of starres and flower delice of gold; every pillar had at the toppe a basin silver, wherein stode great braunches of white waxe'.[1] In this same year 1527, Wolsey had a performance of the Menaechmi at his palace of York Place, and it was followed in 1528 by one of the Phormio, of which a notice is preserved in a letter of Gasparo Spinelli, the secretary to the Italian embassy in London.[2] Unfortunately, Spinelli's description proves rather elusive. I am not quite clear whether he is describing the exterior or the interior of a building, and whether his zoglia is, as one would like to think, the framework of a proscenium arch, or merely that of a doorway.[3] One point, however, is certain. Somewhere or other, the decorations displayed in golden letters the title of the play which was about to be given. Perhaps this explains why, more than a quarter of a century later, when the Westminster boys played the Miles Gloriosus before Elizabeth in January 1565, one of the items of expenditure was for 'paper, inke and colores for the wryting of greate letters'.[4]
Investigation of Court records reveals nothing more precise than this as to the staging of plays, whether classical or mediaeval in type, under Henry VIII. It is noticeable, however, that a play often formed but one episode in a composite entertainment, other parts of which required the elaborate pageantry which was Henry's contribution to the development of the mask; and it may be conjectured that in these cases the structure of the pageant served also as a sufficient background for the play. Thus in 1527 a Latin tragedy celebrating the deliverance of the Pope and of France by Wolsey was given in the 'great chamber of disguysings', at the end of which stood a fountain with a mulberry and a hawthorn tree, about which sat eight fair ladies in strange attire upon 'benches of rosemary fretted in braydes layd on gold, all the sydes sette wyth roses in braunches as they wer growyng about this fountayne'.[5] The device
- ↑ Halle, ii. 86.
- ↑ Mediaeval Stage, ii. 196; cf. ch. xii (Paul's). Spinelli's letter is preserved in Marino Sanuto, Diarii, xlvi. 595, 'La sala dove disnamo et si rapresentò la comedia haveva nella fronte una grande zoglia di bosso, che di mezzo conteneva in lettere d'oro: Terentii Formio. Da l'un di canti poi vi era in lettere antique in carta: cedant arma togae. Da l'altro: Foedus pacis non movebitur. Sotto poi la zoglia si vide: honori et laudi pacifici. . . . Per li altri canti de la sala vi erano sparsi de li altri moti pertinenti alla pace'.
- ↑ V. P. iv. 115 translates 'zoglia di bosso' as 'a garland of box', but Florio gives 'soglia' as 'the threshold or hanse of a doore; also the transome or lintle over a dore'.
- ↑ Murray, ii. 168; cf. ch. xii (Westminster).
- ↑ Halle, ii. 109.
