And now let us try the dances.
[In a twinkling a wild country dance is in full swing. It is interrupted almost immediately, however, by a salvo of trumpets announcing the arrival ofThe Queen.The dancers cease instantly, transfixed with expectancy. Then, headed byThe Master of Ceremonies,they rush off to meetThe Queen,and presently return ushering her to the great throne, cheering with unrestrained enthusiasm. Two ladies-in-waiting, four pages,The Earl of EssexandSir Walter RaleighaccompanyQueen Elizabeth.]
[Queen Elizabethis in her fifty-fourth year at this time. She is of medium stature, richly dressed, and of commanding presence. Her face is long, fair in complexion, and, although somewhat wrinkled, the ravages of time are hidden as well as paint and powder can conceal them. Her small eyes are keen but kindly, her nose slightly hooked, her lips thin. She wears a light auburn wig, dyed to simulate the brilliant color of her own hair in her youth.The Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth'sfavorite, is a remarkably handsome man, tall of stature, and dignified in bearing.]
[Sir Walter Raleigh1is tall and well proportioned, with a high forehead, rich, dark hair and beard, a fine face radiant with life.]
[There is alsoSir Francis Drake, Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton,the noble and chivalrousSir Philip Sidney,the sageLord Burleigh,the gallantSir Christopher
1 Raleigh's name is spelt in many ways. Stebbing cites seventy-four forms known to have been current. Raleigh himself, down to 1583, generally wrote Rauley; he also wrote Rawleyghe, Rauleigh, Raleghe, and Ralegh. “The spelling Raleigh, which posterity has preferred, happens to be one he is not known to have ever employed.”—Stebbing: Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 30-31.Hatton,accompanied bySir John Hawkins, Sir Martin Frobisher,theUsher of the Black Rod,and several gentlemen pensioners.]
[The Earl of EssexandSir Walter Raleighvery ceremoniously assistThe Queento the throne, the pages carrying a silken canopy over her, and the two ladies-in-waiting lifting her train. The crowd cheers in wild enthusiasm. With no little difficultyThe Master of Ceremoniessucceeds in silencing the uproar.]
The Master of Ceremonies[Pompously] To your places, all of you! Make haste!
With your Majesty's gracious permission [with a deep bow] we will sing a song prepared especially for your Highness, and for this momentous time.
[Queen Elizabeth,seating herself, smiles a gracious assent, and the song is sung lustily by all the people.]
God save Britannia's Queen!God save her Majesty!Bless e'en the earth beneath her feet;Bless this her isle, her royal seat;Let all who hear her name repeat,God save her Majesty!God save Britannia's Queen!God save her Majesty!This throned isle, this home of kings,This land where laughter ever rings,Where every echo loudly sings,God save her Majesty!God save Britannia's Queen!God save her Majesty!Let every loyal British son,Support the right ’till life is done.“Dieu et mon droit”—the victory won;God save her Majesty!
[At the conclusion of the song,Queen Elizabethsmiles with gracious approval.]
Queen ElizabethI thank you, my good people.
[Twenty of the townspeople, with their wives, and several of the sailors, advance and perform a country dance.
[The dance is interrupted suddenly by a trumpet call. A page rushes in and, dropping upon one knee beforeThe Queen,offers her a letter. She reads it in haste, then rises.
[While all are intent uponThe Queen'sactions,Raleigh,forgetting his duty, is paying amorous court to one ofThe Queen'smaids-in-waiting, the beautiful golden-hairedElizabeth Throgmorton,whom he afterwards married.2The Queen,noticing this, rebukesRaleighsharply.]
Queen Elizabeth[With evident temper] In this hour of England's peril, mayhap your Queen may claim your service, Master Raleigh.
2 The courtship of Elizabeth Throgmorton by Walter Raleigh is here antedated by several years, but the incident is thoroughly characteristic. The Queen's temper at this time was extremely exacting and uncertain. By this action he brought upon himself the loss of royal favor and imprisonment in the Tower.[Raleighstarts, hastens toThe Queen'sside, and kneeling awaits her command.]
Your arm, my Lord of Essex.
[Raleighthus rebuked, retires for fear of bringing upon himself further royal wrath, andQueen Elizabethturns to address the people.]
Queen ElizabethMy good people all, I am summoned to a council of grave import, and must away at once. I regret that I must leave your merry-makings.
By your leave, my Lord of Essex.
[She hurries out with theEarl of Essex, Lord Howardand her attendants,Raleighfollowing in the rear.
[When the surprise over the sudden summons ofThe Queenhas subsided, the people turn again to their games, and the morris dancers begin their play.]
[Sir Francis Drakeand the other sea-captains returning, seat themselves at the tables before the Boar's Head tavern and call loudly for ale.]
Sir Francis DrakeThe review of troops is delayed by this sudden summons of the Queen to the council. Gallants, let us drink while we await her here. What ho! mine host, ale! ale!
[Now enters a group of poets and playmakers—Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, Francis BeaumontandJohn Fletcher,andWill Shakespeare,now twenty-four years of age and but three years resident in London. With them is the brilliant young scholar,Francis Bacon.]
Sir Francis Drake
Well met, my hearties, rare old Ben and Master Spenser, and all of you. And how fares our young player, Shakespeare? I hear you are devising now a comedy, quaint and fanciful. Beaumont, Fletcher, and our youthful philosopher, Francis Bacon—you are right welcome here. Sit and drink a round with us.
And Master Raleigh has come back to join us, and with him his two rare monsters from Virginia.
[Raleighhas entered with a group of gaudily decorated Indians, decked with elaborate trappings, and conspicuous head-dresses, sent him from his colony of Virginia. The red men stand in silent dignity, while the company, especially youngShakespeare,gazes upon them with staring curiosity.]
[Shakespearecuriously observes the red men. He is evidently much interested in them. The Indians seat themselves toward the front of the scene and fill their long pipes with tobacco.3]
Sir Walter RaleighMine host, a light for their pipes.
[The Hostgoes out and returns with a lighted torch which he holds out awkwardly. The Indians then go through the ceremonial of the pipe, one of them picking up a splinter of wood from the ground with which to light the tobacco. Then rising, both Indians perform the ceremony of turning the lighted pipes to the four quarters of the sky, intently watched by all the company.
3 Raleigh caused tobacco (called by the Indians Yppowoc) to be introduced into England from his American colony, about this time. He had a silver pipe, modelled after the Indian stone pipes, in which he was exceedingly fond of smoking the Indian Yppowoc.INDIAN CHIEFS OF ROANOKE ISLAND
From DeBry's Engraving of John White's Painting
Then they calmly seat themselves and smoke in silence.The Hostbeats out the torch on the ground.]
Sir Francis Drake[Banteringly] Sir Walter, will you not smoke with your friends, the aborigines? I’ faith, I'll see to it that your servant does not drench you with ale this time.
[All laugh loudly.]
ShakespeareShall posterity credit you with having introduced such monsters and such savage weeds as this tobacco?
Sir Walter RaleighNay, Master Will, enough now of your chiding. Not monsters these, but “lustie men,” as Barlow called them, natives of America and princes of their own people. Wanchese and Manteo they are called. Though “savage in their behavior,” they are “as mannerly and civil as any in Europe.” Our colonists “were entertained by them with all love and kindness and with as much bountie (after their manner) as they could possibly devise.” They brought our people for friendly gifts “divers kindes of fruits, Melons, Walnuts, Cucumbers, Gourdes, Pease, and divers rootes, and fruites very excellent good, and of their Countrey corne, which is very white, faire and well tasted.”4
4 “We brought home also two of the Savages, being lustie men, whose names were Wanchese and Manteo.”—Barlow's report of the first expedition and the discovery of Virginia, 1584, printed in Hackluyt's Voyages.Shakespeare
And will they long remain in England?
Sir Walter RaleighNo, Master Will, they will return presently to their own country with our worthy Governor of Virginia.
ShakespeareBut does John White return so soon to your “Citie of Ralegh in Virginia?”5
Sir Walter RaleighAye, that he does; our kinsmen there are now in sore distress. Their stores are gone and winter comes anon. Our brave Governor must hasten back immediately with supplies, lest they perish—in that stark wilderness of Hatteras.
ShakespeareAnd is their “isle of Roanoke” in winter then but vasty wilderness?
Sir Walter RaleighIn winter, aye, but in the goodly spring it is reported a veritable paradise of Nature, “Soile the most
5 “In the yeere of our Lord 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh intending to persevere in planting of his Countrey of Virginia, prepared a new Colonie of one hundred and fifty men to be sent thither, under the charge of John White, whom hee appointed Governour, and also appointed unto him twelve Assistants, unto whom he gave a Charter, and incorporated them by the name of Governour and Assistants of the Citie of Ralegh in Virginia.”—Hackluyt's Voyages.plentiful sweet, fruitfull and wholesome of all the world, . . . . . above fourteene several sweet smelling timber trees, . . . . . the highest and reddest Cedars of the world.” The shores are sandy, “but so full of grapes as the very beating and surge of the Sea overflowed them,” and “in such plenty . . . . . both on the sand and on the greene soile on the hills” that “the like abundance” cannot be found “in all the world.”6
Here comes our gallant Governor even now, to take his leave.
[Governor John Whiteof Virginia enters in haste.]
Governor WhiteFarewell, good Master Walter. My sails are set, and I must hasten forth again to our brave colonists across the seas, to bring them news of home, and goodly stores of food against the lonely winter there.
I yearn to touch again the shores of Hatteras, to see again my fair child Eleanor, and clasp her sweet young babe, Virginia Dare! Virginia Dare! well christened so—the first-born of our English pioneers in new America!7
Sir Walter RaleighGod speed thee on thy way, good Governor, and bring thee safely back to Roanoke, to our brave kinsmen
6 Barlow's report in Hackluyt's Voyages.7 Ananias Dare, one of Governor White's assistants, was his son-in-law. On August 18, 1587, Eleanor, wife of Ananias Dare, gave birth to a daughter who was christened on the following Sunday, Virginia, because she was “the first Christian born in Virginia.” The State of North Carolina has commemorated the event by naming the county which embraces the birthplace, Dare County.there and to the fair Virginia! Would I could with you to Virginia, but England needs me here at home in her defense.
[Governor Whitetakes his leave.]
[A cannon-shot is heard.Raleighsprings to his feet.]
Sir Walter Raleigh’Tis the signal gun! But, gentles all, we will make short work of this “Invincible Armada.” We will speedily sweep clean the seas of all these tyrant foes and clear a path to the New World o'er which, years hence, ships shall freely pass bearing their precious freight of English men and maids and all their household gear, to rear their homes and build their hearthfires in that wide land, Virginia. There shall arise in coming years goodly states, fair cities; and a new and gallant folk—our kin and brothers—shall in the years to come clasp hands with us in Britain here, in worthy emprise and in desperate venture ’gainst grim-faced tyranny.
Spenser[Leaping up and lifting high his bumper of ale.]
Bravo, Master Walter! Here I hail and name thee “The Shepherd of the Ocean.”8
8Whom I asked from what place he came, And how he hight, himself he did ycleepe The Shepherd of the Oceän by name, And said he came far from the main-sea deep. Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
All[Rising, lift their bumpers and, drinking, shout.]
The Shepherd of the Ocean! The Shepherd of the Ocean!
Sir Walter RaleighGood comrades all, my friend, Sir Edmund, has overpraised too much, as is his wont when warmth of comradeship his muse inspires. We are the true knights-errant of the seas, and when we enter the lists with our good ocean steeds, ’gainst Philip's host of ships in wide array, though mountain high, the reddened waves with wide wreckage strewn, shall leave this brave Armada, but vast and reeking ruin.
Lord Howard[Entering in haste.]
Captains all, I have just ridden down from the quay where a swift ship has come with tidings that the great Armada has been sighted and is coming up the channel. The Queen will be here anon to attend the last muster of our troops. Let us to our posts to await her arrival.
[They all go off in haste. In the distance trumpet-calls and alarms are heard, cannon shots and rolling drums.]
[The Indians left behind, the innkeeper gestures them to rise. They, however, remain stolid. In despair he calls out, “Sir Walter, Sir Walter!” running off for assistance. The prentices are afraid to move as ordered. At length at their own will the red men rise slowly and move off with great dignity, the drawers scurrying before them.]
[Then enter the files of soldiers bearing muskets, and the seamen bearing pikes, their officers preceding. A cannon is trundled in. All take their stations. The entrance of a herald and a trumpet-call announce the arrival ofQueen Elizabeth,on horseback and clad in armor. She is attended by the sea-captains and other officers on horseback, headed by the two commanders,Lord HowardandSir Francis Drake;thenSir Walter Raleighand the rest. All dismount exceptThe Queen. Lord Howard,giving his horse to an attendant, stands atThe Queen'sbridle. All salute.]
Lord HowardYour Majesty, my gracious Queen, you see before you here a small portion of the forces with which by land and sea we do propose to meet the Spanish hosts.
Queen Elizabeth’Tis a goodly company, my Lord Howard.
Gentlemen of England, brave soldiers, stalwart seamen of our royal isle, I have appointed Lord Howard and Sir Francis here commanders of all our English hosts by sea and land. And these gallant captains, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Martin Frobisher, and Sir John Hawkins, no less in valor and in honorable achievements, will see their orders executed. The sacred soil of Britain shall repulse the proud invader. Never while I draw breath as Queen, shall foreign foot be planted on our shores. Men of England, all Europe stands with bated breath, awaiting the issue of Philip's venture here.
We have in London here a gentle player, as yet obscure. Some lines of his I chanced upon not long ago will serve our purpose now:
THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA, 1588
From “The Tapestry Hangings of the House of Lords,” Engraved by J. Pine, 1739
“The defeat of the Invineible Armada was the opening event in the history of the United States.”— John Fiske.
“And you, good yeomen,Whose limbs were made in England, show us hereThe mettle of your pasture: let us swearThat you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;For there is none of you so mean and base,That hath not noble luster in your eyes.I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,Straining upon the start.”9
Gentlemen, to horse! The great Armada awaits us. God defend the right! To arms! For your Queen, for England, and St. George!
[Tumultuous cheering. The sailors toss up their caps. The people followThe Queenand the troops, shouting and cheering, wild with enthusiasm.]
9 This passage glows with the spirit of the struggle against the Armada, and may conceivably have been struck off by Shakespeare in the heat of patriotic fervor, and used later in King Henry the Fifth.Interlude
[Chanting,The Chorus of Shepherdsenters. Their kirtles are white, as before—for never was promise more fair than the promise of England's future.]
[The Spirit of Youthnow unfurls the splendid banner of Old England, and, planting it in the center of the stage to suggest the triumph of England over the Armada, speaks.]
The Spirit of YouthAnd yet again, this famous figure flashesAs “Hero of Cadiz,” returned with laurels,Greeting the vast array of friendly folk.Again his vision leads them ’cross the sea,To fairer worlds than any they have dreamed,To larger conquests than the galleon-burningThat constituted victory at Cadiz.As painter, gifted with a magic palette,He outlines deftly simple plans of state,Then splashes on a myriad mystic tintsUntil a form of grandeur and of graceShines there resplendent, free from tyrant-taint,A noble figure—Young America—Her brow aglint with stars, and bearing highThe shining torch of freedom for the world!EPISODE II
Raleigh's Vision of the New World, 1596
Time: The summer of 1596, eight years having elapsed since the coming of the Armada.
Scene: Harrow Field on the Thames River in the suburbs of London, as before. A popular celebration of the victory of the English fleet over the Spaniards at Cadiz, on June 20, 1596. The scene represents the full fruition of English national life.
[It is a colorful festival of the folk—an ever-changing tapestry of merrymaking, of unrestrained dancing and song.]
[There are many interesting figures in this motley throng—some picturesque, others grotesque, but all harmonious with the occasion. Even the grimyBedlam beggarhas a legitimate place in the picture.]
[Here arePeddlarswith fine laces and ornaments, vying withPastry-cooksandFruit Vendersin crying out their tempting wares—muffins, pears, gingerbread, teacakes. Here is one fantastically disguised asA Dragon.Here is a man made up asThe Hobbyhorse,amusing an admiring group of children with his imitations of the trotting, galloping, and curveting paces of the horse.]
[There isA Gypsyin many-colored dress, attracting a group of admiring swains with her sinuous dancing. On the opposite side isA Puppet-master,calling the attention of a crowd of happy rustics to his performance about to begin.An Alchemist,dimly outlined in a murky booth lighted with green lights, is holding a
company of country gulls in awestruck wonder with his marvelous experiments.]
[There are many other familiar figures: the jollyTapsterwith his fat cask of ale and his generous tankards,Woodsmencarrying their axes, prettyMilkmaidsexhibiting a sleek cow with gilded horns decorated with flowers,A Chimney-sweepadorned with holiday ribbons,A Juggler,a sombrePuritan, A Bag-piper, A Jack-in-the-Green,andRobin Hoodand his merry crew—Little John, Will Stukely, Friar Tuck,and the sprightlyMaid Marian.]
[Now there is a loud salvo of trumpets, a momentary hush, and then vociferous cheering asThe Lord Mayor of Londonenters, mounted on his footcloth horse, ushering in with great ceremony the heroes of Cadiz.]
The Crowd[Cheering wildly] All hail! The heroes of Cadiz! All hail!
[Enter arm in arm,Sir Walter RaleighandThe Earl of Essexgaily accoutred.Raleighis noticeable “for the splendor of his armor and ornaments. The very shoes upon his feet were so lavishly decorated with jewels, that they were said to have cost six thousand pounds. His sword and belt fairly glittered with large gems. Chains of gold fell from his neck on the highlyburnished breastplate. On one arm he wore conspicuously a long ribbon, whichThe Queenhad coquettishly given him as a reward for his devotion.”10]
[After themRaleigh'scousin,Sir George Carew,who commanded the Mary Rose; Sir Francis Vere,captain of the Rainbow; Sir Edward Wingfield, Captain Bagnoll, Captain Medick,and other leaders of the great sea-fight.]
10 Towle's Raleigh, His Exploits and Voyages, Boston, 1881, p. 169.[After these comes a brilliant concourse of the chief poets and playmakers of the time—Shakespeare,now thirty-five years of age;Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Edmund Spenser, Francis Bacon,the rising young advocate, and others.]
The Lord Mayor of London[Ordering the crowd to cease cheering, pompously speaks the address of welcome.]
Most worthy heroes of Cadiz—soldiers, mariners of the wooden walls of Britain—you are exceedingly welcome on this magnanimous occasion. Your exploits have rung throughout the wide realm of merry England, and we are here to do you honor and to give you welcome home. I’ faith, we have spoke of little else since you did sail some months agone to meet the giant-ships upon the Spanish Main. May it please you now to listen to our song of welcome!
The Earl of EssexMy Lord Mayor, we thank you for your hearty welcome and will gladly hear your song.
[The heroes of Cadiz and their party seat themselves at the tables before the inn, smoking long Winchester pipes. The people all sing lustily A Deep Seas’ Chantey, celebratingSir Walter Raleighand the soldiers and seamen of England.]
A Deep Seas’ ChanteyO, our good ship, firm and true, Yo ho!Carries Britain's finest crew, Yo ho!Though the sea be wild and squally,
Our captain's Walter Raleigh,And there's nothing he can't do, Yo ho!O, our good ship, Water Sprite, Yo ho!Sees many a gallant fight, Yo ho!When she hears King Philip squeal,She laughs from deck to keel,For with Raleigh she's all right, Yo ho!O, our guns know how to crack, Yo ho!And they'll take no talkin’ back, Yo ho!Through a million ships or more,Those Spanish men-of-war,We make a blazin’ track, Yo ho!O, our captain, he's a peer, Yo ho!He makes old Spain look queer, Yo ho!He's the best sea-dog we know,To hell with him we'd go,Why the devil should we fear, Yo ho!
[At the conclusion of the singingThe Mayorresumes, ostentatiously.]
The Lord Mayor of LondonGentlemen, our festivities are now complete, and we pray you now let us hear from your own lips how the battle went when the proud Spaniard was humbled and great ships sunk.
[A buzz of excitement, vociferous applause and loud calling from the crowd; the names ofRaleighandEssexare heard above the tumult. The people crowd more closely in, some seating themselves on the ground, some kneeling, still others standing, intent upon seeing and hearing all.]
The Earl of Essex[Rising] Gentles, all, and my brave comrades in arms. It seems that my good rival, Sir Walter here, is forever to carry off the laurels—though, by my troth, he has well earned the fame, which is more justly his. For mine own part, the battle plan I did propose to our admiral, Lord Howard, was at the very point of execution stayed by him—by the eloquence of this paladin of the fleet, Sir Walter. He, with cogent reasons well sustained, did so o'erbear Lord Howard and myself that, with one accord, we did yield to him—e'en though my troops already landing to the attack, I must needs recall.
A Sea CaptainAye, aye, and so full of joy were you at Sir Walter's clever plan that you did throw your fine-plumed hat o'erboard.
[Laughter and applause from the crowd.]
A SailorAye, and he did give me a sovereign, when I did restore it to his hand. Its finery was sadly wetted by the sea water. The diamond was still on the plume.
[More laughter and cheering from the crowd.]
The CrowdHear! hear! Essex! Essex!
The Earl of Essex
To Sir Walter, then, was given the high honor of leading the attack. His flagship, the Water-Sprite, floated in the forefront of the array, followed close by the Mary Rose and the Rainbow, while in the rear pressed hard the intrepid Lyon, the Dreadnaught, and the Nonpareill, the Warspright, the Swiftsure, and the Meer-Honour.
Anon, with the first peep of day our English men-of-war approach the Spanish galleons. The culverins ’gan spit back death and fire from out their iron lips.
Ere long ’twas my good fortune to fight by Walter's side. So closely did we press the mighty St. Phillip that they were forced to blow her up rather than see her captured. Then did we see the swarthy Spaniards “tumbling into the sea, heaps of souldiers, so thick as if coals had been poured out of a sack in many ports at once; some drowned and some sticking in the mud.”11 And when the fire did come to the doomed galleon, “the spectacle was very lamentable, . . . . . for many drowned themselves; many, half burnt, leapt into the water; . . . . . many swimming, with grievous wounds, strucken under water, and put out their pain.” There was such tearing of the ordnance, such deafening boom of the explosions, so huge a conflagration, that “if any man had a desire to see Hell itself, it was there most lively figured.” The St. Thomas, too, the Spaniards burnt. But, ’ere they could fire the arrogant St. Andrew, with his own hand did our brave Raleigh that mighty vessel captive take. Then
11 From Raleigh's A Relation of Cadiz Action, as printed by his grandson, Philip Raleigh, from a copy found among Sir Walter Raleigh's Papers, 1699.likewise the St. Mathew did he take. And so—for all the formidable array of Spain the proud city of Cadiz fell to us, and the day most happily was ours—ours through our indomitable leader, our gallant Raleigh.
The Crowd[The mariners and sea-captains beat on the tables with their tankards and with the handles of their daggers. All cheer with tumultuous calls.]
Sir Walter Raleigh! Sir Walter Raleigh!
[Raleighrises and, bowing, graciously acknowledges their greetings.]
Sir Walter RaleighLord Essex hath most nobly set forth our victory and most modestly disclaimed the very valiant part which his forces took in the battle by land, to the complete undoing of the Spanish hosts. And by my faith, gentlemen, until his men did come into the fight it swung most perilously to and fro. The forces of the land which he commanded were not one whit behind those of us who fought by sea. The proud port of Cadiz lies today utterly confounded. The Spanish tyrant soon shall be swept from the seas, the formidable fleets, the invincible armies vanquished all.
The Crowd[Cheering wildly] Bravo! Master Walter! Bravo! Hear! Hear!
Sir Walter Raleigh
And who, let me ask you, gentlemen and yeomen of England, my brave lads all, who say you shall take the place of Spain, and sail the seas, and bring safe home the treasure ships laden with the red gold of El Dorado, the vast deposits of Spanish silver from the mines of Peru and Mexico; the stores of precious stones, the wealth of Indian spices, dyes and countless valued cargoes strange and rare—who but bonnie England shall now inherit these? List, while I do narrate the wondrous things I did with mine own eyes behold in far Guiana, in the valley of the Orinoco; and my good captains here and the mariners all shall vouch for the accuracy of my tale.
The Sea-Captains and MarinersAye, aye, sir, that we will.
The Crowd[Vociferously] Hear! Hear! Tell us all!
Sir Walter RaleighA land it is of abundant fruitfulness and of marvelous beauty. “On the banks of the rivers were divers sorts of fruits. . . . . . We saw birds of all colours, some carnation, some crimson, orange-tawny, purple, watchet (pale blue), and of all other sorts, both simple and mixed, and it was unto us a great good-passing of the time to behold them.
“When we were come to the tops of the first hills of the plains adjoining to the river, we beheld that wonderful
breach of waters which ran down Caroli; and might from that mountain see the river how it ran in three parts, above twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in sight, every one as high over the other as a church tower. . . . . . I never saw a more beautiful country, nor more lively prospects; hills so raised here and there over the valleys; the river winding into divers branches; the plains adjoining without bush or stubble, all fair green grass; . . . . . the deer crossing in every path; the birds towards the evening singing on every tree with a thousand several tunes; cranes and herons of white, crimson, and carnation, perching in the river's side; the air fresh with a gentle easterly wind; and every stone that we stopped to take up promised either gold or silver by his complexion.”12
The Crowd[All give vent to long drawn sighs and stand with open mouths, listening intently. They are transfixed with amazement and admiration, too much so to offer any comment.Shakespeareis apparently captivated. He walks apart a little, in deep contemplation ofRaleigh'swondrous tale, and noticeably pricks up his ears asRaleighcontinues to recite his adventures.]
Sir Walter RaleighStrange human races do inhabit there, “called Ewaipanoma, reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their
12 From Raleigh's own narrative, The Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana; with a Relation of the great and golden City of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, first published in 1596.breasts, and that a long train of hair groweth backward between their shoulders.”12
Shakespeare[Now, too much wrought up longer to contain his thoughts, speaks out.]
What magic do these words contain! They sing within me with sweet siren tones, of wanton
Cannibals that each other eat,The Anthropophagi, and men whose headsDo grow beneath their shoulders.13Sir Walter RaleighThus ever does our Will translate strange matters into rarest plays of fantasy. By my faith, my comrades all, is't not a marvelous country truly and one well worthy of the poet's dreams?
But, gentles all, consider well the full meaning of this our celebration of Cadiz, the full promise of this our victory on the seas—in that far western world—to us of Anglo-Saxon blood. The Empire of Spain in that America is reeling to its ruin. Shall we not rear in its stead a fairer state, one not stained with helpless blood, nor cursed with crimes of direst cruelty? There shall we raise, instead, in fair America, beyond the western verge, a greater State than any ever forged by Spanish bonds—a league of many peoples united all in English friendliness, of peoples come from many lands but speaking all one speech—our goodly mother tongue, and of one common heart
13Othello, I, 3.ANGLORUM IN VIRGINIA M ADVENTUS—THE ARRIVAL OF THE ENGLISH AT ROANOKE ISLAND
From DeBry's Engraving of John White's Painting
of comradeship. I see on the far verge of that New Day a fairer El Dorado than ever Spaniard dreamed, a sunbright nation of immortal youth in fair America!
Shakespeare[Rising up, exclaims] I'll set it down—your vision—in a play—in verse immortal.
O, wonder!How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is! O brave new worldThat has such people in't!14Sir Walter Raleigh’Tis nobly said, good Master Will, and worthy of my vision of this brave new world and the old there joining hands to right the old world wrongs, to lift up manhood, truth, justice, mercy—in larger, freer, brotherhood.
ShakespeareHow beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!14
The People[In their enthusiasm all join inShakespeare'shappy phrasing ofRaleigh'svision.]
O brave new world!
[In the distance is heard a chorus of voices singing, God Save Britannia's Queen, as in the opening scene, and the people follow afterRaleighand his company, taking up the song as they go.]
14The Tempest, V, 1.THE INTERLUDE
Sir Walter Raleigh, gallant victor over the galleons of Spain, now becomes the victim of Stuart tyranny—immured in gloomy dungeon cell, foregoing his ambitious dream of empire and his desperate ventures ’gainst the Spanish tyrant. Then comes the vision of the Orinoco, once more luring him to the Spanish Main. But like those other brave adventurers who followed the call of the New World—Columbus, Ponce De Leon, De Navarez, De Soto, Pizarro—he is led to ruin, heart-break, and at last to death, noble, though in a prison cell.
The Interlude[Slowly entersThe Chorus of Shepherds,chanting as before. In kirtles, now of sombre gray, they appear—as though a cloud had suddenly dimmed the white radiance of the morning.]
[AsThe Spirit of Youthenters, also gray-kirtled, he holds aloft a flaming torch, symbolic of the deathless light of Liberty. In vivid contrast comes the lingering, almost weary cadence of the music, as gray in tone as the kirtles in color, both typifying the menace to England of the cloud of Stuart tyranny which looms on the horizon, and threatens to sweep away the fruitage of the centuries.]
The Spirit of YouthAnd now, as oft, in peaceful summer noon-tidesComes a quick stir, then onrush of the stormWith blinding flash, and beat of cruel hail,Breaking, twisting, stamping into earthThe hardly-nurtured crops so rich in promise,So on that lustrous noon of England's lifeCame sudden crash and deluge of a storm—The rough and ruthless Stuart tyranny.Immured now in sunless prison cellIs brave Sir Walter, England's finest lanceIn valiant joust against the lists of Spain.His vision of an Empire, righteous, free,Doth waver, dimmed by persecution cruel.
THE SECOND PART The Martyrdom of Raleigh
A CELL IN THE BLOODY TOWER WHERE RALEIGH WAS CONFINED FOR THIRTEEN YEARS
From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer, 1851
EPISODE I
The Lure of the Orinoco, 1617
Time: Early in April, 1617.
Scene: A pleasant garden adjoining the Tower of London, in which Raleigh had been confined for twelve years by King James I under the false accusation of high treason, charged with having instigated a plot against the King. Raleigh was given the freedom of this garden through the thoughtful kindness of the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir George Harvey. Here he passed many hours in studying botany and in making experiments in chemistry, pursuits of which he was very fond. Here he was engaged for a number of years in writing his History of the World and various political essays.
[Raleighis now past sixty years of age, his hair and beard are grizzled, his stalwart figure somewhat bent, his face pale and considerably wrinkled with care and sorrow. He enters reading a quarto volume, which is no other than a copy ofShakespeare'splay, The Tempest. He seats himself by a rustic table and continues reading.]
Sir Walter RaleighHe did not fail in his promise, Master Shakespeare. Here it is—his latest play, The Tempest. How pregnant are his words even yet—the lines of Miranda on the enchanted island when first she views the shipwrecked mariners—shipwrecked, alas! like me, imprisoned here.
“O, wonder!How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is! O brave new worldThat has such people in't.”14
So Shakespeare has immortalized in rarest verse my venture in the brave new world, in the enchanted land of Venezuela, in the valley, Orinoco.
[A faithfulOld Servantenters humming a plaintive ditty. Looking up from his reading,Raleighinquires.]
Sir Walter RaleighMy good fellow, from whence comes that ancient melody you sing?
The Old ServantIt do be one that my old grandam used to sing as she span by the sea-coal fire in Devon, when I was but a wanton boy.
[The Old Servantgoes out, droning his song, andRaleighfalls asleep over his book.]
[Now in a soft golden light in the background of the scene appear to him dream-pictures from his past life, in pantomime, while music plays.]
1. Raleigh, the courtier, spreading his cloak before Queen Elizabeth.
2. Raleigh wooing the golden-haired Elizabeth Throgmorton, and the haughty Queen dismissing him in wrath.
14The Tempest, V, 1.3. Raleigh, the colonizer, and Governor White of Virginia, with Manteo and Wanchese, the Indians.
4. Raleigh with his wife and children in his spacious manor-house of Sherborne.
5. Raleigh in Guiana showing the Indians a portrait of Queen Elizabeth.
6. Raleigh, victorious, surrounded with his gallant comrades-in-arms after the capture of Cadiz.
7. Raleigh in the Tower, seated at a table, a few books by him, writing his History of the World.
[Then the music swells into a languorous, oriental strain, suggesting the lure of the Orinoco, of fabled El Dorado, and the golden city of Manoa. There appears a dream figure, at first dimly, then brilliantly shining in the golden light, the splendid Queen of the Carribean,Venezuela,15attended byThe Spirit of the Orinoco,a dancing water-sprite.]
[Venezuela,seated on a richly gilded throne, listlessly waves a fan of peacock plumes. She is a luxuriant brunette of tropic beauty, with lustrous ebon eyes, of dull copper skin heightened by vermillion pigment glowing in her cheeks. She is gorgeously attired in cloth-of-gold, glittering with many-colored jewels, and is crowned with a tiara of rare plumage from the flamered flamingo.]
[Attending her is the laughing water-sprite,Orinoco,dressed in shimmering silver and sparkling with myriad gems, suggesting the lure of the shining river of Raleigh's dreams.Orinocois crowned with rich blossoms and dances with festoons and flying sprays of the same. She wears a plume of brilliant emerald, and a
15 So named by Ojeda, the Spanish navigator, and meaning “Little Venice,” because of the native houses the explorer built on piles along the shore of Lake Maracaibo.girdle of pale yellow, symbolic of the spell of tropic forests and of the golden treasure-city of his quest. She dances blithely now beforeRaleigh,the charm of her person and the witchery of her movements suggesting the maze of windings in which the explorer is lured and finally lost.]
The Spirit of the Orinoco[Singing softly.]
Come, Orinoco calls, calls you again!Come to Orinoco, land of the yellow gold!The soft winds singing, the odorous breezes laden,The myriad sweet bird-voices, the river sweeping to the sea,All invite you back again, to come again.From the land of harsh-cold winter, from cruel prisoning walls,Orinoco calls again; to the mellow golden sun-landCome, my mariner sea-buffeted, ’tis Orinoco calls.Come, find in balmy sun-lands, fresh life, perennial Youth![NowRaleighhas risen to his feet, captivated by the flashing beauty and the siren song ofThe Spirit of Orinoco.His sombre cloak falls from his shoulders and vanishes, revealing him in shining crimson, in fresh attire of silk and velvet. His bent shoulders straighten and he is again the stalwart, lusty adventurer of the former years.]
[As the dream-figure fades, with a new light transfiguring his face,Raleighstands forth once more fully erect, and cries out exultingly.]
Sir Walter RaleighThe Western Land calls me and I go again! The
King's will I'll bend to mine, by the fair words of his latest favorite, of his sweet Lord Villiers. These prison walls I'll burst asunder. Once more I'll sail the seas as “Shepherd of the Ocean,” once more toward Orinoco set my course, toward lands of setting sun—to fair and goodly western world—to New America!
Interlude
[With ponderous stepThe Chorus of Shepherdsenters, now in dead-black kirtles, their heads bent with grief. The music falls into a dull minor; its rhythm becomes heavy and slow.]
[The Spirit of Youthenters, also black-robed. His countenance is shadowed, his step less free. His torch burns now with but a feeble light—uncertain, wavering, as though the flame of Liberty were about to flicker and die.]
The Spirit of YouthBut now at length, the ruthless bars are loosed,And, burning with the new-awakened dreamOf spoils and conquest on the Spanish Main,Raleigh comes forth to follow the mirageThat leads him to destruction, dire and vast.Undone by fatal lure of Orinoco,His cherished son the prey of Spanish hate,Returns the martyr, stripped of every hope.Yet as he waits, within the dungeon dark,The carrion hour of Death that hovers near,His noble heart recks not of all his woes,But, soaring up beyond the sky-lark's heaven,Doth find its rest in God's own dwelling place.EPISODE II
Raleigh's Last Venture, 1617
Time: An April day in 1617.
Scene: An open place in the environs of London, adjoining the Thames; a dais and temporary throne has been erected for King James at the right. Preparations have been made for the sailing of Raleigh's fleet, consisting of a new flag-ship, The Destiny, eleven other good-sized vessels, two fly-boats, and a caravel.
[EnterSir Walter Raleighand his company, consisting of sixty gentlemen of rank, sea-captains, soldiers and mariners, two hundred volunteers in all.Raleighis now sixty-four years of age. After twelve years’ imprisonment in the Tower the figure of the sturdy cavalier appears somewhat stooped, his hair and beard grizzled, his face pale and care-worn, his features grave and saddened, but his heroic spirit is still unshaken and the old ambition still lights his eye. His eldest son,Walter,is now a spirited and valiant youth of twenty-three.]
Sir Walter RaleighThe King comes anon to see me embark for the Orinoco country; Villiers has proved a good advocate and his anti-Spanish policy has prevailed so far as to permit of our adventure. ’Tis true he was somewhat importunate with the King in demanding title, as sole lord and proprietor, to all the land I may discover.
A Gentleman
And did the King grant his request?
Sir Walter RaleighVerily, he can refuse him nothing—saving the half of his kingdom. Yet it has fallen out exceeding well, Villiers is all for Holland against the Spaniard. We may perchance see Armada days again.
A Herald[Enters, announcing] Gentlemen, the King.
[King James I. enters, leaning on the arm ofLord George Villiers,his favorite, and followed by his entire retinue of courtiers and attendants. “No sovereign could have jarred against the conception of an English ruler, which had grown up under Plantagenet or Tudor, more utterly than James the First. His big head, his slobbering tongue, his quilted clothes, his rickety legs, stood out in as grotesque a contrast with all that men recalled of Henry or Elizabeth as his gabble and rhodomontade, his want of personal dignity, his buffoonery, his coarseness of speech, his pedantry, his contemptible cowardice.”16]
[“George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham,his favorite, indeed had no considerable abilities, but his self-confidence and recklessness were equal to his beauty; and the haughty young favorite, on whose neck James loved to loll, and whose cheek he slobbered with kisses, was destined to drag down in his fatal career the throne of the Stuarts.”17]
16 Green's Short History of the English People. N. Y., 1894, p. 477.17Ibid., p. 488.[The Kingpays no attention toRaleigh'spresence, but converses some time withVilliersin an undertone.]
Sir Walter Raleigh[Advancing to the throne and dropping on one knee.]
Your Majesty is most gracious in honoring my poor ship company here by his royal presence. We betake ourselves right merrily to our task when once we are assured that we have obtained the royal favor.
King James[Ill-naturedly] Beshrew me, you discourse but rawly of my favor. [Laughter from the courtiers.] It is ne'er bestowed except on merit of such surpassing excellence as leaves no question. My faithful Villiers, here, is one in a thousand, and I have picked him out of ten thousand churlish fellows who could not be persuaded to address a King as becomes his divine power and mission on this earth.
[The Kingcontinues his conversation withVilliersin an aside; he appears to be in an ill-temper and exceedingly unwilling even yet to letRaleighgo, but he is overpersuaded byVilliers,who pressesThe Kinghard for the favor.]
Sir Walter Raleigh[Rising, impatient to be gone, and fearful that permission may, after all, be withheld.]
Your Majesty, you have graciously permitted me and mine eldest son to go with this brave company to explore once more the golden country of the Orinoco. We have, in truth—
King James
[Sharply interrupting him] Sirrah! not so fast, by my sooth. You presume too much on my royal patience. It is true that by the earnest intercession of my Lord Villiers, here, I have in a certain sort granted you the leave he did ask of me. What you gave him for his intercession I care not, nor do I reck with what golden promises you stuffed his ears ’gainst the well-proved charge that but lately did blazon forth your shame to all true Englishmen.
Villiers[Protestingly] My lord! my lord!
King JamesHa! ha! my Villiers, do'st feel the prick of my tongue? ’Tis meant to lower the crest of yonder springle there, pranking in his newly-furbished finery. He makes a brave show, truly, but I doubt not it was paid for out of his already ruined estate which, like a desperate gambler, he doth risk at a single hazard. Right well he knoweth that he still lies under sentence of death for treason.
[To Raleigh] Come closer, my fine gentleman, erstwhile pirate and Spanish hater; let me give you a word for your private ear. [Raleighadvances and bows on one knee.] It would better become you, my proud sir, were you on both knees; but it will pass, it will pass. [Ironically.] I doubt not your profoundest loyalty and devotion for your sovereign; your prison sentence has doubtless taught you that much wisdom,
and your son, too. Look ye, Master Raleigh, see him better taught than his father, that he may grow up a dutiful subject and a good Christian—e'en like my Lord Villiers here.
Sir Walter RaleighYour Majesty's commands shall be duly heeded. I pray you, now, since the wind and tide are most favorable, that you will give us your royal leave to be gone upon our journey.
King James[Venting his ill-humor without restraint.] You are an ungrateful, low-born cur that dost continually bark at the heels of the gentlemen of this realm. Begone with you and all your pestilent crew. Beware of trenching upon the realms and prerogatives of my good brother, the King of Spain!
Lord Villiers[Pompously] And, Sir Walter, see that nothing is done to diminish the honor and the dignity of the estate you have promised to find for me in the new world. There must be gold enough, come back with you, to nigh sink a treasure fleet of Spain. Look to it, Sir Walter, look to it!18
18 Villiers here refers to the state subsidy in support of the fleet which he had wrung from the unwilling King, and which Raleigh had assured him would be repaid out of the spoils of the venture.Sir Walter Raleigh
[Who has risen whileVillierswas speaking, and now replies with dignity and firmness.]
My lord, you have laid upon us a heavy charge which may well prove too much for our strength. I will bear your commands constantly in mind, and as far as in me lies I will carry them out to the very letter.
King JamesBeshrew me, Villiers, he doth already begin to blanch at it. I warrant you he, and his whole company, will turn tail and run at the sight of the first Spanish argosy. We shall have them back, anon, within the fortnight, begging for safer service under our royal banner.
[The courtiers all laugh.]
[The company ofSir Walterhas borne the humiliating taunts thus far with patience, but with this aspersion on their courage angry murmurs rise from the groups of gentlemen and menacing, low-voiced oaths are heard here and there among the seamen.]
King James[Half starting from his throne.] What's this? Treason, my Villiers? Shall we not call in the guard and send these crack-brained fellows to the Tower?
Sir Walter Raleigh[Coming forward and attempting to pushVilliersaside.] Your Majesty, my Lord Villiers, you have
mistaken, there are no traitors here. The angry murmurs you did hear, the grim sailor oaths, but ’gainst the Spanish uttered. The best leashed pack, my lord, must give tongue when the stag's in sight. Believe me, there are not more loyal subjects in all England than my brave shipmates here.
King James[Still pale and discomposed.] It may be so, in very sooth, as you say. Villiers, we have business elsewhere that demands our immediate presence. Let us away. Farewell, Sir Walter, and good gentles all.
[He goes out leaning on his favorite's arm and is followed by his retinue.]
Sir Walter RaleighA narrow escape, truly. Had my invention failed me in this pinch, we had all ended our venture in the Tower.
A Ship-CaptainAye, aye, you did rarely speak for us. We cannot stomach such currish fawning as some delight in, and if I wot there was such a lick-spittle fellow among us I'd pitch him o'erboard ere he should sail in honest company.
[They converse in dumb show and move slowly out afterRaleigh,whileThe Spirit of the Orinoco,reappearing toRaleigh,points the way. Now she appears transformed into a figure of sinister beauty, the yellow-golden
girdle now a green serpent—symbolic of the fatal nature of her charms.]
[Raleighhesitates, and wavers perceptibly, before following after her, realizing the grave dangers of his venture—perhaps moved by a foreboding of the unfortunate outcome of his quest.]
[But presently he yields, banishing from his mind the impending fears, and follows after her as she dances in a pale green glow of light to a weird strain of music, to lead him to his fate.]
InterludeThe Spirit of Youth
What is our life? The play of passion.Our mirth? The music of division:Our mothers’ wombs the tiring-houses be,Where we are dressed for life's short comedy.The earth the stage; Heaven the spectator is,Who sits and views whosoe'er doth act amiss.The graves which hide us from the scorching sunAre like drawn curtains when the play is done.Thus playing post we to our latest rest,And then we die in earnest, not in jest.
Sr W. R.
EPISODE III
The Sacrifice, 1618
Time: Near midnight, October 28, 1618, the night preceding the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh.
Scene: The garden adjoining the prison of Raleigh, as in Episode I.
[Raleighenters, pale and haggard, looks up to the night sky, then slowly seats himself at the table where he has been writing. Some distant revelers are heard singing in chorus God Save Britannia's Queen. Raleighsighs.]
Sir Walter RaleighThe spacious days of Queen Elizabeth! Virginia! Virginia!
[A rough sailor chantey is heard, faintly, in another direction, the Deep-Seas’ Chantey, recalling to him the victory of Cadiz.]
The brave days of Cadiz!
[He takes up the manuscript.]
Sir Walter RaleighThus do I end my letter to my fair wife:
“You shall receave, deare wief, my last words in these my last lynes. My love I send you, that you may keepe it when I am dead; and my councell, that you may remember it when I am noe more. I would not, with my last Will, present you with sorrowes,
deare Besse. Lett them go to the grave with me, and be buried in the dust. And seeing it is not the will of God that ever I shall see you in this lief, beare my destruccion gentlie and with a hart like yourself.
“I cannot wright much. God knows howe hardlie I stole this tyme, when all sleep; and it is tyme to separate my thoughts from the world. Begg my dead body, which living was denyed you; and either lay itt att Sherborne if the land continue, or in Exiter church by my father and mother. I can wright noe more. Tyme and Death call me awaye.
“The everlasting, infinite powerfull, and inscrutable God, that Almightie God that is goodness itself, mercy itself, the true lief and light, keep you and yours, and have mercy on me, and teach me to forgeve my persecutors and false accusers; and send us to meete in His glorious kingdome. My true wief, farewell. Blesse my poore boye; pray for me. My true God hold you both in His armes.
“Written with the dyeing hand of sometyme thy husband, but now (alasse!) overthrowne.
“Your's that was; but nowe not my owne,
“W. Ralegh.”19
[EnterThe Dean of Westminster,alsoA Spyof the government, who remains in the background throughout this scene.]
Sir Walter Raleigh[To theDean of Westminster.] Good friend,
19 From his letter to Lady Raleigh, written from Winchester, December, 1603, on the eve of his expected execution. Printed from a contemporaneous transcript, Domestic Correspondence; James I., vol. XCVI, paragraph 71 (Rolls House).you have come to give me the spiritual consolation of the final sacrament. I can partake of it in all innocency of heart as becometh a true Christian, and not a traitor as I am charged.
[Sir Walter Raleighthen partakes of the last sacrament. Then enterSeveral Gentlemen,friends ofRaleigh.]
Sir Walter RaleighGood friends, you are welcome. My time is short, yet I would not have one of you leave me in doubt as to my innocency of the heavy charges laid against me, upon which my judges did base my sentence of death.
At the trial I was given no opportunity to face my accusers; indeed, my death was determined from the first. The charges made against me are so manifestly false that they could not in a single point bear the scrutiny of a fair trial. In my letter to the King I have set forth clearly my answers to all the charges wrongfully alleged against me. “It is no time for me to flatter or to fear princes, I, who am subject only unto death; and for me, who have now to do with God alone, to tell a lie to get the favour of the King were in vain.”20
The Dean of WestminsterWe are convinced, sir, that you do lie under a wrongful accusation.
[The Gentlemenpresent assent to this.]
20 From Raleigh's dying speech on the scaffold as printed in The Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, by William Oldys, 1736.A Gentleman
This trial hath injured and degraded the justice of England.21
Sir Walter RaleighMy friends, I thank you for this last testimony of your honorable esteem. “And now I entreat, that you all will join with me in prayer to that great God of Heaven whom I have grievously offended, being a man full of all vanity, who has lived a sinful life. . . . . . that His almighty goodness will forgive me; that He will cast away my sins from me; and that He will receive me into everlasting life; so I take my leave of you all, making my peace with God.”20
[Raleighseats himself and bows his head as if in prayer.]
[The bell tolls the execution hour. He rises.]
“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath Dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only has cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic Jacet!”22
[The Bellmanenters with a lantern.]
21 A statement credited to one of the judges who took part in Raleigh's trial in 1603.22 From The History of the World, written in the Tower, and published in 1614.THE LANDING PLACE OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONISTS IN AMERICA, 1585
THE SITE OF FORT RALEIGH ON ROANOKE ISLAND, NORTH CAROLINA, AS IT IS TODAY
From the painting by Jacques Busbee in the North Carolina Hall of History
Sir Walter Raleigh
It is time for us to part. Farewell, good friends.
[He goes toward the door. The bell tolls again.]
Sir Walter Raleigh[To one of theGentlemen.]
Will you keep these poor lines of mine in remembrance of this time?
[He reads from a manuscript.]
“Even such is time, that takes in trustOur youth, our joys, our all we have,And pays us but with earth and dust;Who, in the dark and silent grave,When we have wandered all our ways,Shuts up the story of our days;But from this earth, this grave, this dust,My God shall raise me up, I trust!”23[In the distance now he hears again the people singing God Save Britannia's Queen.]
Virginia! my “lost colony”24 of Virginia! My
23 Verses found in Sir Walter Raleigh's Bible in the gatehouse at Westminster, and said to have been written the night before his death.24 The disappearance of the Colonists of Sir Walter Raleigh remains an unsolved mystery to this day. White wrote in his account of the search for the “Lost Colony” in 1590 (printed in Hackluyt's Voyages), “We espied towards the North end of the Iland ye light of a great fire thorow the woods, to which we presently rowed; when wee came right over against it, we let fall our Grapnel neere the shore, & sounded with a trumpet Call, & afterwardes many familiar English tunes of Songs, and called to them friendly; but we had no answere, we therefore landed at day breake, and coming to the fire, we found the grasse & sundry rotten trees burning about the place. From hence we went thorow the woods to that part of the Iland directly over against Dasamongwepeuk, & from thence we returned by the water side,“Citie of Ralegh in Virginia” lost indeed. But not all vain—for Jamestown thrives, and Virginia “will yet see itself an English nation!”25
round about the North point of the Iland, untill we came to the place where I left our Colony in the yeere 1586 (1587). In all this way we saw in the sand the print of the Salvages feet of 2 or 3 sorts troaden ye night, and as we entered up the sandy banke upon a tree, in the very browe thereof were curiously carved three faire Romane letters C R O; which letters presently we knew to signifie the place, where I should find the planters seated, according to a secret token agreed upon betweene them & me at my last departure from them, which was, that in any wayes they should not fail to write or carve on the trees or posts of the dores the name of the place where they should be seated; for at my coming away they were prepared to remove from Roanoak 50 miles into the maine. Therefore at my departure from them in An. 1587 I willed them, that if they should happen to be distressed in any of those places, that then they should carve over the letters or name, a Crosse ȕ in this forme, but we found no such signe of distresse. And having well considered of this, we passed toward the place where they were left in sundry houses, but we found the houses taken downe, and the place very strongly enclosed with a high palisado of great trees, with cortynes and flankers very Fortlike, and one of the chiefe trees or postes at the right side of the entrance had the barke taken off, and 5 foote from the ground in fayre Capitall letters was graven CROATOAN without any cross or sign of distresse; this done, we entered into the palisado, where we found many barres of Iron, two piggies of lead, foure yron fowlers, Iron sacker-shotte, and such like heavie things, throwen here and there, almost overgrowen with grasse and weedes. . . . . . but although it much grieved me to see such spoyle of my goods, yet on the other hand I greatly joyed that I had safely found a certaine token of their safe being at Croatoan, which is the place where Manteo was borne, and the Savages of the Iland our friends.”
Perhaps the most popular theory advanced in explanation of the mysterious exodus of Raleigh's Colonists is that, despairing of the return of Governor White, they moved to Croatoan and intermarried with the friendly Croatan Indians, who proudly claim to this day their descent from the Colonists of Raleigh. The supporters of this theory claim that the habits, mental traits and disposition of the Croatan Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina, of the present day indicate traces of such civilized ancestry, that their language is still the English of three centuries ago, and that their names are in many cases the family names of the original Colonists.
25 Raleigh wrote, just before his loss of fortune and of favor, “I shall yet live to see it an English nation.”And still—America, Virginia, new England!What magic words in this my passing hour!They conjure back the daring vision-days,And my sure trust in lands beyond the sea.America! Virginia! New England!What though my star stoop not to its eclipse,Still it doth harbinger the New Day's dawn.And by that way I have so blithely gone,Sea-buffeted, with all my gallant men,A brave new world will yet be won by EnglishYouth across the seas—a sunbright worldOf high resolve—of faith, and love, and Liberty![He goes, in answer to the summons ofThe Bellman.]
THE EPILOGUE
The Epilogue
[The music sweeps into a strong major.The Chorus of Shepherdsenters, chanting the return ofThe Spirit of Youth.Their kirtles now are of flaming rose, and all bear torches burning brightly.]
The Chorus of ShepherdsChildren of Youth, believers in Youth,Lovers of Youth's heart of flame,Prepare ye your hearts for Youth's wisdom,For Youth is the teacher of men.The Spirit of Youth
As long ago, three hundred years today,Sir Walter Raleigh met his arduous taskOf pouring out such flow of martyr's bloodAs should allay the thirst of vengeful king,So doth he symbolize the noble strifeOf England in her quest for liberty.Her own good realm she safe ’gainst foe did make,Repulsing, under valiant Marlborough,Superior force arrayed on Blenheim field.Another despot, great Napoleon,Who shook his mailed fist terrificallyIn Europe's pallid, pain-distorted face,She vanquished famously at Waterloo.
The Chorus of Shepherds
Children of Youth, believers in Youth,Lovers of Youth's heart of flame,Prepare ye your hearts for Youth's wisdom,For Youth is the teacher of men.The Spirit of Youth
And now again, in this age of Today,When all the world lay basking quietlyBeneath the bright, warm sun of peace and faith,When cruel hordes did sweep relentlessly,Despoiling Belgium, threatening fair France,Again did England bare her dauntless breast,And strike, as oft of old, for Liberty.Then did America, with zealous pride,Make good her kinship with these loyal brave,Who bore the grim brunt of those sullen hosts.The Chorus of Shepherds
Children of Youth, believers in Youth,Lovers of Youth's heart of flame,Prepare ye your hearts for Youth's wisdom,For Youth is the teacher of men.The Spirit of Youth
Now hark ye to the vision of fair Youth!The day will come when mankind's highest prideShall be no longer in the vast arrayAnd panoply of war, but, rectified,Shall find delight in all those happy artsThat make the earth a temple unto Peace,A temple of the free-born sons of men.Together all shall we find the way at lastUnto that broader country where the LightDoth shine for all—not sun for but a few,And dismal light for others, evermore—But Light for all, and Life for all,And happiness secure,And Freedom safe o'er all the earth,While mankind shall endure.The Chorus of Shepherds
Children of Youth, believers in Youth,Lovers of Youth's heart of flame,Prepare ye your hearts for Youth's wisdom,For Youth is the teacher of men.
[After The Epilogue is spoken andThe Spirit of Youthwith the accompaningChorus of Shepherdshas departed, in the distance a chorus of voices is heard singing God Save Britannia's Queen, as in the spacious days of goodQueen Bess.]
[From the opposite side, to the same music, comes a swelling chorus singing Hail America! the stanzas of the two hymns being sung alternately, while the banners of both nations appear united in a Field of Light!]
Hail, America!All hail, America,Hail, my America!Liberty-land of sunbright birth,Glory of peoples ’round the earth,Liberty-land o'er all the earth!All hail America!
Wake, my America,Wake, all America!People of mountain, people of plain,Singing together in Freedom's refrain,Singing the chorus again and again,All hail America!Rise, my America,Rise, all America!Sing we the People our Liberty-song,Marching, marching, marching along,Marching and singing our Liberty-song,All hail America!Sing, my America,Sing, all America!Song of the trail of the pioneer toil,Earth-song, sun-song, song of the soil,Song of our sun-born native soil,All hail America!
[During the singingSir Walter Raleighreturns. He stands for a moment silent, in the Field of Light. His mission has been accomplished. His vision of the New World has been fulfilled!]
APPENDIXThe Directors of the Pageant
AUTHOR
Frederick H. Koch
DRAMATIC DIRECTOR
Elizabeth B. Grimball
DIRECTOR OF THE CHORUS
S. Dingley Brown
DIRECTOR OF THE CHILDREN'S CHORUS
Clara Voyle
DIRECTOR OF THE ORCHESTRA
Arthur Fillmore Cain
DIRECTORS OF DANCING
Grace Houchen and J. Richard Crozier
DIRECTOR OF COSTUMES AND PROPERTIES
Elizabeth L. Grimes
DIRECTOR OF LIGHTING
Parker H. Daggett
DIRECTOR OF SETTINGS
Frank B. Simpson
DIRECTOR OF STAGE CONSTRUCTION
William L. Beasley
The Committees of the Pageant
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Mr. W. L. Beasley,Chairman (Rotary Club)
Mr. A. T. Bowler,Secretary (American Legion)
Mr. C. T. McClenaghan,Treasurer (Shriners’ Club)
Mrs. J. Bryan Grimes (Woman's Club)
Dr. W. C. Horton (Chamber of Commerce)
Dr. J. Richard Crozier (Kiwanis Club)
Miss Ellen Durham (Daughters of the American Revolution)
Mr. R. D. W. Connor and Dr. George J. Ramsey
(North Carolina Literary and Historical Association)
THE PRODUCTION COMMITTEEMrs. J. Bryan Grimes,Chairman
Mrs. Wilbur Bunn
Mrs. Frank Castlebury
Dr. W. C. Horton
THE PUBLICITY COMMITTEEDr. W. C. Horton,Chairman
Miss Nell Battle Lewis and Miss Susan Prands Iden
(Representing the Press)
THE FINANCE COMMITTEEMr. C. T. McClanaghan,Chairman
Mrs. B. H. Griffin
THE BOOK COMMITTEEMr. R. D. W. Connor,Chairman
Dr. George J. Ramsey
The Principal Players of the Pageant| The Spirit of Youth | Grace Houchen |
| The Chorus of Shepherds | Martha Adams, Edith Gill, Laura Jones Louise Brockman, Alice Hedrick, Janie Trent, Mildred Adams, Ruth Teachey. |
| Sir Walter Raleigh | Part I, Walter Simpson |
| Part II, Dr. W. C. Horton | |
| Queen Elizabeth | Muriel Victor Castlebury |
| The Earl of Essex | Hardy Murfree Ray |
| Sir Francis Drake | Arthur B. Corey |
| Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton | Clarence Powell |
| William Shakespeare | Louis C. Holmes |
| Edmund Spenser | A. J. Fletcher |
| John White, Governor of Virginia | F. M. Regester |
| Manteo and Wanchese, natives of Virginia | J. R. Thrower |
| R. L. McMillan | |
| The Master of Ceremonies | Robert Noble |
| The Jester | Ellen Durham |
| Ben Jonson | Alfred Sears |
| Francis Bacon | Frank Simpson |
| Elizabeth Throgmorton | Louise Baker |
| The Inn-Keeper | W. G. Briggs |
| The Lord Mayor of London | Robert Noble |
| Robin Hood | Charles B. Garrett |
| Maid Marian | Louise Hall |
| Venezuela, Queen of the Carribean | Elizabeth Walker |
| The Spirit of the Orinoco, a water-sprite | Elizabeth Hughes |
| King James the First | Leland S. Harris |
| George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham | Barber Towler |
| The Dean of Westminster | A. J. Fletcher |
| The Bellman | The Reverend C. A. Ashby |
| Governor and Mrs. T. W. Bickett will appear in the Court of Queen Elizabeth |
