Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/420

 in such sort that her Graces passions and other the Ladies could not [? but] shew it selfe in open place more than euer hath beene seene'. The comedy, in 991 lines of verse, is in fact a sequel to the Tale. In it Occanon comes to seek Caudina, who is persuaded by his arguments and the mediation of Eambia, the Fairy Queen, to give up her lover for her country's sake.

Pollard suggests Gascoigne as the author of the comedy, but of this there is no external evidence. He also regards the intention of the whole entertainment as being the advancement of Leicester's suit. Leicester was no doubt at Woodstock, even before the Queen, for he wrote her a letter from there on 4 Sept. (S. P. D. Eliz. cv. 36); but the undated letter which Pollard cites (cv. 38), and in which Leicester describes himself as 'in his survey to prepare for her coming', probably precedes the Kenilworth visit. Pollard dates it 6 Sept., but Elizabeth herself seems to have reached Woodstock by that date. Professor Cunliffe, on the other hand, thinks that the intention was unfavourable to Leicester's suit, and thus explains the stress laid on Caudina's renunciation of her lover for political reasons. I doubt if there is any reference to the matter at all; it would have been dangerous matter for a courtly pen. Doubtless the writer of the description talks of 'audacity', in the Tale, not the comedy. But has he anything more in mind than Sir Henry Lee, whom we are bound to find, here as elsewhere, in Loricus, and his purely conventional worship of Elizabeth? ''The Tilt Yard Entertainment. 17 Nov. 1590''

There are two contemporary descriptions, viz.:

1590. Polyhymnia Describing, the Honourable Triumph at Tylt, before her Maiestie, on the 17 of Nouember last past, being the first day of the three and thirtith yeare of her Highnesse raigne. With Sir Henrie Lea, his resignation of honour at Tylt, to her Maiestie, and receiued by the right honorable,the Earle of Cumberland. R. Jones. [Dedication by George Peele to Lord Compton on verso of t.p.]

1602. W. Segar, Honor, Military and Ciuill, Book iii, ch. 54, 'The Originall occasions of the yeerely Triumphs in England'.

Segar's account is reproduced by Nichols, Eliz. iii. 41, and both in the editions of Peele (q.v.) by Dyce and Bullen. A manuscript copy with variants from the Q. is at St. John's College, Oxford (F. S. Boas in M. L. R. xi. 300). Polyhymnia mainly consists of a blank verse description and eulogy of the twenty-six tilters, in couples according to the order of the first running of six courses each, viz. Sir Henry Lee and the Earl of Cumberland, Lord Strange and Thomas Gerrard, Lord Compton and Henry Nowell, Lord Burke and Sir Edward Denny, the Earl of Essex and Fulk Greville, Sir Charles Blount and Thomas Vavasor, Robert Carey and William Gresham, Sir William Knowles and Anthony Cooke, Sir Thomas Knowles and Sir Philip Butler, Robert Knowles and Ralph Bowes, Thomas Sidney and Robert Alexander, John Nedham and Richard Acton, Charles Danvers and Everard Digby. The colours and in some cases the 'device' or 'show' are indicated. Lee is described as