ii. 419): 'These sports were great, and done in costly sort, to her Majesty's liking, and their great cost. To express every part, with sundry devices, is more fit for them that delight in them, than for me, who esteemeth little such vanities, I thank God.'
P. A. Daniel (Athenaeum for 8 Feb. 1890) notes that a suit of armour in Lord Hothfield's collection, which once belonged to Cumberland and is represented in certain portraits of him, is probably the identical suit given him by Lee, as it bears a monogram of Lee's name. There has been some controversy about the authorship of the verses sung by 'M. Hales', who was Robert Hales, a lutenist. They appear, headed 'A Sonnet', and unsigned, on a page at the end of Polyhymnia, and have therefore been ascribed to Peele. The evidence, though inconclusive, is better than the wanton conjecture which led Mr. Bond to transfer them to Lyly (Works, i. 410). But a different version in Rawl. Poet. MS. 148, f. 19, is subscribed 'q^d S^r Henry Leigh', and some resemblances of expression are to be found in other verses assigned to Lee in R. Dowland, Musicall Banquet (1610), No. 8 (Bond, i. 517; Fellowes, 459). It is not impossible that Lee himself may have been the author. One of the pieces in the Ferrers MS. (vide p. 406 infra) refers to his 'himmes & songes'. If the verses, which also appear anonymously in J. Dowland, First Booke of Songs or Ayres (1597, Fellowes, 418), are really Lee's, Wyatt's nephew was no contemptible poet. Finally, there are echoes of the same theme in yet another set of anonymous verses in J. Dowland, Second Book of Airs (1600, Fellowes, 422), which are evidently addressed to Lee.
The Second Woodstock Entertainment, 20 Sept. 1592, and Other Fragments
[MSS.] (a) Ferrers MS., a collection made by Henry Ferrers of Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire (1549-1633).
(b) Inner Temple Petyt MS. 538, 43, ff. 284-363.
[A collection of verses by Lady Pembroke, Sir John Harington, Francis Bacon (q.v.) and others, bound as part of a composite MS.]
(c) Viscount Dillon kindly informs me that a part of the entertainment, dated '20 Sept.', is in his possession.
Editions (Ferrers MS. only) by W. Hamper, Masques: Performed before Queen Elizabeth (1820), and in Kenilworth Illustrated (1821), Nichols, Eliz.^2 iii. 193 (1828), and R. W. Bond, Lyly, i. 412, 453 (1902).
The Ferrers MS. seems to contain ten distinct pieces, separated from each other only by headings, to which I have prefixed the numbers.
(i) 'A Cartell for a Challeng.'
Three 'strange forsaken knightes' offer to maintain 'that Loue
is worse than hate, his Subiectes worse than slaues, and his Rewarde
worse than naught: And that there is a Ladie that scornes Loue and
his power, of more vertue and greater bewtie than all the Amorouse
Dames that be at this day in the worlde'. This cannot be dated.
