Antony's to boot, and assisted both of them with all her might in
committing them to memory.

As Captain Talbot had foretold, the boys' sport was quite
sufficiently punished by being made into earnest. Master Sniggius
was far from merciful as to length, and his satire was so extremely
remote that Queen Elizabeth herself could hardly have found out that
Zenobia's fine moral lecture on the vanities of too aspiring ruffs
was founded on the box on the ear which rewarded poor Lady Mary
Howard's display of her rich petticoat, nor would her cheeks have
tingled when the Queen of the East--by a bold adaptation--played the
part of Lion in interrupting the interview of our old friends Pyramus
and Thisbe, who, by an awful anachronism, were carried to Palmyra.
It was no plagiarism from "Midsummer Night's Dream," only drawn from
the common stock of playwrights.

So, shorn of all that was perilous, and only understood by the
initiated, the play took place in the Castle Hall, the largest
available place, with Queen Mary seated upon the dais, with a canopy
of State over her head, Lady Shrewsbury on a chair nearly as high,
the Earl, the gentlemen and ladies of their suites drawn up in a
circle, the servants where they could, the Earl's musicians
thundering with drums, tooting with fifes, twanging on fiddles,
overhead in a gallery. Cis and Diccon, on either side of Susan
Talbot, gazing on the stage, where, much encumbered by hoop and
farthingale, and arrayed in a yellow curled wig, strutted forth
Antony Babington, declaiming--


"Great Queen Zenobia am I,