Monday was occupied by hunting, conducted on a large and magnificent scale, during which Her Majesty was ingeniously complimented through the medium of several sylvan devices.
Music, dancing, and pageantry on the water, formed the diversions of the Tuesday.
Hunting and field sports consumed the Wednesday; bear-baiting, tumbling, and fire-works, were the recreations of the Thursday; and, the weather not permitting any out-door diversions on Friday, the time was spent in banquetting, shows, and domestic games.
On Saturday, the morning being fine, the Queen was highly entertained by the representation of a country bride-ale, by running at the quintain, and by the "Old Coventry Play of Hock Thursday;" while the evening diversions were a regular play, a banquet, and a masque.
The amusement of hunting was resumed on the Monday, returning from which Her Majesty was highly gratified by a pageant on the water, exhibiting, among other spectacles, Arion seated upon a dolphin twenty-four feet in length, and singing a song, accompanied by the music of six performers, who were snugly lodged in the belly of the fish.
The Coventry play not having been finished on the preceding Saturday, was repeated, at the desire of the Queen, on the Tuesday, and on Wednesday the 20th, she bade adieu to Kenelworth, greatly delighted with the hospitality and princely splendour of its noble owner.[196:A]
The Hall and the Tiltyard were two of the most striking features at Kenelworth, and they designate with sufficient precision two of the leading characteristics of the age of Elizabeth, its hospitality, and
attachment to chivalric costume; the former was carried on upon a scale to which modern usage is a perfect stranger; for, as Bishop Hurd remarks, "the same bell, that called the great man to his table, invited the neighbourhood all around, and proclaimed a holiday to the whole country[197:A];" and the latter cherished its predilections, and romantic ardour, by cultivating tilting, the sole remaining offspring of the gorgeous tournament, with scientific skill. The latter half of the sixteenth, and the commencement of the seventeenth, century, saw, indeed, the diversion of running at the ring carried to its highest degree of perfection, from which, however, it very soon afterwards began to decline, and may be said to have expired with the reign of James the First.
Yet the influence of this amusement, in exciting the heroism of the Elizabethan age, was by no means inconsiderable, and we may view the tilt-yard of Kenelworth, with the eyes of Dr. Hurd, "as a nursery of brave men, a very seed-plot of warriors and heroes.—And, as whimsical a figure as a young tilter may make in a modern eye, who will say that the virtue was not formed here, that triumphed at Axell, and bled at Zutphen."[197:B]
To complete the picture of Kenelworth-castle during this festive period, it would be desirable, could we ascertain what were the domestic economy and usages which were adopted in so large a household, and how the Queen, her ladies, and attendants, contrived to pass the hours, when the weather forbade exterior diversions, and when the masque, the banquet, and the fete, had exhausted their attractions. Fortunately we possess a sketch of this kind, from the communicative pen of Laneham, who seems to have been gifted, if we may trust his own account, with great powers of pleasing, and to have enjoyed, in an extraordinary degree, the favour and confidence of the high-born dames of honour who followed in the train of Elizabeth.