Earliest English pageants. City pageants. record in England is that described by Matthew Paris as having taken place in 1236, on the occasion of the passage of King Henry III and Eleanor of Provence through the City to Westminster. On the return of Edward I from his victory over the Scots in 1298 occurred the earliest exhibition of shows connected with the City trades. These processions were in England frequently called ridings'. To about the same period belongs the first detailed description which we possess of a pageant in the more modern sense of the term, Walsingham's account of the reception of Richard II by the citizens in 1377. There were pageants under Henry IV, one on Henry V's return from Agincourt, and another on Henry VI's return from France after his coronation. The first description of the Lord Mayor's own pageantry, on the day of his entrance upon the duties of his office, dates from 15333. Similar gratulatory pageants were exhibited in other cities; the Lord Mayor's pageants, however, of course remained preeminent 5. Many of our early dramatists exercised their ingenuity upon them; Peele's Descensus Astraeae, and several productions by Munday, Dekker, Thomas Heywood, and Middleton, belong to this class. They dealt in patriotic and moral allegories, as well as in direct illustrations of the glories of the City or of the particular City Company to which the Lord Mayor belonged, such as the Triumphs of Old Drapery, or The Rich Clothing of England, and 1 So Chaucer relates of the idle apprentice, Perkin Revelour, that 'whan ther any riding was in Chepe Out of the shoppe thider wold he lepe, And danced wel, he would not come agein.' (The Coke's Tale.) 2 Described by Lydgate (who probably wrote the songs for the occasion). 3 In this year Queen Anne Boleyn was by royal command welcomed in the City likewyse as they use to dooe when the Maior is presented on the morrow after Symon and Jude.' This procession was by water. 4 Queen Margaret was welcomed to Coventry in 1455 by a pageant, of which the scheme has been preserved, and which introduces Scriptural, historical, and allegorical personages, several of whom speak a few lines of obeisance. (See Sharp, u. s., p. 145 seqq.) 5 'I do not think,' says Spendall in Green's Tu Quoque (pr. 1614), ‘but to be Lord Mayor of London before I die, and have three pageants carried before me, besides a ship and an unicorn.' PUBLIC PAGEANTS. Chrysanaleia; the Golden Fishing, or the Honour of Fishmongers'. These City pageants continued in favour till the outbreak of the Civil War, when the very maypoles were extirpated by command of the Parliament. It may be added that they were revived in 1655, Sir Roger Tichburn, Mayor, exhibiting one in 1656; that the last poet who exerted his brains on this class of performances was the immortal Elkanah Settle; and that about the beginning of the eighteenth century they seem to have sunk to the level at which it is rumoured that they still remain. 81 These public pageants have but little importance for the earlier history of our drama; they served, however, to encourage that love of spectacle which has at different times been an aid or a danger to the dramatic art, and helped to prevent the drama in its infancy from falling into too narrow grooves. As an exceptional phenomenon, the so- Hox Tuescalled Hox Tuesday Play at Coventry may perhaps deserve day Play. mention. In the main it was a pantomimic representation. of a fight, but it is stated to have been accompanied by 'rymez.' It commemorated the overthrow of the Danes by the men of Coventry, where it was exhibited from the year 1416, and in 1575 was witnessed by Queen Elisabeth. The historical origin of the festival (either the massacre of St. Brice's day or the death of Hardicanute) and the doubtful etymology of the name I cannot pretend to discuss; if this performance was not, properly speaking, a historical play, it seems at least to have been something more than a mere dumb show in memory of a historical event 2. 1 Both by Munday. A humorous description of the 'Marchant Taylers' pageants will be found in the Second Part of the old play of Promos and Cassandra, act i. sc. v. * See Sharp, Coventry Mysteries, p. 125 seqq. This must have been the performance in which Captain Cox took a part, whose ghost, mounted in his hobby-horse,' delivered the so-called Masque of Owls, at Kenelworth,' written by Ben Jonson in 1626: And being a little man, When the skirmish began "Twixt the Saxon and the Dane (For thence the story was ta'en) He was not so well seen As he would have been o' the queen.' G Court entertainments. Masks. Lastly, the amusements of the Court and of the great houses of the nobility from a very early date consisted of entertainments partaking to a greater or less degree of a dramatic character. These entertainments were partly conducted by paid servants, partly by the members of the Court themselves. 'Disguisings' and 'mummings,' i.e. dances or other appearances in costume, no doubt often of a figurative description, were in vogue at Court from the time of Edward III; under Henry V was exhibited, on the occasion of the visit of the Emperor Sigismund, what appears to have been a pantomimic representation of the Life of St. George. Under Edward IV the Duke of Gloucester kept a body of 'players;' and under Henry VII there were three royal establishments of actors, the players of interludes, the Prince's (Arthur's) players, and the gentlemen of the chapel; and some of the great nobles likewise had their companies, while others were attached to particular towns. The entertainments at Court, which were doubtless very various, were superintended by an Abbot or Lord of Misrule. But a new impulse was given to this, as to every other form of amusement, by the accession of Henry VIII. Early in his reign (1512-13) there was introduced, as a new species of entertainment from Italy, the 'mask,' which appears to have differed from the earlier disguisings' by the circumstance of the dancers wearing masks as well as costume. Such a 'mask' is that described by Cavendish in his Life of Wolsey, and introduced with great effect by Shakspere into his Henry VIII'. Inasmuch as moralities were represented at Court and exercised their influence upon its tastes, the degree of action introduced into the disguisings and masks varied considerably; at times decorations or 'properties' (the term is ancient) were employed; and on special occasions the various kinds of entertainment were no doubt combined 1 The Pageant of the Nine Worthies, out of which so much fun is made in Shakspere's Love's Labour's Lost, was represented in Queen Mary's time. Each of the Worthies, says Strype, 'made his speech,' no doubt commencing, as in the comedy, with 'I Pompey am,' ' Judas I am,' &c. Cf. Warton's Hist. of Engl. Poetry, sec. liii. See the definition of a masque in Tale of a Tub, act. v. SC. 2. THE GOVERNMENT AND THE STAGE. 83 into exhibitions of a very elaborate description. At Henry The govern ment and the stage. performance of plays, when licensed by the bishop, to the period between All Saints' and Shrovetide. At Court, however, masks and interludes continued to be performed under Queen Mary, who likewise encouraged the representation of miracle-plays in London. We have thus reached the reign of Elisabeth, who after first issuing a general prohibition against dramatic performances, on the 16th of May, 1559, ordered that they should be permitted, if licensed by the mayors of towns or lord-lieutenants of counties, or two justices of the peace; but that no play touching on matters of religion or government `should in any case be licensed. At Court, interludes, masks, and revels continued as before; plays had been performed before Elisabeth already in her brother's reign; and her taste for such entertainments never left her. In her palaces and on her progresses she was amused in this way; we shall see how the Universities and the Inns of Court vied with one another in providing such diversions; and her great nobles kept their companies of players. Among these, the company of the Earl of Leicester was, in May 1574, granted the privilege of performing within the city of London, and within any cities, towns, and boroughs throughout England. The Common Council of the City of London sought to make its license necessary for every public exhibition, and otherwise to hamper the players, whom it regarded with so much hostility. The result was, that the players sought to establish themselves in places beyond the jurisdiction of the city authorities, though locally within the city. Thus James Burbadge and others, play-houses. the players of the Earl of Leicester, in 1576 converted some rooms situate in the precinct of the dissolved monastery of the Blackfriars into a play-house; and, apparently in the same year, the Theatre' was erected at Shoreditch, and another building for the same purpose, called the Curtain1, hard by. Earliest Elisabethan entertainments. The same point of time shows the Court entertainments of this reign at the full height of their developement; and 1 As to the origin of this name see Shaksp. Soc. Papers, vol. i. p. 29 seqq. |