lawn-tennis, and in the evening a banquet in the garden and a display of fireworks. On the fourth morning came Aureola, the fairy queen, with a round of dancing fairies, and as the Queen departed there were Nereus and Sylvanus and their companies at the pond, the Hours and Graces weeping, a speech from the Poet dressed in black, and a farewell ditty at the park gate.[1] I have set the Kenilworth and Elvetham entertainments side by side, partly to illustrate the permanence of type, and partly because, if any actual sea-maid and fireworks gave Shakespeare a hint for Oberon's famous speech in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, it must surely have been those which were comparatively fresh in the memories of his hearers.[2]
The medley of Kenilworth and Elvetham repeats itself elsewhere; nor is the imaginative range a very wide one. Classical, romantic, pastoral, and folk-lore elements blend in quite sufficient congruity. The pagan divinities called upon are the out-of-door ones, Pan and Ceres at Bisham, Apollo and Daphne at Sudeley; and these, with the Nymphs (Orpington, Cowdray, Harefield) and Satyrs (Harefield, Althorp), may make easy acknowledgement of fundamental kinship with Aureola or Queen Mab and the native fairies (Woodstock, Norwich, Hengrave, Althorp) and woodwoses (Cowdray, Bisham). So, too, the rustic revelry of morris or country dance (Warwick, Cowdray, Althorp, Wells) or the choosing of the Cotswold Queen (Sudeley) passes readily enough into the manner of the formal pastoral, as we find it in Sidney's Lady of the May (Wanstead) or his sister's later dialogue of Thenot and Piers; which in turn have their affinities to the mediaeval débat, surviving in the dialogue of Constancy and Inconstancy (Woodstock), and in the 'contentions' of Sir John Davies between a Gentleman Usher and a Poet, and a Maid, a Wife, and a Widow.[3] To a modern taste, perhaps the most attractive entertainments are the simple ones in which the Gardener and the Mole-catcher or the Bailiff and the Dairymaid offer the naïve welcome of the
- ↑ Cf. ch. xxiv.
- ↑ M. N. D. 11. i. 148:
'Thou rememb'rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory.
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.'On the chronology, cf. Sh. Homage, 154.
- ↑ On the débat, cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 79, 187; ii. 153, 201.
