gigas mirae magnitudinis . . . . ex utroque latere . . . in eadem pagina erigebantur duo animalia vocata antelops.” At Anne Boleyn’s coronation, June 1, 1533, one “pageant” contained figures of Apollo and the Muses, another represented a castle, with “a heavenly roof and under it upon a green was a root or stock, whereout sprang a multitude of white and red roses” (Arber, English Garner, ii. 47, quoted in the New English Dictionary). Such “pageants” formed a feature, in a somewhat degraded shape, in the annual lord mayor’s show in London. The development in meaning from “moving platform” to that of a “processional spectacle” or “show” is obvious.
The 20th century has seen in England what may in some respects be looked on as a revival but in general as a new departure in the shape of semi-dramatic spectacles illustrative of the history of a town or locality; to such spectacles the name of “Pageant” has been appropriately given. Coventry in its procession in commemoration of Lady Godiva’s traditional exploit, has since 1678 illustrated an incident, however mythical, in the history of the town, and many of the ancient cities of the continent of Europe, as Siena, Bruges, Nuremberg, &c., have had, and still have, at intervals a procession of persons in the costumes of various periods, and of figures emblematical of the towns’ associations and history. The modern pageant is far removed from a mere procession in dumb show, however bright with colour and interesting from an historical or artistic point of view such may be made. It consists of a series of scenes, representing historical events directly connected with the town or locality in which the pageant takes place. These are accompanied by appropriate dialogue, speeches, songs, &c., and with music and dances. The effect is naturally much heightened by the place of the performance, more particularly if this is the actual site of some of the scenes depicted, as at the Winchester Pageant (1908) where the background was formed by the ruins of Wolvesey Castle. The Sherborne pageant of 1905 was the first of the series of pageants. In 1907 and 1908 they became very numerous; of these the principal may be mentioned, those at Oxford, Bury St Edmunds in 1907; at Winchester, Chelsea, Dover and Pevensey in 1908; and that of the English Church at Fulham Palace 1909, a peculiarly interesting example of a pageant connected with an institution and not a locality.
The artistic success of a pageant depends on the beauty or historic interest of its site, the skilful choice of episodes and dramatic incidents, the grouping and massing of colour, and the appropriateness of the dialogue, speeches and incidental music. It is here that the skill and talent of the writer, designer or director of the pageant find scope. The name of the dramatist Louis N. Parker (b. 1852), the author of the Sherborne pageant, the earliest and one of the most successful, must always be associated with the movement, of which he was the originator.
More important, perhaps, than the aesthetic pleasure given is the educational effect produced not only on the spectators but also on the performers. The essence of the pageant is that all who take part are residents in the place and locality, that the costumes and accessories should be made locally, and that all classes and all ages should share in a common enthusiasm for the bringing back in the most vivid form the past history, often forgotten, in which all should feel they have an equal and common part. (C. We.)
PAGET, SIR JAMES, Bart. (1814–1899), British surgeon, born at Yarmouth on the 11th of January 1814, was the son of a brewer and shipowner. He was one of a large family, and his brother Sir George Paget (1809–1892), who became regius professor of physic at Cambridge in 1872, also had a distinguished career in medicine and was made a K.C.B. He attended a day-school in Yarmouth, and afterwards was destined for the navy; but this plan was given up, and at the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to a general practitioner, whom he served for four and a half years, during which time he gave his leisure hours to botanizing, and made a great collection of the flora of East Norfolk. At the end of his apprenticeship he published with one of his brothers a very careful Sketch of the Natural History of Yarmouth and its Neighbourhood. In October 1834 he entered as a student at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Medical students in those days were left very much to themselves; there was no close supervision of their work, but it is probable that Paget gained rather than lost by having to fight his own way. He swept the board of prizes in 1835, and again in 1836; and in his first winter session he detected the presence of the Trichina spiralis, a minute parasite that infests the muscles of the human body.[1] In May 1836 he passed his examination at the Royal
College of Surgeons, and became qualified to practise. The
next seven years (1836–1843) were spent in London lodgings,
and were a time of poverty, for he made only £15 a year by
practice, and his father, having failed in business, could not
give him any help. He managed to keep himself by writing for
the medical journals, and preparing the catalogues of the hospital
museum and of the pathological museum of the Royal College
of Surgeons. In 1836 he had been made curator of the hospital
museum, and in 1838 demonstrator of morbid anatomy at
the hospital; but his advancement there was hindered by the
privileges of the hospital apprentices, and by the fact that he
had been too poor to afford a house-surgeoncy, or even a dressership.
In 1841 he was made surgeon to the Finsbury Dispensary;
but this appointment did not give him any experience in the
graver operations of surgery. In 1843 he was appointed lecturer
on general anatomy (microscopic anatomy) and physiology
at the hospital, and warden of the hospital college then founded.
For the next eight years he lived within the walls of the hospital,
in charge of about thirty students resident in the little college.
Besides his lectures and his superintendence of the resident
students, he had to enter all new students, to advise them how
to work, and to manage the finances and the general affairs
of the school. Thus he was constantly occupied with the
business of the school, and often passed a week, or more, without
going outside the hospital gates. In 1844 he married Lydia,
youngest daughter of the Rev. Henry North. In 1847 he was
appointed an assistant-surgeon to the hospital, and Arris and
Gale professor at the College of Surgeons. He held this professorship
for six years and each year gave six lectures in surgical
pathology. (The first edition of these lectures, which were
the chief scientific work of his life, was published in 1853 as
Lectures on Surgical Pathology.) In 1851 he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society. In October 1851 he resigned the
wardenship of the hospital. He had now become known as a
great physiologist and pathologist: he had done for pathology
in England what R. Virchow had done in Germany; but he had
hardly begun to get into practice, and he had kept himself poor
that he might pay his share of his father’s debts—a task that it took him fourteen years to fulfil.
It is probable that no famous surgeon, not even John Hunter, ever founded his practice deeper in science than Paget did, or waited longer for his work to come back to him. In physiology he had mastered the chief English, French, German, Dutch and Italian literature of the subject, and by incessant study and microscope work had put himself level with the most advanced knowledge of his time; so that it was said of him by R. Owen, in 1851, that he had his choice, either to be the first physiologist in Europe, or to have the first surgical practice in London, with a baronetcy. His physiological lectures at St Bartholomew’s Hospital were the chief cause of the rise in the fortunes of its school, which in 1843 had gone down to a low point. In pathology his work was even more important. He fills the place in pathology that had been left empty by Hunter’s death in 1793—the time of transition from Hunter’s teaching,
- ↑ This discovery is usually credited to R. Owen (q.v.). The facts appear to be as follows: Paget was a first-year’s student, and, by means of a pocket lens, found in the dissecting-room that the specks in the infected muscles were parasitic worms and not, as previously thought, spicules of bone. Thomas Worrall, the senior demonstrator, who was no pathologist, sent a piece of the same muscle to Owen, who authoritatively pronounced the specks to be parasites and gave them their scientific name. It is probable that Owen did not realize that Paget had already made the discovery, and it was naturally associated with the name of the professor.
