“Surely that is perilous, should it come to the knowledge of those at Court.”

“Oh, I promise you, Sniggius hath a device for disguising all that could give offence.  The Queen will become Semiramis or Zenobia, I know not which, and my Lord of Leicester, Master Hatton, and the others, will be called Ninus or Longinus, or some such heathenish long-tailed terms, and speak speeches of mighty length.  Are they to be in Latin, Humfrey?”

“Oh no, sir,” said Humfrey, with a shudder.  “Master Sniggius would have had them so, but the young ladies said they would have nothing to do with the affair if there were one word of Latin uttered.  It is bad enough as it is.  I am to be Philidaspes, an Assyrian knight, and have some speeches to learn, at least one is twenty-five lines, and not one is less than five!”

“A right requital for thy presumptuous and treasonable game, my son,” said his father, teasing him.

“And who is to be the Queen?” asked the mother.

“Antony Babington,” said Humfrey, “because he can amble and mince more like a wench than any of us.  The worse luck for him.  He will have more speeches than any one of us to learn.”

The report of the number of speeches to be learnt took off the sting of Cis’s disappointment, though she would not allow that it did so, declaring with truth that she could learn by hearing faster than any of the boys.  Indeed, she did learn all Humfrey’s speeches, and 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—­