Maie joyne all togither to thanke God and rejoyce To reforme thabuses She is oure most wise and worthie Nemesis. This was a court play; there were others, less favourably looked upon by the authorities. The Government, in fact, throughout the century, never ceased to interfere: Henry, Edward, Mary, Elizabeth, each in turn, periodically restrict the performance of plays, and prohibit altogether those in which are expounded ideas different from theirs. Henry VIII., as we have seen, was very positive; all bad and wicked plays should be "utterly abolished, extinguished and forbydden"; by wicked plays must be understood the works of "arrogant and ignorant persons, wherof some pretendyng to be lerned," but their learning can be but a sham as their opinions vary from the King's; they "subverte the verry trew and perfect exposition, doctrine and declaracion of the sayd Scripture," not only in sermons and treatises, but in “balades, playes, rymes, songes and other fantasies." Good plays alone shall be maintained, by which is meant, as we know, those agreeing with the present "doctryne" of the King or any other he may happen to "set forth" when he pleases.1 Edward VI.'s edicts are no less severe against people who presume to dispute of "his Majesties affayres," and they forbid "any common players or other persons . to play in thenglish tong any maner Enterlude, play or mattre, without they have special license." Mary renews the same prohibitions, only turning them against different people. Immediately after her accession, Elizabeth finds • Proclamation of H. VIII., May 26, 1545. Hazlitt, "The English Drama and the Stage," 1869, p. 6; above, II. 196. Cf. Virginia Gildersleeve, "Government regulation of the Elizabethan drama." New York, 1908. * Proclamations of Edward VI., August 6, 1549, April 28, 1551, and of Mary, August 18, 1553; ibid. pp. 8, 13, 17. that all sorts of questions which ought to be left alone are discussed in "common Interludes in the English tongue," even the Book of Common Prayer being held up to scorn. She therefore forbids "al maner Interludes to be playde, eyther openly or privately, except the same be notified before hande and licensed." No license shall be granted to plays wherein "either matters of religion or of the governaunce of the estate . . . shalbe handled"; let the "nobilitie and gentilmen . . . take good order in thys behalfe wyth their servauntes being players." Among these "gentilmen" was Dudley, whose first care, at the beginning of the reign, had been to attach to his person a troupe of actors, several members of which were to be later Shakespeare's fellow-players. Like other countries, England had her popular feasts, her solemn processions and pageants, her court masques or ballets, all of a semi-dramatic character, as they were often interspersed with dialogues, or even real diminutive plays: May games with Robin Hood; Saint George's plays with the holy knight vanquishing the dragon; processions of maskers on the occasion of a banquet or marriage feast; eves of St. John or St. Peter; "midsummer watches," of which Stow describes two sorts, the "marching" ones and the standing ones, these last being a kind of * 1 Eliz. ch. 11 (Act of Uniformity), e.g. in Prothero, "Select Statutes," 1894, p. 16; also, Proclamation of May 16, 1559, Transactions of the "New Shakspere Society," 1884, Appendix iii.; and Hazlitt, ibid., p. 19. Cf. above, vol. II. pp. 256 ff. and "Acts of the Privy Council," July 28 and August 15, 1597, new series, vol. xxvii.; below, pp. 37, 98. • On midsummer watches and pageants, the decking of the streets with "white lilies and such like," the various shows, the "lamps of glass, with oil burning in them all the night," morris dancers, musicians, giants, etc., see Stow, "Survay of London," 1603, pp. 103 ff., 154, 161. The pageants (cars) were housed in Leadenhall and painted afresh every year. The painters played an important part: "The lofts above (in Leadenhall) were partly used by the painters in working for the decking of pageants and other devises for beautify. ing of the watch and watchmen," p. 161. But the shows were not so brilliant in his days, the author declares, as in the early part of the sixteenth century; tableaux vivants; royal entries into a town, with appropriate interludes, speeches and dialogues; royal visits to a University, or to a nobleman who would transform, on such an occasion, his park into Olympus and his lake into Neptune's realm. Gods emerged from bushes, descended from heaven, danced on the grass, and nymphs swam across the water. Elizabeth was never tired of enjoying this open air and mid-water mythology. Leicester devised in her honour the famous "pleasures at Kenilworth," where, among many agreeable inventions, the Sibyl predicted to the Queen a glorious reign, and Hercules, the porter of the castle, was overcome by viewe of the rare beautie and princelie countenance of her Majestie." 1 The town of Norwich offered Elizabeth a whole week of semi-dramatic pageantry, and spent enormous sums in velvet, silk, and cloth of gold. Churchyard the poet, entrusted with the management of the festivities, has left an account of them, where successes are gloried in, and disasters good-humouredly acknowledged. He had prepared for the coming of the Queen a music "which was marvellous sweete and good," but "the rudenesse of some ringer of belles," who could not be stopped, “did somewhat hinder the noyse and harmonie." After which, other pleasures were replacing them. On the St. George plays, see e.g. Chambers, "Medieval Stage," i. 210; on masques, etc., see his "Elizabethan Stage," 1923, I. 149; W. W. Greg, "A List of Masques, Pageants, etc.," Bibliographical Soc., 1902; Reyher, "Les Masques Anglais," 1909; Mary Sullivan, "Masques of James I.," 1913. ... July 9, 1575; words by Gascoigne and others: "The Princelye Pleasures at the courte at Kenelworth," pr. 1576 ("Complete Works," ed. Cunliffe, ii. 91). On solemnities of this sort, see Nichols, "Progresses . . . of Queen Elizabeth," 1823, 3 vols. 4to; e.g. in vol. iii., an account of a mythological aquatic fete offered to the Queen by the Earl of Hertford, with a curious engraving of 1591 reproduced, p. 101; also "The Queenes. Entertainment at Woodstocke," ed. Cunliffe in Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn., XXVI. Same tastes in France; see the great tapestries in the Arazzi Museum, Florence; festivities given by Henri [III.] at Fontainebleau. "an excellent boy," wearing on his head "a crimson scarfe wrought with gold, folded on the Turkishe fashion. aboute his browes," complimented the Queen, who deigned to say: "This device is fine." Another day, Mercury, sent by "Jehova"-for Churchyard is not afraid of modernising his mythology-came on a car which " seemed to flye," as it was "covered with birdes and naked sprites hanging by the heeles in the aire, and cloudes cunningly painted out." A morality was next performed before the Queen: Chastity was seen taking hold of Cupid's bow and offering it to Elizabeth, "to learn to shoote at whome she pleased, since none coulde wounde hir Highnesse hart." Elizabeth, doubtless, also found this device "fine." Another morality was performed the next day before the Queen and the French ambassador, and there was to be some pageantry on the water; but everything went wrong; the players had to act in such a narrow room that they could scarcely move; and as for the water pageant they mistook the appointed place, and "hoovered on the water three long houres," while the Queen was walking elsewhere, and so night came. The Thursday had been reserved for the most graceful invention of all; a large hole had been dug in a field near the river; a green cloth, stretched over it, concealed musicians and boys, the latter with "long, goodly tresses" of false hair were disguised as "water nymphs," so skilfully that "sondry took them to be yong girles and wenches prepared for the nonce to procure a laughter." They were to spring, one after the other, from their hiding-place, make their bow to the Queen, and "daunce with timbrels that were trammed with belles and other jangling things," behaving themselves, “as neere as could be ymagined, like the Phayries." But torrents of rain overcame them in their hole and the disaster was so complete "that it was," writes the poet with his imperturbable good-humour, "a greater pastime to see us looke like drowned rattes than to have beheld the uttermost of the shewes rehearsed." I Processions of disguised maskers, with speeches and dialogues, frequently enlivened balls and banquets, in England as elsewhere. One such procession can be seen in a picture of the sixteenth century now preserved at the National Gallery, and representing the festivities for the marriage of Sir Henry Unton, twice ambassador to France and a personal friend of King Henri IV.; a number of Cupids and masked deities march, to the sound of an orchestra, before the married couple and their guests. A show of the same sort, "a living drollery," graces Alonso's banquet in Shakespeare's "Tempest": "Several strange shapes... dance about it with gentle actions of salutation." Spenser introduces one into his "Faerie Queene," and it takes him one hundred and seventy lines to describe it: After whom marcht a jolly company, In manner of a maske, enranged orderly; There were Fancy and Desire, Fear, Hope, and Cruelty. Next after her, the winged God himselfe while minstrels Came riding on a Lion ravenous, were "making goodly merriment." 2 Sometimes the performance was a mimic one, without words, or took the shape of an allegorical ballet. Brantôme describes one that he saw at the English court, the subject of which was the Wise and the Foolish Virgins: "Even the Queen danced, and with perfect grace and royal majesty," 1561. In other cases, maskers spoke and the guests were ... "A Discourse of the Queenes Maiesties entertainement . . . devised by Th. Churchyarde, Gent., with divers shewes of his own invention, sette out at Norwich." London, 1578, 4to. Cf. below, p. 270, n. 3. Book iii. canto xii. |