"The pageant was finished with the archery; and the procession began to move away, to make room for the villagers, who afterwards assembled in the square, and amused themselves by dancing round the May-pole in promiscuous companies, according to the ancient custom."[171:A]
In consequence of the opposition, however, of the puritans, during the close of Elizabeth's reign, who considered the rights of May-day as relics of paganism, much havoc was made among the Dramatis Personæ of this festivity. Sometimes instead of Robin and Marian, only a Lord or Lady of the day was adopted; frequently the friar was not suffered to appear, and still more frequently was the hobby-horse interdicted. This zealous interference of the sectarists was ridiculed by the poets of the day, and among the rest by Shakspeare, who quotes a line from a satirical ballad on this subject, and represents Hamlet as terming it an epitaph; "Else shall he suffer not thinking on," says he, "with the hobby-horse; whose epitaph is, For, O, for, O, the hobby horse is forgot."[171:B] He has the same allusion in Love's Labour's Lost[171:C]; and Ben Jonson has still more explicitly noticed the neglect into which this character in the May-games had fallen in his days.
"But see, the Hobby-horse is forgot.
Foole, it must be your lot,
To supply his want with faces,
And some other Buffon graces;"[172:A]
and again, still more pointedly,—
"Clo. They should be Morris dancers by their gingle, but they have no napkins.
Coc. No, nor a hobby-horse.