maskers: My Ladye Dorydye, Mrs. Fitton, Mrs. Carey, Mrs. Onslow, Mrs. Southwell, Mrs. Bes Russell, Mrs. Darcey and My Ladye Blanche Somerset. These 8 dawnce to a music Apollo brings, and there is a fine speech that makes mention of a ninth, much to her honour and Praise. The preparacion for this feast is sumptious and great, but it is to be feared the howse in Blackfriars will be to littell for such a company. The marriage is upon Monday. What els will happen at it, I will signifie when it is past. 28 June, 1600. This day sennight Her Majesty was at Blackfriars, to grace the marriage of Lord Herbert and his wife. The bride met the Queen at the waterside where my Lord Cobham had provided a litter wherein she was carried to My Lady Russels' by six knights. After supper the mask came on, as I writ in my last, and delicate it was to see 8 ladies soe prettily drest. Mrs. Fitton led and after they had done all their ceremonies these 8 maskers chose 8 more ladies to dawnce the measures. Mrs. Fitton went to the Queen and wooed her to dawnce. Her Majesty asked what she was. "Affection," she said, "Affection!" said the Queen, "Affection is false," but she rose and dawnced. The gifts given that day were valewed at 1000 pounds in plate and jewels at the least. The entertainment great and plentiful and Lady Russell much commended for it. 28 June, 1600. Her Majesty greatly troubled by the number of knights made by Essex in Ireland, decides to depose them by Publiq proclamacion. Mr. Bacon is thought to be the man that moves her Majesty to it. Sunday night, 27 July, 1600. Her Majesty's displeasure continues toward the Earl of Essex & My Lady Rich is appointed to be before the Lords, and the scholar that writ Harry the 4th is committed to the Tower.' 'Mr. Acheson kindly furnishes me with the following information: "The allusion in Rowland Whyte's letters to the 'scholar that writ Harry the 4th' was to Wm. Heywood who wrote such a play and dedicated it to Essex. He got into trouble with the authorities and was imprisoned for a while. Upon the accession of James I. he was knighted. The deposition of Richard II. was supposed to reflect the suggested deposition of Elizabeth." APPENDIX IV NOTES FULMAN'S NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE'S DEER-STEALING Rev. Alexander Dyce (Edition of Shakespeare, page xxii), in the note on the deer-stealing episode, says: "First put in print by Rowe 1709, but in the archives of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, are the MS. collections of a learned antiquary, Rev. Wm. Fulman who died in 1688, with additions by a friend to whom he bequeathed them, Rev. Richard Davis, rector of Sapperton & Archdeacon of Litchfield, who died in 1708. Among the papers, under the article 'Shakespeare' the following additions by Davies are found: 'Much given to all unluckinesse in stealing venison and rabbits particularly from Sr. Lucy who had him often whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country, to his great advancement; but his revenge was so great that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great man, and that in allusion to his name, bore three louses rampant for arms.' "Rowe speaks of the ballad on Sir Thomas Lucy as being 'lost' according to Oldys: 'There was a very aged gentleman living in the neighborhood of Stratford where he died some fifty years since, who had not only heard from several old people in that town of Shakespeare's transgression, but could remember the first stanza of the ballad: which repeating to one of his acquaintance, he preserved it in writing, and here it is, neither better nor worse, but faithfully transcribed from the copy which his relation very courteously communicated to me: A parliament member, a justice of peace, At home a poor scare-crow at London an asse; Yet an asse in his state We allow by his ears but with asses to mate, Capell gives exactly the same version of the stanza which he obtained through the Grandson of its transcriber, Mr. Thomas Jones, who dwelt at Tarbick, a village in Worcestershire, a few miles from Stratford, and dyed in the year 1703 upwards of 90 and remembered to have heard from several old people the same account as that given by Rowe, except that he says the ballad was hung on the park gate which. exasperated the Knight to apply to a Warwickshire lawyer to proceed against him." (Transmitted by Thomas Wilkes to Capell's father.)' JOHN AUBREY (1625—1696) Modern readers owe to the excellent edition of Aubrey's Brief Lives, Chiefly of Contemporaries, published by Andrew Clark, the pleasure of becoming familiar at first hand with one of the most entertaining books ever written. Aubrey says himself, in one of his most curious sketches (that of Venetia, Lady Digby), "How these curiosities would be quite forgott, did not such idle fellowes as I am putt them down"; and indeed we owe him an inestimable debt of gratitude, for his "Lives" are the most fresh, sincere, and natural emanation that one can imagine, and what is wanting in complete accuracy, for he wrote as one would speak, in an "impressionistic" manner, not stopping to verify quotations or dates, is amply made up for by the absolutely living picture he gives us of his contemporaries. Moreover this racy style of narration does not prove carelessness of the truth, for Aubrey's notes were written at the instigation of Anthony à Wood, the learned Oxford antiquary. They were to serve Wood as a basis of information to his great work Athenæ ' Malone takes pains to prove that Lucy had no park at Charlecote. He may, however, have had deer, for his son and successor sent a buck as a present to Lord Ellesmere in 1602 (Egerton Papers, Camden Society). |