AN ELIZABETHAN PAGEANT

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1485, 6 July 1912, Page 11

AN ELIZABETHAN PAGEANT

SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. "Even such is tamo I Who takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all wo have, And pays us but with earth and dustj Who in the dark and silent grave, When wo have wandeTed all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days." Even now, although centuries have gone by, the spaciousness of tho dnys i>n which Queen Elizabeth-ruled England, their fascination and their glamour still cast their Bpell over us, tho children of tho twentieth century. Wonderful though our' ' own time is with its great scientific achievements, its art, its learning, its philosophy, and its great struggle to adjust life to tho new conditions whioh theso achievements of science have brought about in the industrial world, it has left us no new worlds to conquor, no dreams of a Utopia, and sometimos one is almost inclined to think, not even tho splendid daring of tho men and women of thoso days. Tor us, apparently, thcro is no new thing under the sun—every country, evory ocean, every square inch almost of tho world has boen explored and brought under control, oven those two great things which onco upon a time wero thought to be beyond man's dominion—time and space—and now all tho world knows what is happening at its furthermost corner, nnd can arrange accordingly. The Good Times, Gone. It is not surprising then that Elizabethan days, when the world was opening out to Englishmen in tho East its stores of olassical learning, and in the West an illimitable continbnt of unimnginablo resource and wealth, should still hold tho minds of English people in thrall. They were filled with tho pomp, splendour, and pageantry of an intensely vital, brilliant, and brutal ago. It was youth incarnate— youth that had just waked up to the realisation of its powers in literature, in drama, in dominion of the seas, and in its power as a nation. All the more quaint is it to learn that evon then the voice of past days mode itself heard in querulous complnint. "When our houses were built of willow," it said, "then we had oaken men, but now that our houses are made of oak, our men have not only become willow, but many -are altogether of straw, which is a soro affliction." So nros tho world! The splendour and brilliancy of those

days were brought before people last year in the great Shakespearean ball which was held in London at tho time of the King's Coronation. Probably, tho English people aro tho most pageanWoving, in spite of their inattor-of-faefcness and apparent stolidity, of all tho world's peoples, and .this. year a large number of society women, headed by Mrs. Gcorgo Cornwallis West, organised an exhibition of Shakespeare's England at Earl's Court in London, which opened in May, and is to run 'all through this month and probably later. Several of the old buildings, which were survivals of past years, wero cleared away from the grounds.of End's Court, and Elizabethan London, at. least a part of it, with quaint gables, narrow, cobbled,, crooked streets, and overhanging eaves, im_ exact replica of the town through which Shakespeare must have passed, has como into being. A Globo Theatre, constructed upon the lines of the original, lias arisen, and in it are being performed tho plays of not only Shakespeare, but of Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and other contemporary -dramatists. "• Relics of a Great Queen. Writiiig of the day upon which Queen Alexandra visited the exhibition, previous to its iormal opening, a writer in "Tho Queen says that very special - interest centred in that wonderful model of the little Revenge lying ij, Plymouth Harbour, of winch so much has been said, Mid one of the prettiest scenes in tho Royal private view was the manning of the vessel with Elizabethan sailors, while a company of men-at-arms in curious snedieval dress guarded tho quayside, A*ZZi ?,, rD i\ list , ic Eliral "-'"ian crowd danced the old dances' of merrie En»Skstily Sa " B tU ° denr oI(l chanti " L? 059 !.- *? the - placu in ,rhi «h tho Reirenge had moored,- in a quiet corner, is o gargpyled building, approached through ft ludor archway, and reproducing a religious house of Winchester. Here truly did romance he, for in tho spacious quiet rooms were collected togethc-r rolics of the great Queen and her great subjects, among which clung dreams and visions indeed. There were a pair of dainty shoes worn by Elizabeth and left by her at tho house of tho ancestor of Colonel Frowen, who cherishes them among other heirlooms generously lent for the exhibition, and a petticoat gorgeously embroidered and curiously modern in design. There were a pair of her gloves, too, a vest worn by her and a girdle, all lent, by "Lady. Denbigh, and conjuring up intimate pictures of the Queen as a woman. Several portraits of the Maiden Queen herself and of that other Bess—of .Hardwicke— were also there, lent by the Duke of Devonshire, whose ancestress sho was, as well as a cloak which belonged to her, and a miniature of Shakespeare, reputed to have-been painted by his illustrious patroness herself, while many rare portfolios of his plays gave food for hours of careful examination. These were but a tithe of the interesting and amusing things that wero seen in Shakespeare's England, to which wero added tho delights of the pictnresqno grounds, as well .as a wonderful collection of side-Shows, collected in tho Imperial villago, not forgetting an extraordinary settlement of wild people from the Phil, lippines. direct descendants of thoso visited by Raleigh and Drake, and carrying on tho samo lifo as that of their ancestors. Still another feature of tho exhibition, and ono about which much has been jrritten. ia the Mmi^J^^BiJß^^Msh.

boys and girls, brought from all parts of England for -this special purpose, sing an<T danoe as they have seen their mothers and fathers do in their own. villages. They bring before people the fact that thero is in England to-day an unbroken tradition and practice of folk song ami dance, as well as o spontaneous revival which has spread throughout the length nnd breadth of tho land. The folk dauco, tho traditional interpretation of which has never quito disappeared, "tho music not having becomo too proud for the words," is tho unbroken living link between tho merry peasants of Shakespeare's, timo and English boys and girls of to-day, who have inherited that tradition.