XXIII.—SETTING OUT OF PAGEANTS.
In an old play, the Historie of Promos and Cassandra, part the second, by George Whetstone, printed in 1578, [56] a carpenter, and others, employed in preparing the pageants for a royal procession, are introduced. In one part of the city the artificer is ordered "to set up the frames, and to space out the rooms, that the Nine Worthies may be so instauled as best to please the eye." The "Worthies" are thus named in an heraldical MS. in the Harleian Library: [57] "Duke Jossua; Hector of Troy; kyng David; emperour Alexander; Judas Machabyes; emperour Julyus Cæsar; kyng Arthur; emperour Charlemagne; and syr Guy of Warwycke;" but the place of the latter was frequently, and I believe originally, supplied by Godefroy, earl of Bologne: it appears, however, that any of them might be changed at pleasure: Henry VIII. was made a "Worthy" to please his daughter Mary, as we shall find a little farther on. In another part of the same play the carpenter is commanded to "errect a stage, that the wayghtes [58] in sight may stand;" one of the city gates was to be occupied by the fowre Virtues, together with "a consort of music;" and one of the pageants is thus whimsically described:
They have Hercules of monsters conquering;
Huge great giants, in a forrest, fighting
With lions, bears, wolves, apes, foxes, and grayes,
Baiards and brockes——
——Oh, these be wondrous frayes!
The stage direction then requires the entry of "Two men apparelled lyke greene men at the mayor's feast, with clubbs of fyreworks;" whose office, we are told, was to keep a clear passage in the street, "that the kyng and his trayne might pass with ease."—In another dramatic performance of later date, Green's Tu Quoque, or the City Gallant, by John Cooke, published in 1614, a city apprentice says, "By this light, I doe not thinke but to be lord mayor of London before I die; and have three pageants carried before me, besides a ship and an unicorn." The following passage occurs in Selden's Table Talk, under the article Judge, "We see the pageants in Cheapside, the lions and the elephants; but we do not see the men that carry them we see the judges look big like lions; but we do not see who moves them."