SOURCE: Bergeron, David M. “Anthony Munday: Pageant Poet to the City of London.” Huntington Library Quarterly 30, no. 4 (August 1967): pp. 345-68.

In the following essay, Bergeron evaluates Munday's role in the development of Jacobean civic pageantry.

Our knowledge of Anthony Munday, especially his contribution to English civic pageantry, is generally confined to what some of his contemporaries said about him in their various satirical barbs hurled in Munday's direction. There is a real need for a fresh assessment of Munday's work in the area of the lord mayor's shows. The only scholarly work which has attempted to discuss Munday and his contribution to pageantry, that done by Celeste Turner Wright in the 1920's, is inadequate, since the author had not seen the pamphlets which describe four of Munday's entertainments.¹ This paper is an effort in the direction of understanding Munday's important contribution to Jacobean civic pageantry.

As we know...