to the verge of the grave. Her share in the Twelfth Night revels of 1599 was reported to Spain with the sarcastic comment that 'the head of the Church of England and Ireland was to be seen in her old age dancing three or four gaillards'. A year or so later, she was still dancing 'gayement et de belle disposition' at the wedding of Anne Russell, and in April 1602 she trod two gaillards with the Duke of Nevers.[1] It was near the end of her life, too, when her desire to see Falstaff in love inspired Shakespeare, to the regret of those who sentimentalize over Falstaff, with the racy English farce of The Merry Wives of Windsor. During these last years of all, there was a touch of fever in her restless activity. She needed much entertainment both within doors and without in the course of 1600, and her wearied statesmen resented the arduousness of the progress upon which she resolved on the verge of sixty-seven. She went a-Maying at Highgate in 1601 and at Lewisham in 1602. During the next winter her councillors provided a special series of festivities, with the object of inducing her to spend Christmas in London, instead of at Richmond; and we learn that the Court 'flourisht more then ordinarie' with plays, only a month before the indomitable lady took to her bed, and died of no very clearly ascertained disease, but in 'a settled and unremoveable melancholy'.
When James came to London he adopted the traditional splendours of the English Court, in place of the simpler style of living to which he had been accustomed in Edinburgh. His scale of expenditure, indeed, was from the beginning far in excess of Elizabeth's, and landed him before long in considerable embarrassment of the purse. For this there were various reasons: the necessity of keeping up supplementary establishments for a queen consort and an heir apparent, the personal inclination of Anne of Denmark for ostentatious prodigality, the crowd of hungry Scots demanding provision for their needs; above all, no doubt, the absence of any statesmanlike instinct for financial control. There is plenty of evidence that the dignity and sobriety which, on the whole, had characterized Elizabeth's Court soon vanished under the lax rule of her successors. But extravagance and wantonness, although deplorable in themselves, are not necessarily unfriendly to the arts. The transference of the leading companies of players to the direct service of the royal households made it clear that the drama would occupy no less
- ↑ Sp. P. iv. 650; Chamberlain, 99, 126; Hatfield MSS. xii. 253; Boissise, i. 415; Beaumont, 21; Goodman, i. 17.
