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The Lord Mayor's Show for 1623
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
That Thomas Middleton was the author of the London Lord Mayor's Show for 1623 has long been known; that he was not the sole author no one has suspected. His pamphlet describing the occasion is entitled The Triumphs of Integrity; it was printed by Dyce, and from him by Bullen; Dyce does not tell where the pamphlet which he reprints may be found; and I have not been able to discover it in the libraries of the British Museum, the Guildhall, the Society of Antiquaries, or the Bodleian.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1915
References
page 110 note 1 In his edition of Middleton's Works, v, pp. 305 f.
page 110 note 2 In his edition of Middleton, vii, pp. 381 f. The title is recorded by Greg, A List of Masques, Pageants, &c. (1902) p. 18. For mention of this show, see Fairholt, Lord Mayor's Pageants (1843), pt. i, p. 49. Bullen says he has not seen the original of this very rare pamphlet; nor had J. Nichols (writing in the Gent. Mag. for August, 1824, p. 117) seen any copy.
page 110 note 3 Aside from a page and three lines of dedication (addressed to the Drapers and signed “your poore louing Brother, A. Mundy”), this pamphlet consists of four pages of description. I find no suggestion of a pageant—in the strict sense of the word—beyond the Argo. Of course the companies in their barges accompanied the Mayor to Westminster, as the custom was.
page 112 note 1 Reprinted in Heath, Some Account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers (2d ed., 1854), p. 413.
page 112 note 2 This pamphlet, which is in the British Museum, has been reprinted by Dyce, v, pp. 293 f.; Bullen, vn, pp. 335 f.; in Prog. James, IV, pp. 724 f. Cf. Greg, p. 17; J. G. Nichols, London Pageants (1831), p. 103; J. Nichols, in Gent. Mag. for August, 1824, p. 116, and Fairholt, pt. i, p. 48. Cf. Bullen, vii, pp. 341, 346, and 348, for descriptions of the pageants here enumerated. Garrett Christmas was the engineer who had charge of the scenic effects of more than one Lord Mayor's Show planned by Middleton.
page 113 note 1 The “partener” is Mr. Richard Simpson, or Mr. Nicholas Sotherne. This looks as if the poet chosen to write the Show could select the engineer who was to realize his “projects.” If there were an honor in having a “scarf” it is comforting to know that Monday received its equivalent in 1623, though it was denied him in 1621.
page 113 note 2 As early as 1522, when Charles V came to London, the Drapers exhibited “a pagiaunt of the story of Jason and medea wyth the dragon and ij bollys (bulls) beryng the goldyn flese, by cause the emperowr is lorde and gever of the tewson (Toison d'Or) and hedde & maker of all the knyghtys off the tewson, lyke as the kyng or englonde is of the ordyr of the knyghtys off the garter” Corp. Christi (Cantab.) ms. 298; cf. also on this entry, Stow, Annals, p. 516; Hall, pp. 637 f.; Grafton, ii, pp. 322 f. My own English Pageantry—an Historical Outline, which is in preparation, will contain a detailed account of this “royal-entry.”
In 1615 Munday wrote the show for the inauguration of Sir John Jolles, Draper, as Lord Mayor. (The pamphlet is in the British Museum, Guildhall, and Bodleian; it is reprinted in John Nichols, Progresses, &c. of James I, iii, pp. 107 f.). In this show a goodly Argo, with Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts appeared on the Thames; the companions of Jason were “seated about him in their several degrees, attired in fair gilt armors.” Jason also appeared in the 1621 show; he sat in the “Chariot of Honour.” See Bullen,, op. cit., vii, pp. 339 f.
page 114 note 1 Bullen's ed., vii, pp. 385 f.
page 114 note 2 “Movable stage-erections (Gr. π 
γμα, Lat. pegma)”—Bullen. The word was a common synonym for pageant in the xvii century.
page 114 note 3 Bullen's Middleton, vii, p. 389.
page 114 note 4 These were personified, and sat in a pageant at Sopers-Lane end, when Queen Elizabeth passed through London before her coronation in January, 1558-9. For an account of this “royal entry,” see the pamphlet printed by Richard Tottill, and reprinted in John Nichols, Progresses, &c., of Queen Elizabeth, i, pp. 38 f.; and in Edward Arber, An English Garner, iv, pp. 217 f.
page 114 note 5 Bullen, op. cit., vii, pp. 393 f. This may be the “fountaine with a triple Crowne” of the 1621 records, remodelled.
page 114 note 6 Bullen, vii, pp. 394 f.
page 115 note 1 Cf. Middleton's The Sun in Aries (the show for 1621—Bullen's ed. vii, pp. 335 f.). The water-show is dismissed with a word—the mayor “received some service upon the water” (p. 339). The first character to greet him on land was Jason, who with Hercules, Alexander, Cæsar, and others, awaited his “most wished arrival,” in St. Paul's Churchyard.
page 115 note 2 Fairholt, op. cit., p. 50, echoes Middleton's descriptive pamphlet, and makes no mention of the Argo.