This song being ended, Proteus told the Queen’s Majesty a pleasant tale of his delivery, and the fishes which he had in charge. The device of the Lady of the Lake was also Master Hunnis’....
And now you have as much as I could recover hitherto of the devices executed there; the country shews excepted and the merry marriage, the which were so plain as needeth no further explication. To proceed then: there was prepared a show to have been presented before Her Majesty in the Forest; the argument whereof was this:
Diana, passing in chase with her nymphs, taketh knowledge of the country, and thereby calleth to mind how, near seventeen years past, she lost in those coasts one of the best beloved nymphs, named Zabeta.[70] She describeth the rare virtues of Zabeta. One of her nymphs confirmeth the remembrance therof, and seemeth to doubt that dame Juno hath won Zabeta to be a follower of hers. Diana confirmeth the suspicion; but yet, affirming herself much in Zabeta’s constancy, giveth charge to her Nymphs that they diligently hearken and espy in all places to find or hear news of Zabeta: and so passeth on.
To entertain intervallum temporis, a man clad all in moss cometh in lamenting, and declaring that he is the wild man’s son, which not long before had presented himself before Her Majesty; and that his father (upon such words as her Highness did then use to him) lay languishing like a blind man, until it might please her Highness to take the film from his eyes.
The Nymphs return one after another in quest of Zabeta; at last Diana herself, returning and hearing no news of her, invoketh the help of her father Jupiter. Mercury cometh down in a cloud, sent by Jupiter, to recomfort Diana, and bringeth her unto Zabeta. Diana rejoiceth, and after much friendly discourse departeth: affying herself in Zabeta’s prudence and policy. She and Mercury being departed, Iris cometh down from the rainbow, sent by Juno; persuading the Queen’s Majesty that she be not carried away by Mercury’s filed[71] speech nor Diana’s fair words; but that she consider all things by proof, and then she shall find much greater cause to follow Juno than Diana. [The text of the Shew, in two Acts.]
This Shew was devised and penned by M. Gascoigne; and being prepared and ready (every Actor in his garment) two or three days together, yet never came to execution. The cause whereof I cannot attribute to any other thing than to lack of opportunity and seasonable weather.[72]
The Queen’s Majesty hasting her departure from thence, the Earl commanded Master Gascoigne to devise some farewell worth the presenting; whereupon he himself, clad like unto Silvanus, God of the Woods, and meeting her as she went on hunting, spake ex tempore as followeth: [Prose Allegory, with songs, ending:]
“Whereat your Highness may rest assured, that heaven will smile, the earth will quake, men will clap their hands, and I will always continue an humble beseecher for the flourishing estate of your royal person, whom God now and ever preserve, to his good pleasure and our great comfort. Amen.”
LONDON IN THE PLAGUE (about 1593).
Source.—Lansdowne MSS., Malone Society, Collections. I. ii., p. 206.