"A world of wealth at will

You henceforth shall enjoy
In wedded state, and therewithal
Hold up from great annoy
The staff of your estate:

O queen, O worthy queen,

Yet never wight felt perfect bliss

But such as wedded been."

But when the Queen laughed at the word marriage, the wily courtier had his impromptu device of the mock bridal. The marriages of the poor were the marriages to be made fun of. But there was a device of marriage at which Diana would weep, and all the other Gods rejoice, when her Majesty should give the word. Alas, for that crowning show there was "lack of opportunity and seasonable weather."

It is difficult to imagine anything more tedious than the fulsome praise, the mythological pedantries, the obscure allusions to Constancy and Deep-Desire, which were poured into the ears of Elizabeth during the nineteen days of Kenilworth. There was not, according to the historians of this visit, one fragment of our real old poetry produced to gratify the Queen of a nation that had the songs and ballads of the chivalrous times still fresh upon its lips. There were no Minstrels at Kenilworth; the Harper was unbidden to its halls. The

old English spirit of poetry was dead in a scheming court. We have man! evidences besides the complaint of poor Richard Sheale,* that the courtly and the rich had begun to hold the travelling depositaries of the old traditionary lore of England in unwise contempt. A few years after, and they were proscribed by statute ::

"Beggars they are with one consent,
And rogues by act of parliament.".

Laneham gives an account of "a ridiculous device of an ancient minstrel and his song, prepared to have been proffered, if meet time and place had been found for it." This is not the minstrel himself, but a travestie of him. He was a Squire Minstrel of Middlesex;" and an absurd narrative is put into his mouth of "the worshipful village of Islington, well known to be one of the most ancient and best towns in England next London, at this day." Lancham goes on to describe how "in a worshipful company" the "fool" who was to play the Minstrel was put out of countenance by one cleverer than himself— Master Laneham perhaps; and how "he waxed very wayward, eager, and sour." But he was pacified with fair words, and sack and sugar; and after a little warbling on his harp came forth with a "solemn song, warranted for story out of King Arthur's acts, the 1st book and 26th chapter." Percy prints The Minstrel's Sonnet' in his Reliques,' under the title of King Ryence's Challenge,' saying "This song is more modern than many of them which follow it, but is placed here for the sake of the subject. It was sung before Queen Elizabeth at the grand entertainment at Kenilworth Castle in 1575, and was probably composed for that occasion." Not so. Laneham says expressly, "it was prepared to have been proffered." It is remarkable that Percy does not state. what is so evident-that this ballad was intended to be a burlesque upon the Romances of Chivalry. If all Laneham's conceited description of the Minstrel did not show this, the following stanza is decisive enough; being the answer to the messenger of King Ryence, who came to demand, in the language of the Morte Arthur,' the beard of the British king, "for king Ryence had purfeled a mantell with kings' beards, and there lacked for one a place in the mantell :"

"But say to sir Ryence, thou dwarf, quoth the king,

That for his bold message I do him defye;
And shortlye with basins and pans will him ring

Out of North-Gales: where he and I

With swords and not razors quickly shall trye
Whether he or king Arthur will prove the best barbor;
And therewith he shook his good sword Excalàbor."

It was something higher that in a few years called up Spenser and Shakspere. Yet there was one sport, emanating from the people, which had heart and reality in it. Laneham describes this as a "good sport presented in an historical cue by certain good-hearted men of Coventry, my lord's neighbours there." They made petition that they might renew now their old storial show: of argument how the Danes, whilom here in a troublous season, were for *See Chapter V.

mason,

quietness borne withal and suffered in peace; that anon, by outrage and unsup portable insolency, abusing both Ethelred the King, then, and all estates everywhere beside, at the grievous complaint and counsel of Huna, the King's chieftain in wars, on Saint Brice's night, Anno Dom. 1012 (as the book says, that falleth yearly on the thirteenth of November), were all despatched, and the realm rid. And for because that the matter mentioneth how valiantly our Englishwomen, for love of their country, behaved themselves, expressed in action and rhymes after their manner, they thought it might move some mirth to her Majesty the rather. The thing, said they, is grounded in story, and for pastime wont to be played in our city yearly, without ill example of manners, papistry, or any superstition; and else did so occupy the heads of a number, that likely enough would have had worse meditations; had an ancient beginning and a long continuance, till now of late laid down, they knew no cause why, unless it was by the zeal of certain of their preachers, men very commendable for their behaviour and learning, and sweet in their sermons, but somewhat too sour in preaching away their pastime." The description by Laneham is the only precise account which remains to us of the "old storial show," the "sport presented in an historical cue." It was a show not to be despised, for it told the people how their Saxon ancestors had arisen to free themselves from "outrage and unsupportable insolency," and "how valiantly our Englishwomen, for love of their country, behaved themselves." Laneham, in his accustomed style, is more intent upon describing "Captain Cox," an odd man of Coventry, ale-conner, who hath great oversight in matters of story," than upon giving us a rational account of this spectacle. We find, however, that there were the Danish lance-knights on horseback, and then the English; that they had furious encounters with spear and shield, with sword and target; that there were footmen, who fought in rank and squadron; and that "twice the Danes had the better, but at the last conflict beaten down, overcome, and many led captive for triumph by our Englishwomen." The court historian adds," This was the effect of this show, that as it was handled made much matter of good pastime, brought all indeed into the great court, even under her Highness's window, to have seen." But her Highness, having pleasanter occupation within, "saw but little of the Coventry play, and commanded it therefore on the Tuesday following to have it full out, as accordingly it was presented." This repetition of the Hock-play in its completeness, full out, necessarily leads to the conclusion that the action was somewhat more complicated than the mere repetition of a mockcombat. Laneham, in his general description of the play, says, "expressed in action and rhymes." That he has preserved none of the rhymes, and has given us a very insufficient account of the action, is characteristic of the man, and of the tone of the courtiers. The Coventry clowns came there, not to call up any patriotic feeling by their old traditionary rhymes and dumb-show, but to be laughed at for their awkward movement and their earnest declamation. It appears to us that the conclusion is somewhat hasty which says of this play of Hock Tuesday, "It seems to have been merely a dumb-show."* Percy, rest

• Collier, 'Annals of the Stage,' vol. i., p. 234.

re

ing upon the authority of Laneham, says that the performance "seems on that occasion to have been without recitation or rhymes, and reduced to mere dumbshow." Even this we doubt. But certainly it is difficult to arrive at any other conclusion than that of Percy, that the play, as originally performed by the men of Coventry, "expressed in action and rhymes after their manner,”presenting a complicated historical event, the insolence of tyranny, the indignation of the oppressed, the grievous complaint of one injured chieftain, the secret counsels, the plots, the conflicts, the triumph,-must have offered us "a regular model of a complete drama." If the young Shakspere were a witness to the performance of this drama, his imagination would have been more highly and more worthily excited than if he had been the favoured spectator of all the shows of Tritons, and Dianas, and Ladies of the Lake, that proceeded from "the conceit so deep in casting the plot" of his lordship of Leicester. It would be not too much to believe that this storial show might first suggest to him how English history might be dramatized; how a series of events, terminating in some remarkable catastrophe, might be presented to the eye; how fightingmen might be marshalled on a mimic field; how individual heroism might stand out from amongst the mass, having its own fit expression of thought and passion; how the wife or the mother, the sister or the mistress, might be there to uphold the hero, even as the Englishwomen assisted their warriors; and how all this might be made to move the hearts of the people, as the old ballads had once moved them. Such a result would have repaid a visit to Kenilworth by William Shakspere. Without this, he, his father, and their friends, might have retired from the scene of Dudley's magnificence, as most thinking persons in all probability retired, with little satisfaction. There was lavish expense; but according to the most credible accounts, the possessor of Kenilworth was the oppressor of his district. We see him not delighting to show his Queen a happy tenantry, such as the less haughty and ambitious nobles and esquires were anxious to cultivate. The people come under the windows of Elizabeth as objects of ridicule. Slavish homage would be there to Leicester from the gentlemen of the county. They would replenish his butteries with their gifts, they would ride upon his errands; they would wear his livery. There was one gentleman in Warwickshire who would not thus do Leicester homage-Edward Arden, the head of the great house of Arden, the cousin of William Shakspere's mother. But the mighty favourite was too powerful for him: "Which Edward though a gentleman not inferior to the rest of his ancestors in those virtues wherewith they were adorned, had the hard hap to come to an untimely death in 27 Eliz., the charge laid against him being no less than high treason against the Queen, as privy to some foul intentions that Master Somerville, his son-inlaw (a Roman Catholic), had towards her person: For which he was prosecuted with so great rigour and violence, by the Earl of Leicester's means, whom he had irritated in some particulars (as I have credibly heard), partly in disdaining to wear his livery, which many in this country, of his rank, thought, in those days, no small honour to them; but chiefly for galling him by certain harsh expressions, touching his private accesses to the Countess of Essex before she

was his wife; that through the testimony of one Hall, a priest, he was found guilty of the fact, and lost his life in Smithfield."* The Rev. N. J. Halpin, who has contributed a most interesting tract to the publications of The Shakespeare Society' on the subject of Oberon's Vision in the Midsummer Night's Dream,' has explained the allusions in that exquisite passage with far more success than the belief of Warburton that the Queen of Scots was pointed at, or of Mr. Boaden that Amy Robsart was the "little western flower." He considers that Edward Arden, a spectator of those very entertainments at Kenilworth, discovered Leicester's guilty "accesses to the Countess of Essex;" that the expression of Oberon, "That very time, I saw, but thou couldst not," referred to this discovery; that when the Imperial Votaress passed on," he "marked where the bolt of Cupid fell;" that "the little western flower," pure, milk-white" before that time, became spotted, "purple with love's wound." We may add that there is bitter satire in what follows-" that flower," retaining the original influence, "will make or man or woman madly dote," as Lettice, Countess of Essex, was infatuated by Leicester. The discovery of Edward Arden, and his "harsh expres sions" concerning it, might be traditions in Shakspere's family, and be safely allegorized by the poet in 1594 when Leicester was gone to his account.†

Laneham asks a question which in his giddy style he does not wait to answer, or even to complete :-" And first, who that considers unto the stately seat of Kenilworth Castle, the rare beauty of building that his Honour hath advanced, all of the hard quarry-stone; every room so spacious, so well beDugdale's Warwickshire,' p. 681.

+ Professor Craik, in his most interesting work, 'The Romance of the Peer ge,' is of opinion that no reader who shall come to the perusal of Mr. Halpin's Essay, with a mind free from prepos sessions and a sufficient knowledge of the time, "will retain any doubt that the secret meaning of these lines has now been discovered--that Cupid is Leicester, that the Moon and the Vestal typify Elizabeth, that the Earth is the Lady Sheffield, and the little western flower the Countess of Essex." (Vol. i. p. 75.)