Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/383

Rh it is curious to note the date of the festival of St. George, the 23rd April, Shakespeare’s birthday. That day used to be a general holiday in Stratford in the Middle Ages, as it ought to be now for a prouder cause. There are some notices of these celebrations at Leicester, at Stratford, at London, and elsewhere, which I will briefly refer to, in order that we may note the elements of the legend and their dramatic presentation.

In 1416, at Windsor, a performance took place before the Emperor Sigismund and Henry V, divided into three parts, first, “the armyng of Seint George, and an Angel doyng on his spores” [spurs]; secondly, “Saint George ridyng and fightyng with the dragon, with his spear in his hand”; and thirdly, “a castell, and Saint George and the Kynge’s daughter ledyng the lambe in at the castel gates.” No speeches are mentioned; probably it was all pantomime, as we should say now, the original meaning of the word drama having become changed. But assuredly a very pretty spectacle, in the year after Agincourt, where, doubtless, many a spirited charge was made in the name of the English saint, as Shakespeare makes the King invoke him in Henry V, before Harfleur:

This was a royal affair; we will glance at some local celebrations. It is to be noted, by the way, that the spectacles of St. George were invariably arranged in connection with a well or water-conduit. In a description of the reception of Prince Edward at Coventry in 1474, printed in Sharpe’s Coventry Mysteries, among various pageants, and speeches, and minstrelsy, the following occurs: “Upon the Condite in the Crosse Chepyng was seint George armed and Kynges doughr knelyng afore hym wt a lambe and the fader and the moder beying in a toure a boven beholdyng seint George savyng their doughr from the dragon. And the Condite rennying wine