presence, that she wanted a new play carrying on the description of the character of Falstaff, and again, only a fortnight later, the poet, asking for an audience and announcing that he had the play ready for Her Grace's approval. Pym says that the Queen was very fond of having plays acted, and spent great sums on having them "well mounted." There was a stage erected, probably in St. George's Hall, on which there was frequent acting. "For the actors a wardrobe was established, and for the stage scenes were painted. The Queen had also an orchestra, composed of trumpeters, luterers, harpers, singers, rebecks, vialls, sagbutts, bagpipes, mynstrels, domeflads, flutes. The charges for 3 plays performed before Her Majesty show payments of the officers, taylors, and painters for making scenes of divers cities and towns, and the Emperor's palace and other devices, as well as money paid to carvers, mercers for sarsnet and other stuff, and lynendrapers for canvas to cover the towns withal, and other provision for a Play; and for a maske a rock for the 9 Muses to sing on, with a vayne of sarsnet drawn up and down upon them. There were charettes for the goddesses, and devices of the Heaven and clouds." So that more was done at Windsor to support by scenery the plays of Shakespeare than at the Globe Theatre he had in London, and he was doubtless able to direct here the artisans to provide whatever he called for. From THE NORTH TERRACE. 99 that North Terrace he must have retired from the Queen's presence, with a quick step and eager eyes, through the Lower Ward to the Garter Inn to perfect his schemes; and then with what a company he must have gone to see the preparations in the Hall, planning everything, ordering everything, and occasionally taking advantage of a talk with Bacon to get hints how to enact on the stage the great affairs of state, which often give the spur to the actions of his characters. In our day another famous Queen has revived the custom of seeing the best English actors play their parts before her. But times differ, for now it takes only an hour instead of a day to go from London to Windsor, and it takes four months at least, instead of a fortnight, for a subject of Queen Victoria to write a good play! Walk along to the east end of the esplanade before you return to the narrow stair, for the outline of the Castle towers is splendid, when viewed from the terrace; and it is here that Wyatt and later architects have achieved the greatest success in breaking up ugly masses into picturesqueness combined with stateliness, while the comfort of the interior was much enhanced. There was an immense barrack-like block before George IV.'s time, and after Elizabeth's, raised on this front, and by no means made beautiful by a great Garter ribbon and red cross painted on the masonry. 581579 Looking over the parapet and past the crowns of the fine trees that shade the steep slope below, you see the Home Park where Elizabeth had the deer sometimes driven past her, and amused herself by shooting them with her cross-bow. There, too, is the river on which she loved to be rowed in her barge, and the pinnacles beyond of Eton College where she went in state to receive the elaborate poetical addresses of the students. On this broad footway let us think of her "spacious times," and people again her terrace with the figures clad intrunk-hose and tights, the graceful mantles and plumed caps worn by Raleigh, and Drake, and Howard, and Clinton, and Leicester, and Cecil. Here they are best grouped in fancy, for here they truly walked and talked, and the comedy of The Merry Wives, and the too real tragedy of Fotheringay, were discussed on this stage set with the beautiful scenery of the valley of the Thames. KING JOHN'S TOWER (p. 101). The place of King John of France's detention fronts you as you turn to the left on reascending the little stair to the Norman Gate. It is the angle nearest to the Round Tower, and he probably occupied rooms corresponding to those near it, and now called the Vandyke Gallery. Apart from the beauty or grandeur of a building, the human interest given to it by a knowledge of what passed within KING JOHN'S TOWER ΙΟΙ is its greatest attraction. You will remember the occasion of the coming of the French captive. John had so great a fear and dislike of Edward III. that he actually put to death the Count of Eu, who had visited the English king and had spoken well of him! When afterwards, on the field of Poictiers, he had to surrender to Edward's son, he was brought with a great company of other prisoners to London, and then to Windsor, where he was permitted to hunt and hawk and take whatever other diversion he pleased. Walking with his conqueror and with King David II. of Scotland, who was also a prisoner, he is said to have told the English king that the Upper |