XVII.

DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. CORONATION OF KING JAMES.

_"All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity."_

_"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."_

_"What have kings that privates have not too,
Save ceremony?"_

The New Year of sixteen hundred and three brought no consolation or
happiness to Queen Elizabeth. Her reign of forty-four years had been
bloody, but patriotic; and while she had long since passed the noonday of
her glory, her sunset of life hastened to its setting with a fevered brain
and tortured heart, to think that she had not one real friend living, but
surrounded by cunning courtiers, who were already manipulating for the
favor and patronage of King James.

_Like a blasted pine on a mountain peak,
She moaned and sighed every day and week;
Awaiting the deadly, stormy gust
That laid her low in the crumbling dust._

To amuse her lingering hours of grief Lord Cecil desired the Shakspere
Company to give its new version of "Love's Labor's Lost" before the Queen
in the grand reception hall at Richmond.

Burbage went to the castle and made all the preliminary preparations for
the play, and on the night of the second of February, 1603, the fantastic
love play was given for the amusement of the Virgin Queen. She sat in regal
solitude, and with mock laughter tried to enjoy the mimic show.

The royal audience was great in rank, beauty, wealth and intellect, yet
through the various scenes of the light-hearted drama, Elizabeth only swung
her head, muttered and sighed, while her courtiers evinced great amusement
at the predicament of the various lovers in the play. Nothing can minister
to a mind diseased.

The Queen professed great disappointment at the absence of Shakspere from
the performance--"on account of sickness," as Burbage told her Royal
Highness. But William and myself remained at our rooms at Temple Bar that
evening working on the first draughts of "Macbeth" to catch the praise and
patronage of King James, the Scotch-Englishman.

Since the execution of Essex and imprisonment of Southampton Shakspere
never said a word in praise of Elizabeth, and when he heard of her death on
the 26th of March, 1603, he betrayed no feeling of grief, but on the
contrary, expressed delight that the way was now clear for the release of
Southampton and other victims of Elizabeth from the Tower.

Several weeks before her death Elizabeth was afflicted with a