Pages 61 - 75 Summary

"Queen Elizabeth" returns to the stage, and villagers gather around her, as if it were the Globe Theatre and they are going to put on a play for her, a sort of play-within-a-play. An old crone emerges, and recites a long and confusing passage about concealing a baby twenty years ago, a man in a hood, and bloody hands. Isa can make no sense of it (along with the reader most likely), and she wonders if the plot of this pageant matters at all. To Isa, plot only exists to "beget emotion," and to Isa there are only two emotions, love and hate. She ties this back to her own dilemma about her lust for Mr. Haines.

A priest comes out and offers a sort of benediction, and then the acting company dances and frolics about as the gramophone blares music...