Constable. Your Highness, the State has lost its prop, and therefore it is toppling over; the State has an enemy that has grown too strong for it. Restore the prop, which is the nobility, and crush the enemy, which is the Church!
Constable. First of all: Brask is in correspondence with the Pope to have the inquisition established here. Lübeck is insisting on her shameless demands and threatens war. The treasury is empty. There is rebellion in every nook and corner of the country--
Gustaf. That's enough! But I have the people with me.
Constable. I beg your pardon--you have not. There are the Dalecarlians, for instance--a spoiled lot, always disputing with those of Lübeck about the honor of having bestowed a king on Sweden. They are ready to rebel on the slightest occasion, and they are coming forward with demands like these: "There shall be no outlandish customs used, with slittered and motley colored clothes, such as have of late been brought into the King's court."
Constable. "Whosoever eats meat on Fridays or Saturdays shall be burned at the stake or otherwise made away with." And furthermore, "There shall be no new faith or Lutheran teachings foisted upon us." What a treacherous, impudent people!
Gustaf. And yet there was a time when they showed themselves to be men.
Constable. Well, what wonder if they carried water when their house was afire? How many times have they broken troth and faith? But they have so often heard themselves lauded that they have come to give the name of "old Swedish honesty" to their own brute arrogance.
Constable. Yes, and it is my conviction that the peasant has played out his part--the part of a crude force needed to drive away the enemy by sheer strength of arm. Crush the Church, Your Highness, for it is keeping the people in fetters. Seize the gold of the Church and pay the country's debt--and give back to the reduced nobility what the Church has obtained from it by dupery.
Gustaf. Call Bishop Brask! [Exit the Constable.]
Brask. I wish to offer our congratulations on--
Gustaf. I thank Your Grace! And what more?
Brask. There have been complaints from several districts, I am sorry to say, about unpaid loans of silver exacted from the churches by Your Highness.