TENNYSON'S " QUEEN" MARY."

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 126, 1 October 1875, Page 8

TENNYSON'S " QUEEN" MARY."

Thb ' Catholic Review ' upon Tennyson's " Queen Mary :" — "Mr. Tennyson has recently published a drama on the subject of Mary Tudor, which, is creating considerable stir in literary circles. Of course it is beautifully written, but Mr. Tennyson seems to hare taken the key-note of his work from that of Mr. Gladstone's late pamphlets, and to be almost as much concerned about the dangers to be apprehended from the Catholic Church in England as the expremier himself. The " poet's license" is a wide one, as everybody knows, but after all it is a proof of historical ignorance to write of Mary as " Bloody Mary," in these days when her private character has been so thoroughly investigated that justice should obligt every candid man to acknowledge that she was personally a very upright •woman, and not at all responsible for the horrible deeds done in her •name at the clcse of- her reign. Fuller, an Anglican historian, tells us that " she had been a worthy princess, if as little cruelty had "been done under her as by her. She hated 'to equivocate,' and always was what she was, without dissembling her judgment or conduct for fear of flattery." Fox, the author of the Book of Martjrs, tells us that " Mary was a woman in every way excellent while she followed her own inclination." During the persecution ■which marked the late years of this queen's reign, she was prostrated by an awful malady which made her actually "lie like one torpid and half dead," as we are told by Lady Dormer, her chamberwoman. It is rather remarkable, that it was only wh«n too sick to attend the council in person that her subjects were treated with such exceeding severity. Early in her reign, a woman played ghost and used to answer questions from the window of a lonely house, in Aldersgate street in the following manner — when the crowd shouted " God save Queen Mary," the voice answered — •' God save the Lady Elizabeth." When asked " What was the mass ?" the voice said, *' Idolatry." Thp woman, whose name was Elizabeth Croft, was at last detected and brought to trial. Mary ordered that the only punishment to be given her was that of the pillory for three hours. She annulled the law made by her father which condemned to death persons libelling the king or queen, and, according to all testimony, was a very merciful princess until her great sickness incapacitated her, and then the na,tion was ruled by a council which certainly disgraced itself, and often used the name of the queen without her knowledge, as is proven by Underbill, a Protestant writer. "If," says .Miss Agnes Strickland in her * Lives of the Queens of England,' " eternal obloquy was incurred by the half dead queen, what is then due to the parliament which legalized the acts- of cruelty committed in her name ? Shall we call the House of Lords bigoted, when its majority, which legalized this wickedness, was composed of the same individuals who had planted very recently .the Protestant Church of England?" Mr. Tennyson, as an educated man and one who writes in an enlightened *ge, should hare borne these facts in mind.