The train of gay carriages that had formed the retinue of the fair queen, were said to have left behind them the infection of the plague; and scarcely had the last echoes of merriment and joy faded upon the ear, when the deep thrilling notes of wailing and lamentation broke forth from crushed hearts. Death held his reign of terror, threw his black mantle of gloom over the stricken city, and wrapped its folds around each hearth and home, and banquet chamber—sunshine was followed by clouds and storm, and thunders of wrath—feast-makers, devisors, and players—Gurgunt, Mercury, Cupid, and Apollo, laid down their trappings, and in their stricken houses died alone. The finger-writing upon the door-posts marked each smitten home with the touching prayer, “The Lord have mercy upon us!” The insignia of the white wand borne by the infected ones, who issued forth into the streets from their tainted atmospheres, warned off communion with their fellow men, and
sorrow filled all hearts;—a year of sadness and gloom followed—men’s hearts failing them for fear. Scarcely had the plague lifted its hand from oppressing the people, ere the benumbed faculties of the woe-begone mourners were roused to fresh terror, by the grumbling murmurs of an earthquake;—storms, lightnings, hailstones, and tempests spread desolation in their course through all parts of the country in quick succession—a very age of trouble.
But turning from dark scenes of history once more to the sports and pastimes that gladdened the hearts and eyes of the good old citizens of yore, we must not fail to chronicle the famous visit of Will Kempe, the morris dancer, whose “nine days’ wonder,” or dance from London to Norwich in nine days, has been recorded by himself in a merry little pamphlet bearing internal evidence of a lightness of heart rivalling the lightness of toe that gained for him his Terpsichorean fame. His name receives a fresh halo of interest from its association with that of one of the great ones of the earth, Will Shakespeare, in whose company of players at the Globe, Blackfriars, he was a comedian; and his signature and that of the dramatist’s stand together at the foot of a counter petition presented at the same time with one got up by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood against the continuance of plays in that house. Kempe played Peter and Dogberry in “Romeo and Juliet,” and
“Much Ado about Nothing;” also, Launce, Touchstone, Gravedigger, Justice Shallow, and Launcelot. One feels that the morris dancer has a fresh claim upon our interest by such associations, and we look into the merry book dedicated to Mistress Anne Fitton, maid of honour to England’s maiden queen, prepared to relish heartily the frolicsome account of how he tript it merrily to the music of Thomas Slye, his taberer, gaining every where the admiration of the wondering townsfolk and villagers upon his road, receiving, and occasionally of necessity refusing, their profusely proffered hospitalities, and now and then accepting their offers to tread a measure with him at his pace, a feat that one brave and buxom lass alone was found equal to perform—one can appreciate the quiet fun in which he permits himself to indulge at the discomfiture of the followers who track his flying steps, when their running accompaniment is interrupted by the mud and mire of the unmacadamized mediæval substitutes for turnpike roads, where occasionally he dances on, leaving the volunteer corps up to their necks in some slough of despond. Such a picture of the highways in the good old times, is consolatory to the unfortunate generation of the nineteenth century, who, among their many burdens and oppressions, can at least congratulate themselves that in respect to locomotion, the lines have fallen to them in pleasanter places.
The morris dance in its original glory was most frequently joined to processions and pageants, especially to those appropriated to the celebration of the May games. The chief dancer was more superbly dressed than his comrades, and on these occasions was presumed to personate Robin Hood; the maid Marian, and others supposed to have been the outlaw’s companions, were the characters supported by the rest; and the hobby-horse, or a dragon, sometimes both, made a part of the display.
It was by some supposed to have been imported from the Moors, and was probably a kind of Pyrrhic or military dance, usually performed with staves and bells attached to the feet, each of which had its several tone and name; the men who danced it, when in full character, were accompanied by a boy dressed as a girl, and styled the maid Marion (or Morian, possibly from the Italian Moriane, a head piece, because his head was generally gaily decked out).
The hobby-horse was originally a necessary accompaniment of the morris dance, but the Puritans had banished it before the time of the hero Kempe,—why, or wherefore, it is difficult to imagine, as his presence, with a ladle attached to his mouth to collect the douceurs of the spectators, must have been as harmless, one would fancy, as that of the fool who succeeded him in the office.
In Edward the Fourth’s reign, we find mention made of hoblers, or persons who were obliged by tenure to send a light swift horse to carry tidings of invasion from the sea-side—light horsemen from this came to be called hoblers—and doubtless from this origin sprang the term hobby-horse—hence the allusion to men riding their hobby.
Kempe’s dance is alluded to by Ben Jonson, in his “Every Man out of his Humour.” In his own narrative he alludes to some other similar exploit he had it in his mind to perform; but as no record exists of its accomplishment, we are left to infer that the entrance made of the death of one Will Kempe, at the time of the plague, November 1603, in the parish books of one of the metropolitan churches, refers to the merry comedian, and that his career was suddenly terminated by that unsightly foe.
In 1609, a tract with an account of a morris dance performed by twelve individuals who had attained the age of a hundred, was published, “to which,” it was added, “Kempe’s morris dance was no more than a galliord on a common stage at the end of an old dead comedy, is to a caranto danced on the ropes.”