Vol. II.—47.

The Giants
IN THE LORD MAYOR’S SHOW,
AND IN GUILDHALL.

In the Lord Mayor’s Show on the 9th of November, 1827, there was a remarkable variation from the customary route. Instead of the new chief magistrate and corporation embarking at Blackfriars, as of late years has been usual, the procession took a direction eastward, passed through the Poultry, Cornhill, Leadenhall-street, Billiter-lane, Mincing-lane, and from thence by Tower-street to the Tower Stairs, where they embarked. This deviation is presumed to have been in compliment to the Tower ward, in which the lord mayor presides as alderman. The ancient lord mayors of London were accustomed to “ride and go” on horseback, attended in like manner by the aldermen, and others of the corporation, to the bottom of Queen-street, and there embark on board the barges for Westminster. The present is the first instance of the lord mayor’s show by water having proceeded from a more distant spot down the river.

In addition to the “men in armour,” and the length of the route by land, in the lord mayor’s show of this year, there was “the far more attractive novelty of two colossal figures representing the well-known statues, Gog and Magog, (as they are called,) of Guildhall. They were extremely well contrived, and appeared to call forth more admiration and applause, than fell to the share of any of the other personages who formed part of the procession. Whatever some fastidious critics may say as to the taste of reviving in the present day some of the long-neglected civic pageants, we think the appearance of these figures augurs well for the future conduct of the new lord mayor: some of his brother magistrates would, we make no doubt, be well content if in the whole course, or at the close, of their official career, they could come in for a little of the plaudits which were yesterday bestowed on the two representatives of Gog and Magog.” (The Times, Nov. 10.) From the report of a spectator, it appears that the giants were constructed of wicker-work, gaily apparelled in the costume of their prototypes, and similarly armed: each walked along by means of a man withinside, who ever and anon turned the faces towards the thrones of company in the houses; and, as the figures were fourteen feet high, their features were on a level with the first-floor windows throughout the whole of their progress.

In a work, which contains much information respecting the “London Triumphs” of the lord mayors, and the “pageants” of those processions in the olden time, there is a chapter devoted to a History of the Carvings called the “Giants in Guildhall.” As the book is my own, and seems to be little known “within the walls,” I presume to render the account in a compressed form, as follows—

The Giants in Guildhall

From the time when I was astonished by the information, that “every day, when the giants hear the clock strike twelve they come down to dinner,” I have had something of curiosity towards them. How came they there, and what are they for? In vain were my examinations of Stow, Howell, Strype, Noorthouck, Maitland, Seymour, Pennant, and numberless other authors of books and tracts regarding London. They scarcely deign to mention them, and no one relates a syllable from whence we can possibly affirm that the giants of their day were the giants that now exist.

To this remark there is a solitary exception. Hatton, whose “New View of London” bears the date of 1708, says in that work, “This stately hall being much damnify’d by the unhappy conflagration of the city in 1666, was rebuilt anno 1669, and extremely well beautified and repaired both in and outside, which cost about two thousand five hundred pounds, and two new figures of gigantick magnitude will be as before.”[443] Presuming on the ephemeral information of his readers at the time he published, Hatton obscured his information by a brevity, which leaves us to suppose that the giants were destroyed when Guildhall was “much damnify’d” by the fire of London in 1666; and that from that period they had not been replaced. It is certain, however, that there were giants in the year 1699, when Ned Ward published his London Spy: for, describing a visit to Guildhall, he says, “We turned down King-street, and came to the place intended, which we entered with as great astonishment to see the giants, as the Morocco ambassador did London when he saw the snow fall. I asked my friend the meaning and design of setting up those two lubberly preposterous figures; for I suppose they had some peculiar end in it. Truly, says my friend, I am wholly ignorant of what they intended by them, unless they were set up to show the city what huge loobies their forefathers were, or else to fright stubborn apprentices into obedience; for the dread of appearing before two such monstrous loggerheads, will sooner reform their manners, or mould them into a compliance with their masters’ will, than carrying them before my lord mayor or the chamberlain of London; for some of them are as much frighted at the names of Gog and Magog, as little children are at the terrible sound of Raw-head and Bloody-bones.” There is no doubt that at that time the city giants were far more popular than now; for, in the same work, two passengers through Bartholomew fair, who had slyly alighted from a coach without discharging it, are addressed by the coachman with “Pay me my fare, or by Gog and Magog you shall feel the smart of my whipcord;” an oath which in our time is obsolete, though in all probability it was common then, or it would not have been used by Ward in preference to his usual indecency.

Again; as to giants being in Guildhall before Hatton wrote, and whether they were the present statues. On the 24th of April, 1685, there were “wonderful and stupendous fireworks in honour of their majesties’ coronation, (James II. and his queen,) and for the high entertainment of their majesties, the nobility, and City of London, made on the Thames.”[444] Among the devices of this exhibition, erected on a raft in the middle of the river, were two pyramids; between them was a figure of the sun in polished brass, below it a great cross, and beneath that a crown, all stored with fireworks; and a little before the pyramids “were placed the statues of the two giants of Guildhall, in lively colours and proportions facing Whitehall, the backs of which were all filled with fiery materials; and, from the first deluge of fire till the end of the sport, which lasted near an hour, the two giants, the cross, and the sun, grew all in a light flame in the figures described, and burned without abatement of matter.” From this mention of “statues of the two giants of Guildhall,” it is to be inferred, that giants were in Guildhall fourteen years before Ward’s book was published, and that, probably, the firework-maker took them for his models, because their forms being familiar to the “City of London,” their appearance would be an attraction as well as a compliment to his civic audience.

Just before 1708, the date of Hatton’s book, Guildhall had been repaired; and Hatton says, “In the middle of this front are depenciled in gold these words, Reparata et Ornata Thoma Rawlinson, Milit. Majore, An. Dom. M. DCC. VI.” From whence, and his observation, in the extract first quoted, that “two new figures of gigantick magnitude will be as before,” he intends his reader to understand that, as before that reparation there had been two giants, so, with the new adornment of the hall there would be two new giants. The proof of Hatton’s meaning is to be found in “The Gigantick History of the two famous Giants in Guildhall, London, third edition, corrected. London, printed for Tho. Boreman, bookseller, near the Giants in Guildhall, and at the Boot and Crown, on Ludgate-hill, 1741.”—2 vols. 64mo. This very rare book states, that “before the present giants inhabited Guildhall, there were two giants, made only of wicker-work and pasteboard, put together with great art and ingenuity: and those two terrible original giants had the honour yearly to grace my lord mayor’s show, being carried in great triumph in the time of the pageants; and when that eminent annual service was over, remounted their old stations in Guildhall—till, by reason of their very great age, old Time, with the help of a number of city rats and mice, had eaten up all their entrails. The dissolution of the two old, weak, and feeble giants, gave birth to the two present substantial and majestic giants; who, by order, and at the city charge, were formed and fashioned. Captain Richard Saunders,[445] an eminent carver in King-street, Cheapside, was their father; who, after he had completely finished, clothed, and armed these his two sons, they were immediately advanced to those lofty stations in Guildhall, which they have peaceably enjoyed ever since the year 1708.” The title-page of the “Gigantick History” shows that the work was published within the Guildhall itself, when shops were permitted there; so that Boreman, the publisher, had the best means that time and place could afford of obtaining true information, and for obvious reasons he was unlikely to state what was not correct. It is further related in this work, that “the first honour which the two ancient wicker-work giants were promoted to in the city, was at the restoration of king Charles II., when with great pomp and majesty they graced a triumphal arch, which was erected on that happy occasion at the end of King-street, in Cheapside.” This was before the fire of London, by which the hall was “much damnify’d,” but not burned down; for the conflagration was principally confined to the wooden roof; and, according to this account, the wicker-giants escaped, till their infirmities, and the labours of the “city rats,” rendered it necessary to supersede them.

That wicker was used in constructing figures for the London pageants is certain. Haywood, in his description of the pageants in the show of the lord mayor Raynton, in 1632, says, “The moddellor and composer of these seuerall pieces, Maister Gerard Christmas, found these pageants and showes of wicker and paper, and reduc’t them to sollidity and substance.”

To prove, however, the statement in the “Gigantick History,” that the present giants were put up upon the reparation of the hall in 1706, an examination of the city archives became necessary; and as the history fortunately mentions captain Richard Saunders as the carver, the name became a clue to successful inquiry. Accordingly, on examination of the city accounts at the chamberlain’s office, under the head of “Extraordinary Works,” for 1707, I discovered among the sums “paid for repairing of the Guildhall and chappell,” an entry in the following words:—

To Richard Saunders, carver, seaventy pounds, by order of the co’mittee for repairing Guildhall, dated ye xth. of April, 1707, for work by him done

70l.

This entry of the payment confirms the relation of the gigantic historian; but Saunders’s bill, which doubtless contained the charges for the two giants, and all the city vouchers before 1786, deposited in the chamberlain’s office, were destroyed by a fire there in that year.

Giants were part of the pageantry used in different cities of the kingdom. By an ordinance of the mayor, aldermen, and common-council of Chester,[446] for the setting of the watch on the eve of the festival of St. John the Baptist, in 1564, it was directed that there should be annually, according to ancient custom, a pageant, consisting of four giants, with animals, hobby-horses, and other figures, therein specified.[447] In 1599, Henry Hardman, Esq. the mayor of Chester in that year, from religious motives, caused the giants in the Midsummer show “to be broken, and not to goe the devil in his feathers,” and he provided a man in complete armour to go in their stead; but in 1601, John Ratclyffe, a beer-brewer, being mayor, set out the giants and the Midsummer show as usual. On the restoration of Charles II. new ones were ordered to be made, and the estimate for finding the materials and workmanship of the four great giants, as they were before, was at five pounds a giant; and four men to carry them at two shillings and sixpence each. The materials for making these Chester giants were deal-boards, nails, pasteboard, scaleboard, paper of various sorts, buckram, size cloth, and old sheets for their bodies, sleeves, and shirts, which were to be coloured; also tinsel, tinfoil, gold and silver leaf, and colours of different kinds. A pair of old sheets were to cover the father and mother giants, and three yards of buckram were provided for the mother’s and daughter’s hoods. There is an entry in the Chester charges of one shilling and fourpence “for arsenic to put into the paste to save the giants from being eaten by the rats;”[448] a precaution which, if adopted in the formation of the old wicker-giants of London, was not effectual, though how long they had ceased to exist before the reparation of the hall, and the carving of their successors, does not appear. One conjecture may perhaps be hazarded, that, as after the mayor of Chester had ordered the giants there to be destroyed, he provided a man in armour as a substitute; so perhaps the dissolution of the old London wicker-giants, and the lumbering incapacity of the new wooden ones for the duty of lord mayor’s show, occasioned the appearance of the men in armour in that procession.

Until the last reparation of Guildhall, in 1815, the present giants stood with the old clock and a balcony of iron-work between them, over the stairs leading from the hall to the courts of law and the council chamber. When they were taken down in that year, and placed on the floor of the hall, I thoroughly examined them as they lay in that situation. They are made of wood,[449] and hollow within, and from the method of joining and gluing the interior, are evidently of late construction, and every way too substantially built for the purpose of being either carried or drawn, or any way exhibited in a pageant. On inspecting them at that period, I made minute inquiry of an old and respectable officer of Guildhall, with whom they were favourites, as to what particulars existed in the city archives concerning them; he assured me that he had himself anxiously desired information on the same subject, and that after an investigation through the different offices, there was not a trace of the period when they commenced to be, nor the least record concerning them. This was subsequently confirmed to me by gentlemen belonging to other departments.

However stationary the present ponderous figures were destined to remain, there can scarcely be a question as to the frequent use of their wicker predecessors in the corporation shows. The giants were great favourites in the pageants.[450] Stow, in describing the ancient setting of the nightly watch in London on St John’s eve, relates that “the mayor was surrounded by his footmen and torch-bearers, and followed by two henchmen on large horses: the mayor had, besides his giant, three pageants; whereas the sheriffs had only two, besides their giants, each with their morris dance and one henchman.”[451] It is related, that, to make the people wonder, these giants were armed, and marched as if they were alive, to the great diversion of the boys, who, peering under, found them stuffed with brown paper.[452] A character in Marston’s “Dutch Courtezan,” a comedy acted in 1605, says, “Yet all will scarce make me so high as one of the gyant’s stilts that stalks before my lord mayor’s pageants.”[453]

During queen Elizabeth’s progress to her coronation, Gogmagog and Corinæus, two giants, were stationed at Temple-bar. It is not certain, yet it is probable, that these were the wicker-giants brought from Guildhall for the occasion. In the reign before, when queen Mary and Philip II. of Spain made their public entry, there was at London bridge a grand spectacle, with two images representing two giants, the one named Corinæus, and the other Gogmagog, holding between them certain Latin verses.[454] There is scarcely a likelihood that these were any other than the Guildhall giants, which on the occasion of a corporation rejoicing could be removed with the utmost ease.

Orator Henley, on the 21st of October, 1730, availed himself of the anticipated civic festival for that year to deliver a lecture upon it, mentioning the giants, which he announced by newspaper advertisement as follows:—

At the Oratory, the corner of Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, near Clare-market, this Day, being Wednesday, at Six o’Clock in the Evening, will be a new Riding upon an old Cavalcade, entituled The City in its Glory; or, My Lord Mayor’s Shew: Explaining to all Capacities that wonderful Procession, so much envy’d in Foreign Parts, and nois’d at Paris: on my Lord Mayor’s Day; the fine Appearance and Splendor of the Companies of Trade; Bear and Chain; the Trumpets, Drums, and Cries, intermix’d; the qualifications of my L—’s Horse, the whole Art and History of the City Ladies and Beaux at Gape-stare in the Balconies; the Airs, Dress, and Motions; THE TWO GIANTS walking out to keep Holiday; like Snails o’er a Cabbage, says an old Author, they all crept along; admir’d by their Wives, and huzza’d by the Throng.

There is no stronger evidence of the indifference to playfulness and wit at city elections, than the almost total silence on those occasions respecting such ample subjects for allusion and parallel as the giants in the hall. Almost the only instance of their application in this way is to be found in a handbill on occasion of a mayoralty election, dated Oct. 4th, 1816, addressed “To the London Tavern Livery and their Spouses.” It states, that “the day after Mr. Alderman —— is elected lord mayor for the year ensuing, the following entertainments will be provided for your amusement gratis, viz. 1. The two giants, at the bottom of the hall, will dance a minuet by steam, attended by Mr. Alderman —— in a new wig upon an elastic principle, gentleman having bought half of his old one for the purpose of making a new peruke for the aforesaid giants.” This is the first humorous allusion to the giants after their removal to their present station.

It is imagined by the author of the “Gigantick History,” that the Guildhall giants represent Corinæus a Trojan, and Gogmagog a Cornish giant, whose story is related at large in that work; the author of which supposes, that as “Corinæus and Gogmagog were two brave giants, who nicely valued their honour, and exerted their whole strength and force in defence of their liberty and country; so the city of London, by placing these their representatives in their Guildhall, emblematically declare, that they will, like mighty giants, defend the honour of their country and liberties of this their city, which excels all others, as much as those huge giants exceed in stature the common bulk of mankind.” Each of these giants, as they now stand, measures upwards of fourteen feet in height: the young one is believed to be Corinæus, and the old one Gogmagog.

Such being the chief particulars respecting these enormous carvings, the terror of the children, the wonder of the ’prentices, and the talk of the multitude, in former days, I close the subject, satisfied with having authenticated their origin. Trifling as this affair may seem, I pursued the inquiry for upwards of sixteen years; and though much of the time I spent in the search might have been better employed, I can assure those who are unacquainted with the nature of such investigations, that I had much pleasure in the pursuit, and when I had achieved my purpose I felt more highly gratified, than I think I should had I attained to the dignity of being “proud London’s proud lord mayor.”

There are other memoranda respecting the giants and lord mayors’ shows in my volume on “Ancient Mysteries,” from whence the present particulars are extracted.

*

[443] Hatton’s New View of London, 1708, 8vo. p. 607.

[444] See the “Narrative,” by R. Lowman, 1685, folio, half sheet, 1685.

[445]

“——————— a citizen
Of credit and renown,
A trainband captain——.”—Cowper.

[446] Harl. MSS. 1368.

[447] Ibid. 2125.

[448] Strutt’s Sports, Pref. p. xxvi.

[449] Noorthouck writing in 1773, (Hist. of London, 4to. p. 590,) erroneously affirms that the giants are made of pasteboard.

[450] Strutt, p. xxiii.

Giants were introduced into the May-games. “On the 26th of May, 1555, was a gay May-game at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, with giants and hobby-horses, drums and guns, morris-dancers, and other minstrels.”—(Strype’s Memorials.) Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” includes giants among the ordinary domestic recreations of winter.

[451] Strutt, p. 319.

[452] Brand, i. p. 257.

[453] Stilts to increase the stature of the giants, and the introduction of the morris-dance, are instances of the desire to gratify the fondness of our ancestors for strange sights and festive amusements. A cock dancing on stilts to the music of a pipe and tabor is in Strutt’s Sports, from a book of prayers written towards the close of the thirteenth century. Harl. MSS. 6563.

[454] Strutt’s Sports, Pref. p. xxvii.

NORWICH GUILD.
Mayor’s Feast, Temp. Elizabeth.

The earls of Northumberland and Huntingdon, the lords Thomas Howard and Willoughby, with many other noblemen and knights, paid a visit to the duke of Norfolk, and were entertained, with their retinue, at the duke’s palace, in Norwich, in 1561. The guild happening at this time, William Mingay, Esq., then mayor, invited them and their ladies to the feast, which they accepted, and expressed the greatest satisfaction at their generous and hospitable reception. At the entertainment the duke and duchess of Norfolk sat first; then the three earls of Northumberland, Huntingdon, and Surrey, lord Thomas Howard, lord Scroop and his lady, lord and lady Bartlet, lord Abergavenny, with so many other peers, knights, and ladies, that the hall could scarcely contain them and their retinue.[455] The mayor’s share of the expense was one pound, twelve shillings, and ninepence. The feast makers, four in number, paying the rest. The mayor’s bill of fare was as follows:—

£.s.d.
Eight stone of beef, at 8d. a stone, and a sirloin058
Two collars of brawn010
Four cheeses, at 4d. a cheese014
Eight pints of batter016
A hinder quarter of veal0010
A leg of mutton005
A fore quarter of veal005
Loin of mutton and shoulder of veal009
Breast and coat of mutton007
Six pullets010
Four couple of rabbits018
Four brace of partridges020
Two Guinea cocks016
Two couple of mallard010
Thirty-four eggs006
Bushel of flour006
Peck of oatmeal002
Sixteen white bread-loaves004
Eighteen loaves of white wheat-bread009
Three loaves of meslin bread003
Nutmegs, mace, cinnamon, and cloves003
Four pounds of Barbary sugar010
Sixteen oranges002
A barrel of double strong beer026
A barrel of table beer010
A quarter of wood022
Two gallons of white wine and Canary020
Fruit, almonds, sweet water, perfumes004
The cook’s wages012
Total£1129

After dinner, Mr. John Martyn, a wealthy and honest man of Norwich, made the following speech:—“Maister Mayor of Norwich, and it please your worship, you have feasted us like a king. God bless the queen’s grace. We have fed plentifully and now, whilom I can speak plain English, I heartily thank you, maister Mayor, and so do we all. Answer, boys, answer. Your beer is pleasant and potent, and will soon catch us by the caput and stop our manners: and so huzza for the queen’s majesty’s grace, and all her bonny-brow’d dames of honour.[456] Huzza for maister Mayor, and our good dame Mayoress. His noble grace,[457] there he is, God bless him, and all this jolly company. To all our friends round county, who have a penny in their purse and an English heart in their bodies, to keep out Spanish dons, and papists with their faggots to burn our whiskers. Shove it about, twirl your cap-cases, handle your jugs, and huzza for maister Mayor, and his bretheren their worships.”

The honesty, freedom, loyalty, and good-humour of this speech would, at any time, entitle the orator to a patient hearing and an approving smile.

The above is from Beatniffe’s Norfolk Tour.

G. B.

Norwich,
September, 1827.

[455] Five hundred can conveniently dine in this hall. I have seen seven hundred entertained on the guild day.

[456] This is familiar enough, and looks as if the fumes of the potent beverage had begun to attack the honest orator’s caput.

[457] The duke of Norfolk.

Garrick Plays.
No. XLI.

[Dedications to Fletcher’s “Faithful Shepherdess;” without date; presumed to be the First Edition.]

1st.

To that noble and true lover of learning, Sir Walton Aston.

Sir, I must ask your patience, and be true.
This Play was never liked, except by few
That brought their judgments with them; for of late
First the infection,[458] then the common prate
Of common people, have such customs got
Either to silence Plays, or like them not:
Under the last of which this Interlude
Had fal’n, for ever press’d down by the rude
That, like a torrent which the moist South feeds,
Drowns both before him the ripe corn and weeds;
Had not the saving sense of better men
Redeem’d it from corruption. Dear Sir, then
Among the better souls be you the best,
In whom as in a center I take rest,
And proper being; from whose equal eye
And judgement nothing grows but purity.
Nor do I flatter; for, by all those dead
Great in the Muses, by Apollo’s head,
He that adds any thing to you, ’tis done
Like his that lights a candle to the sun.
Then be as you were ever, yourself still
Moved by your judgement, not by love or will.
And when I sing again (as who can tell
My next devotion to that holy Well?)
Your goodness to the Muses shall be all
Able to make a work Heroical.

2nd.

To the Inheritor of all Worthiness, Sir William Scipwith.

ODE.

1.

If from servile hope or love
I may prove
But so happy to be thought for
Such a one, whose greatest ease
Is to please,
Worthy Sir, I have all I sought for.

2.

For no itch of greater name,
Which some claim
By their verses, do I show it
To the world; nor to protest,
’Tis the best;
These are lean faults in a poet.

3.

Nor to make it serve to feed
At my need;
Nor to gain acquaintance by it;
Nor to ravish kind Atturneys
In their journies;
Nor to read it after diet.

4.

Far from me are all these aims;
Frantic claims,
To build weakness on and pity;
Only to yourself, and such
Whose true touch
Makes all good, let me seem witty.

3rd.

To the perfect gentleman, Sir Robert Townesend.

If the greatest faults may crave
Pardon, where contrition is,
Noble Sir, I needs must have
A long one for a long amiss.
If you ask me how is this,
Upon my faith I’ll tell you frankly;
You love above my means to thank ye.
Yet according to my talent,
As sour fortune loves to use me,
A poor Shepherd I have sent
In home-spun gray, for to excuse me:
And may all my hopes refuse me
But, when better comes ashore,
You shall have better, never more;
’Till when, like our desperate debtors,
Or our three-piled sweet “protesters,”
I must please you in bare letters;
And so pay my debts, like jesters.
Yet I oft have seen good feasters,
Only for to please the pallet,
Leave great meat, and chuse a sallet.

Apologetical Preface, following these:

To the Reader.

If you be not reasonably assured of your knowledge in this kind of Poem, lay down the Book; or read this, which I would wish had been the Prologue. It is a Pastoral Tragic-Comedy; which the people seeing when it was played, having ever had a singular gift in defining, concluded to be a play of Country hired Shepherds, in gray cloaks, with cur-tailed dogs in strings, sometimes laughing together, sometimes killing one another; and, missing Whitsun Ales, cream, wassail, and Morris dances, began to be angry. In their error I would not have you fall, lest you incur their censure.[459] Understand, therefore, a Pastoral to be—a Representation of Shepherds and Shepherdesses, with their Actions and Passions, which must be such as agree with their natures; at least, not exceeding former fictions and vulgar traditions. They are not to be adorn’d with any art, but such improper ones as nature is said to bestow, as Singing and Poetry; or such as experience may teach them, as the virtues of herbs and fountains; the ordinary course of the sun, moon, and stars; and such like. But you are ever to remember Shepherds to be such, as all the ancient poets (and modern of understanding) have received them; that is, the Owners of Flocks, and not Hirelings.—A Tragic-comedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths (which is enough to make it no Tragedy); yet brings some near to it (which is enough to make it no Comedy): which must be a Representation of Familiar People, with such kind of trouble as no life can be without; so that a God is as lawful in this, as in a Tragedy; and mean People, as in a Comedy.—Thus much I hope will serve to justify my Poem, and make you understand it; to teach you more for nothing, I do not know that I am in conscience bound.

John Fletcher.

[From the “Wars of Cyrus;” a Tragedy Author unknown, 1594.]

Dumb Show exploded.

Chorus (to the Audience). ———— Xenophon
Warrants what we record of Panthea.
It is writ in sad and tragic terms,
May move you tears; then you content our Muse,
That scorns to trouble you again with toys
Or needless antics, imitations,
Or shows, or new devises sprung o’ late;
We have exiled them from our tragic stage,
As trash of their tradition, that can bring
Nor instance nor excuse: for what they do,[460]
Instead of mournful plaints our Chorus sings;
Although it be against the upstart guise,
Yet, warranted by grave antiquity,
We will revive the which hath long been done.

[From the “Married Beau,” a Comedy, by John Crowne, 1694.]

Wife tempted: she pleads religion.

Lover. Our happy love may have a secret Church
Under the Church, as Faith’s was under Paul’s,
Where we may carry on our sweet devotion;
And the Cathedral marriage keep its state,
And all its decency and ceremonies.

[From the “Challenge for Beauty,” Tragi-Comedy, by T. Heywood, 1636.]

Appeal for Innocence against a false accusation.

Helena. Both have sworn:
And, Princes, as you hope to crown your heads
With that perpetual wreath which shall last ever,
Cast on a poor dejected innocent virgin
Your eyes of grace and pity. What sin is it,
Or who can be the patron to such evil?—
That a poor innocent maid, spotless in deed,
And pure in thought, both without spleen and gall,
That never injured creature, never had heart
To think of wrong, or ponder injury;
That such a one in her white innocence,
Striving to live peculiar in the compass
Of her own virtues; notwithstanding these,
Should be sought out by strangers, persecuted,
Made infamous ev’n there where she was made
For imitation; hiss’d at in her country;
Abandon’d of her mother, kindred, friends;
Depraved in foreign climes, scorn’d every where,
And ev’n in princes’ courts reputed vile:
O pity, pity this!

C. L.

[458] The Plague: in which times, the acting of Plays appears to have been discountenanced.

[459] He damns the Town: the Town before damn’d him.—Ed.

We can almost be not sorry for the ill dramatic success of this Play, which brought out such spirited apologies; in particular, the masterly definitions of Pastoral and Tragi-Comedy in this Preface.

[460] So I point it; instead of the line, as it stands in this unique copy—

Nor instance nor excuse for what they do.

The sense I take to be, what the common playwrights do (or shew by action—the “inexplicable dumb show” of Shakspeare—), our Chorus relates. The following lines have else no coherence.