THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS 95
lowed by " Look, the elves are come." 13"n The Satyr,
to.
the sound of excellent soft music, that was concealed in the thicket,
there came tripping up the lawn a bevy of FAIRIES, attending on
MAB their queen, who falling into an artificial ring, began to dance
a round.ls6
In the plot or platt of Dead Man's Fortune, 1593,
" after that the musicke plaies & ther Enters 3 antique
faires dancynge on after a nother." 137
. . . her Majestie was no sooner readie, and at her Gallerie
window looking into the Garden [at Elvetham, where she was
greeted by a dance of fairies], but there began three Cornets to
play certaine fantastike dances, at the measure whereof the Fayery
Quene came into the garden, dauncing with her maides about her.
. . . the Fairy Quene and her maides daunced about the Garden,
singing a Song of sixe parts, with the musicke of an exquisite
consort; wherein was the lute, bandora, base-violl, citterne, treble-
violl, and flute.ls8
When the fairies sang or their music was heard, the
effect both upon their friends and upon their victims was
often immediate and violent:
Than kynge Oberon . . . set hys horne to hys mouth and blewe
so melodyous a blast/ that the .xiiii. compaygnyons, beyng vnder
the tre, had so parfayte a ioy at there hertes that they a1 rose vp
and begane to synge and daunse; lag
Enter the Faieries, singing and dauncing.
..............
I FAY Will you haue any musick Sir?
135 Jonson, Gifford ed., 111, 2.
Jonson, Morley ed., p. 408.
lS7 Henslowe Papers, App. 11, p. 135.
Nichols, Prog. of Eliz., Vol. 111, pp. I 18-119.
139 Huon of Burdeux, E. E. T. S. ed., Vol. I, pt. I, p. 66.