[720] The ‘Nine Worthies’ of Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 2, are a pageant not a dance, and the two sets of speeches quoted from Bodl. Tanner MS. 407, by Ritson, Remarks on Shakespeare, 38, one of which is called by Ashton, 127, the earliest mummers’ play that he can find, also probably belong to pageants. The following, also quoted by Ritson loc. cit. from Harl. MS. 1197, f. 101* (sixteenth century), looks more like a dance or play:
‘I ame a knighte
And menes to fight
And armet well ame I
Lo here I stand
With swerd ine hand
My manhoud for to try.
Thou marciall wite
That menes to fight
And sete vppon me so