Punch, or the London Charivari, page 19 by Various Authors
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e life of the monarch, like that of the policeman, was "not a happy one." Eleanor the Queen, as a divorcée, was not Henry's wife; but Rosamond, if, as is supposed, the King had married her, was his wife and not his mistress. It is just this point that ought to be emphasised, in order to give the right clue to Eleanor's character and conduct in regard to her treatment of Rosamond. Rosamond must be right and virtuous; Eleanor wrong and vicious; the King fond, weak, and capricious. To regard the whole story as one of a mere amour is to entirely miss the beauty of the gentle Rosamond's nature. She is at once "gentle and simple."
And herein seems to me to have been the puzzlement in the poet's mind; he was in doubt whether to regard Henry's attachment to Rosamond as only a liaison--to represent Becket as so treating it, or to place Eleanor manifestly in the wrong, as being herself not the wife she pretends to be. "Go to a nunnery, go!" is the end of it all. But at that nunnery, it seems, Fair Rosamond remained for some time permissu superiorum as, I suppose, a lady-boarder, not assuming the habit of even a postulant, much less compelled, as a novice, to be shorn of her hair, and so to appear in the final Transformation Scene as "The Fair One without the golden locks." This freedom of action on the part of Rosamond shows what it is to be a postulant in a convent of a Poetically Licensed Order.
[Illustration]
The Scene of the Martyrdom, "Becket's crown," is thrillingly impressive. The faithful Monks are well played by Messrs. HAVILAND and BISHOP--a real Bishop on the Stage, among all these representatives of various sees--while Mr. FRANK COOPER is a rough-and-ready Fitzurse leader of the four "King's-men," who, of course, are all Fellows of King's, Cambridge, and probably, therefore, under the ancient st