Facsimile Title-page of Bate’s Book, showing a “Green Man.”
Regarding the origin of the Green Man, it has been suggested that the character was evolved from the wild men, satyrs, monsters, etc., which appeared in the earlier exhibitions. This may or may not be so, but another explanation suggested to the writer by an old Danish print of the sixteenth century is at least plausible.
This print, which apparently represents a floating firework device of the old scenic type, shows two figures carrying fire clubs wearing leaves, and suggesting immediately the green man of a slightly later date.
Behind them are two figures holding rockets, leaving no doubt that a firework display is portrayed.
On the other hand, apart from the fact that normally they have no fire issuing from their clubs, the supporters of the Danish royal arms might be here depicted; a supposition which is borne out by the fact that the figure surmounting the erection carries the crown and sceptre of Denmark.
It seems quite within the bounds of possibility that these two figures were introduced into Danish displays as a compliment to Royalty, and that later they appeared in England, and became, as it were, acclimatised. Colour is lent to this belief by the record of a display given on a float by the King of Denmark in 1606 upon his departure from this country, where he had been on a visit to his brother-in-law, James I.
This exhibition seems to have given James a taste for fireworks, and one at least of the Danish artists appears to have remained in this country, as some months after James had a display carried out by “a Dane, two Dutchmen, and Sir Thomas Challoner.”
In 1572 a firework display was given in the Temple Fields, Warwick, by the Earl of Warwick, then Master-General of the Ordnance. The occasion was a visit to the castle by Queen Elizabeth, who appears to have been rather partial to such exhibitions.
The display consisted of a mimic battle, with two canvas forts for a setting; noise was provided by the discharge of ordnance of various sizes; the fireworks proper seem to have taken the form of flights of rockets. The display was evidently conducted in a somewhat reckless manner, some houses being set on fire, and some completely destroyed, the two inhabitants of which are said in a contemporary report to have been in bed and asleep, although how that could be with continuous discharge from twenty pieces of ordnance, to say nothing of “qualivers and harquebuses,” in the immediate neighbourhood, is to say the least curious.
Two other displays attended by Elizabeth were those at Kenilworth in 1572 and at Elvetham in 1591.