for the devices at Fenchurch, Temple Bar, and the Strand; Dekker for those at Soper Lane and the Cross; Middleton for at any rate a part of that in Fleet Street. A few London entertainments of less importance are upon record. When Elizabeth first came to the Tower on 28 November 1558, there were 'in serten plasses chylderyn with speches, and odur places, syngyng and playing with regalles'.[1] When James first came to London on 7 May 1603, Dekker had prepared a show of the Genius Loci and Saints George and Andrew for performance at the Bars beyond Bishopsgate, which he afterwards printed; but he was disappointed, for James entered by another route, direct from Stamford Hill to the Charterhouse.[2] On 31 July 1606 he brought the King of Denmark to see the City, and there was an arch with Neptune, Mulciber, Concord, and the Genius of London, and a Summer Bower with a shepherd and shepherdess on the Fleet Street conduit.[3] On 16 July 1607 he dined with Henry at the hall of the Merchant Taylors, who spent £1,000 on the festivity. Ben Jonson wrote verses to be spoken by John Rice, then a boy actor at the Globe, as an angel of gladness, with a taper of frankincense in his hand, and the hall was filled with music. There were lutenists in the windows, wind-instruments on the screen, and three singers in a ship hanging aloft. The court musicians, Thomas Lupo and Mr. Lanier, and Nathaniel Giles and the Chapel were amongst those who made melody.[4] London was to the fore again in welcome to Prince Henry on his creation as Prince of Wales, sending the barges of the Lord Mayor and the companies to meet him, as he came up by river from Richmond on 31 May 1610, with Corinea on a whale to offer salutation on behalf of Cornwall at Chelsea, and Amphion on a dolphin to do the same for Wales at Whitehall. The speeches were written by Anthony Munday and delivered by Richard Burbage and John Rice.[5] A month earlier, on 23 April, another show in Henry's honour had been held at Chester. It was devised
- ↑ Machyn, 180.
- ↑ See ch. xxiv, s.v. Dekker, Coronation Entertainment. On 15 April 1605 the Spanish ambassador provoked a riot by 'joys and shews' to celebrate the birth of a Spanish prince (Lodge, iii. 147; Stowe, Annales, 862).
- ↑ V. P. x. 384; Nichols, iv. 1074.
- ↑ Clode, Early History of the Merchant Taylors, i. 276, gives many details from records of the company, including the item, 'To M^r. Hemmyngs for his direccion of his boy that made the speech to his Majesty 40s., and 5s. given to John Rise the speaker'.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xxiii. The entry of payments to Burbage and Rice, trumpeted as a discovery by C. W. Wallace in The Times for 28 March 1913, was in fact published by Halliwell-Phillipps in the Athenaeum for 19 May 1888; it is also in Stopes, Burbage, 108.
