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KENILWORTH - Penn State University

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KenilworthCHAPTER XXXIX.pal agents in the general massacre of the Danes, which tookplace at Hocktide, in the year of God 1012. This sport, whichRoom! room! for my horse will wincehad been long a favourite pastime with the men of Coventry,If he comes within so many yards of a prince; had, it seems, been put down by the influence of some zealousclergymen of the more precise cast, who chanced to haveFor to tell you true, and in rhyme,He was foal’d in Queen Elizabeth’s time;considerable influence with the magistrates. But the generalityof the inhabitants had petitioned the Queen that they mightWhen the great Earl of LesterIn his castle did feast her.have their play again, and be honoured with permission torepresent it before her Highness. And when the matter wasBen Jonson, Masque of owls. canvassed in the little council which usually attended theQueen for dispatch of business, the proposal, although opposedby some of the stricter sort, found favour in the eyes ofTHE AMUSEMENT with which Elizabeth and her court were nextday to be regaled was an exhibition by the true-hearted men Elizabeth, who said that such toys occupied, without offence,of Coventry, who were to represent the strife between the the minds of many who, lacking them, might find worseEnglish and the Danes, agreeably to a custom long preserved subjects of pastime; and that their pastors, however commendablefor learning and godliness, were somewhat too sour inin their ancient borough, and warranted for truth by old historiesand chronicles. In this pageant one party of the townsfolk preaching against the pastimes of their flocks and so the pageantwas permitted to proceed.presented the Saxons and the other the Danes, and set forth,both in rude rhymes and with hard blows, the contentions of Accordingly, after a morning repast, which Master Lanehamthese two fierce nations, and the Amazonian courage of the calls an ambrosial breakfast, the principal persons of the courtEnglish women, who, according to the story, were the princi-in attendance upon her Majesty pressed to the Gallery-tower,430

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