"Ahem! Your Majesty," said Sir Thomas, "I am not altogether good at repeating poetry. I like it not. Sir Philip Sydney was about to observe something,—he understands these matters."
"I am but saying to my Lord of Leicester," said Sir Philip, "that according to the present system, those stage matters are managed in a somewhat more rapid style than was wont to be the custom. Now, for instance, we must tax our imagination. For look ye, if in the play the ladies walk forth before one's eyes and gather flowers, what skills it but your Majesty is forthwith to imagine the stage a garden. By-and-by two wet mariners speak of shipwreck in the same place. Then indeed, are we to blame an we accept it not for a barren sand or rock. Upon the back of that cometh out a hideous monster with fire and smoke issuing from his nostrils; and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave, whilst in the meantime two armies flying in are represented by some half-a-dozen swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?"
"By my fay, Sir Philip," said the Queen, "we must then have imaginations as fertile as him who writeth these changeful varieties."
"Truly so, your Majesty," said Sir Philip, who was rather affected in his ordinary style. "Doubtless such sights are edifying, but then of time, madam,—of time,—we must be even more liberal, for look ye, if (as is not uncommon) two royal persons fall in love, we may see these lovers become parents of a chubby boy. Then, your Majesty, such boy becomes stolen and lost, and after many traverses he groweth to man's estate, falleth in love in time, and in time is ready to marry and all this (an it so please ye) in some two hours' space."
"Nay, Sir Philip," saith the Queen, " methinks you are now taking some pains to appeal to our imagination yourself, lest we should weary ere the performance commences. But, look ye, in good time the drums have ceased and the curtain rises."
CHAPTER L.
THE SCENIC HOUR.
When the curtain rose, it discovered the representation of a private street, very rudely painted upon a sort of hanging screen at the back of the stage, with a couple of wings to match, and upon a board or placard was also written in good-sized characters an intimation for the benefit of the spectators, worded thus:—"Scene during the greater part of the play in Verona; once in ye-fifthe act, at Mantua," a flourish of trumpets meantime rung out as the stage was displayed, and one dressed in character as "Prologue," entered, and bowing low towards the royal box, delivered the well-known but now omitted argument of the piece:—
"Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows
Do, with their death, bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents's rage
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage:
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend."