Windsor Children’s Historical Pageant

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Grounds of Long Walk House (Windsor) (Windsor, Berkshire, England)

Year: 1911

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 1

Notes

13 July 1911

[The performance was in the afternoon.]

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Director of Pageant [Pageant Master]: Everett, Rev. Bernard
  • Dances Arranged by: Miss Davis, Miss Cunningham, Miss Hawtrey
  • Assistant Producers: Miss Bale, Miss Murray-Thomson, Miss Pearson, Miss Smith, Mr. R.G. Night
  • Costumes: Mrs Bernard Everett, Mrs Knight, Miss Bale

Names of executive committee or equivalent

Pageant Committee

  • Chairman: Rev. John H. Ellison, Vicar of Windsor
  • Hon. Treasurer: Mr. R.A. Bosanquet
  • Hon. Organising Secretaries: Rev. Vernard Everett and Mr S.F. Oxley

Notes

Patronage of the King and Queen; Her Royal Highness Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, Princess Alexander of Teck, Princess Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, Archbishop of Canterbury, Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, Provost of Eton, Headmaster of Eton

Names of script-writer(s) and other credited author(s)

  • Everett, Rev. Bernard
  • Crum, Reverend J.M.C.
  • Anson, Miss
  • Fuller, M.
  • Street, E.
  • Shakespeare, William

Notes

  • Prologue and Epilogue: Rev. J.M.C. Crum
  • Episodes 1, 3: Mrs Bernard Everett
  • Ep. 2: Miss Anson
  • Ep. 4: Miss M. Fuller
  • Ep. 5: E. Street

Names of composers

  • Everett, Rev. Bernard

Numbers of performers

500

Financial information

n/a

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion

n/a

Audience information

  • Grandstand: Not Known
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: n/a

Notes

The Queen, the Prince of Wales and other Royal children witnessed a rehearsal (Daily News, 13 July 1911, 5).

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

n/a

Associated events

n/a

Pageant outline

Prologue

Ballet of the twenty-four hours, Primaeval Man and Woman, the Family

Episode I. Richard I Leaving for the Crusade, 1190

The king in leaving his kingdom deputes Hugh de Puiset and William de Longchamp to act for him (though he has sold these posts to get money for the Crusades): Longchamp is a repulsive-looking dwarf. Before leaving Windsor, the King gives the Church of St John the Baptist of New Windsor to the Abbot and Monks of Waltham. Immediately after his departure, trouble breaks out between the two deputies.

Episode II. Presentation of Charter to Guild of the Holy Trinity, Windsor by Edward I, 1276.

Edward hurries home from Crusades on hearing of the death of his father, stopping to solve a dispute with the Countess of Flanders over a dispute about wool. He goes to war with Wales.

Episode III. Edward III and Queen Philippa entering Windsor after their marriage, 1329

[No information]

Episode IV. Production of the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ before Queen Elizabeth, 1593

[No information]

Episode V. Charles I and Queen at Windsor Fair, 1634

An onion Fair

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Richard I [called Richard Coeur de Lion, Richard the Lionheart] (1157–1199) king of England, duke of Normandy and of Aquitaine, and count of Anjou
  • Berengaria [Berengaria of Navarre] (c.1165–1230) queen of England, consort of Richard I
  • Eleanor [Eleanor of Aquitaine], suo jure duchess of Aquitaine (c.1122–1204) queen of France, consort of Louis VII, and queen of England, consort of Henry II
  • Baldwin [Baldwin of Forde] (c.1125–1190) archbishop of Canterbury
  • Longchamp, William de (d. 1197) administrator and bishop of Ely
  • Puiset, Hugh du, earl of Northumberland (c.1125–1195) bishop of Durham
  • Edward I (1239–1307) king of England and lord of Ireland, and duke of Aquitaine
  • Eleanor [Eleanor of Castile] (1241–1290) queen of England, consort of Edward I
  • Edward III (1312–1377) king of England and lord of Ireland, and duke of Aquitaine
  • Philippa [Philippa of Hainault] (1310x15?–1369) queen of England, consort of Edward III
  • Mortimer, Roger (V), first earl of March (1287–1330) regent, soldier, and magnate
  • Chaucer, Geoffrey (c.1340–1400) poet and administrator
  • Wykeham, William (c.1324–1404) bishop of Winchester, administrator, and founder of Winchester College and New College, Oxford
  • Elizabeth I (1533–1603) queen of England and Ireland
  • Cecil, William, first Baron Burghley (1520/21–1598) royal minister [Baron Burleigh]
  • Sackville, Thomas, first Baron Buckhurst and first earl of Dorset (c.1536–1608) poet and administrator
  • Devereux, Robert, second earl of Essex (1565–1601) soldier and politician
  • Greville, Fulke, first Baron Brooke of Beauchamps Court (1554–1628) courtier and author
  • Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) playwright and poet
  • Charles I (1600–1649) king of England, Scotland, and Ireland
  • Henrietta Maria [Princess Henrietta Maria of France] (1609–1669) queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, consort of Charles I
  • Laud, William (1573–1645) archbishop of Canterbury

Musical production

n/a

Newspaper coverage of pageant

  • Daily News
  • Sheffield Daily Telegraph

Book of words

Windsor Children's Historical Pageant 1911 Word Book. Windsor, 1911.

Other primary published materials

n/a

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Copy of Book of Words in Surrey History Centre, Woking 1713/B1/PM/4

Sources used in preparation of pageant

  • Shakespeare, William. The Merry Wives of Windsor. [1602].

    Act IV, Scene IV and Act V, Scene V were featured.

Summary

Children’s pageants were popular from the outset. Some, of course, were staged by schools: one early example was Kingston Grammar School, which put on a pageant to celebrate its six-hundredth anniversary in 1909,1 another was Charterhouse, which in 1911 also used a pageant to mark the anniversary of its foundation.2 Other children’s pageants were not associated with particular schools, and this is an example of one such event (see Berkhamsted 1922). It seems to have been a fairly large-scale and high-profile undertaking, involving five hundred local children and drawing the patronage of the king, queen and other establishment figures. Its focus was very much on the history of the British monarchy—perhaps predictable given the personnel of its supporters and the local context of Windsor. In general, it seems that the crowned heads who featured were presented in a favourable light (though there may have been some implied criticism of Richard I’s selling of offices in the first episode). Again, this is predictable, though the decision to conclude with a scene of Jaocobean rather than Elizabethan merry-making is a striking one. Charles I, the king who lost his head, is the focus of the closing scene, which depicts him and his wife visiting Windsor Fair in 1634. As indeed was the case in many pre-1914 pageants, the Civil War passes unmentioned (its strife suggestive community division rather than cohesion), though here the pro-monarchical emphasis seems particularly strong. Windsor held a pageant of Berkshire Women's Institutes in 1928.

Footnotes

1. ^ Daily Graphic, 21 July 1909, p. 4.
2. ^ Ibid., 10 July 1911, p. 5.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Windsor Children’s Historical Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1453/