In house, in field, in church, in street,
In summer, winter, water, land,
In cold, in heat, in dry, in wet—
I judge they are for wives such tools
As babies are in plays for fools.”
Queen Elizabeth dropped a silver-handled fan into the moat at Amstead Hall, which occasioned many madrigals. Sir Francis Drake presented to his royal mistress a “fan of feathers, white and red, enameled with a half-moon of mother-of-pearl; within that a half-moon garnished with sparks of diamonds, and a few seed pearls on one side. Having her Majesty’s picture within it, and on the reverse a crow.” Why not try, young ladies, to paint a fan like this? Use silver dust to illustrate “sparks of diamonds.” It would be a very pretty conceit.
Poor Leicester gave, as his New Year’s gift, in 1574, “a fan of white feathers set in a handle of gold, garnished on one side with two very fair emeralds, and fully garnished with rubies and diamonds, and on each side a white bear (his cognizance), and two pearls hanging, a lion romping, with a white muzzled bear at his foot.” This fan would be difficult to copy. It was evidently a love-token from poor, ill-used Leicester to his haughty queen. Just before Christmas, in 1595, Elizabeth went to Kew, dined at my Lord Keeper’s house, and there was handed her a “fine fan, with a handle garnished with diamonds.”
Fans in Shakespeare’s time seem to have been composed of ostrich-feathers, and so on, stuck into handles. In “Love and Honor,” by Sir William Davenant, we find the line,
“All your plate, Vasco, is the silver handle of your old prisoner’s fan.”