opening of a parliament contemplated in October, and ultimately to the following spring.[1] It took place on 15 March 1604. Jonson, Dekker, and Middleton were employed to furnish verses and devices, and the structure of the five pageants provided by the City was entrusted to Stephen Harrison, a joiner.[2] There were three additional ones, of which two were contributed by the Italian and Dutch traders in London, and the third, erected outside the City boundary, by the City of Westminster and the Savoy Liberty. The Venetian ambassador was perhaps prejudiced in reporting that the Italian pageant excelled the others in design and workmanship. But all the pageants, although they were enlivened by speeches and songs, for which the services of trained actors were enlisted, appear to have relied more upon architectural embellishment and less upon allegorical symbolism than those of 1559.[3] The order was as follows: At Fenchurch were the Genius of London and Thamesis, impersonated by Edward Alleyn of the Prince's men and a boy from the Queen's Revels; at the Exchange the Dutch and Italian arches, in neither of which a definite theme is traceable; at Soper Lane end 'Arabia Britannica', with a speech by a Paul's choir-boy and the song 'Troynovant is now no more a city'. In Cheapside stood once more the civic dignitaries, with a speech by the Recorder and three cups of gold for the King, Queen, and Prince. At the Cross were Sylvanus and Vertumnus, with the 'Garden of Eirene and Euporia'. In Paul's Churchyard the choristers sang, and a boy from the grammar school was ready with his Latin. The pageant at Fleet conduit, where William Borne of the Prince's had a speech as Zeal, represented the 'Globe of the World'; that at Temple Bar the 'Temple of Janus'; that of Westminster and the Savoy in the Strand the Rainbow, Sun, Moon, and Pleiades. Jonson seems to have been responsible
- ↑ V. P. x. 64, 67, 74; Birch, i. 8, 9. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton (10 July 1603), 'Our pageants are pretty forward, but most of them are such small timbered gentlemen that they cannot last long, and I doubt, if the plague cease not the sooner, they will rot and sink where they stand.' The double preparation must have cost the City something. There was a levy, amounting to £12 10s. on some of the guilds, in 1603, and in February 1604 another £400 had to be raised 'for the full performance and finishing of the pageants'. Towards this the Carpenters paid £2, but in all they had to pay an additional £8 3s. 4d. in 1604. There must have been protests, for the wardens of the Brewers were imprisoned for refusing to pay a levy of £50 (Jupp, The Carpenters, 68, 294; Young, The Barber-Surgeons, 110; Williams, The Founders, 222).
- ↑ Cf. ch. xxiv.
- ↑ Dekker sadly records that a great part of the speeches was left unspoken, lest they should be tedious to James.
