Pageant

“ On scorching mountains, amid raw prairie-winds, or upon the regal ocean, the white pageant shall come back to us again, with all the luxury of summer heats, and all the fragrant coolness that can relieve them. ”

“ Let us remember that in our time we cannot make any show, or festival, or pageant—we have lost the art of pageantry—which can compare with the shows which our forefathers saw daily: the shows of magnificent trains, queens and princesses in such raiment as the greatest lady of these times would be afraid to put on, lords and knights and gentlemen of the livery, streets with their gabled houses hung with crimson and scarlet cloth; minstrels and music everywhere; mysteries and pageants and allegories, with fair maidens and giants, angels and devils ”

“ Carnival time is just before the beginning of Lent, and is a season of great merriment. Under a turquoise sky, with no clouds to mar its fairness, there is a pageant almost like those of the days of chivalry, and Fernando and Juanita, attended by their faithful Manuel and Dolores, saw it all. ”

“ One glittering pageant treads on the heels of another, each more gorgeous and resplendent than the last, until the stage, set to represent a fantastical hall with a bewildering vista of carved columns, golden lions, and rich draperies, is filled with such a kaleidoscopic mass of colors and groupings as only an Oriental mind could conceive. ”

“ Roaring and stamping and raving, as he said of himself, the king rushed down the pageant steps and “raged” in the market-place amongst the people, to the delight of the grown-up folk and the terror of the children in the crowd. ”

“ I was acquainted for some hours with the actions of a youth of whose very name I am ignorant, but whose face I am very certain will reappear twenty years hence in a setting of glory, recognized as yet one other of those superb spirits who will do all for England.
The occasion was a pageant - no matter what pageant - a great public pageant which passed through the Strand, and was to be witnessed by hundreds of thousands. Let us call it "The Function." ”

“ If the magic of the moonlight could summon from the graves of forgotten centuries and many lands the countless myriads that have battled on this wide, far-reaching floor, and array them in the thousand strange Costumes of their hundred nationalities, and send the vast host sweeping down the plain, splendid with plumes and banners and glittering lances, I could stay here an age to see the phantom pageant. ”

“ With a word here of the hills, and a song there of the sea,
And—the great movement changes—the pageant passes me. ”

“ But thus far, so far as I know, my pageants are the only ones that regard the pageant as a musical as well as dramatic art-form and seek to work out its development as such.' Certainly the new pageant is one of the most interesting developments in American art, and it is especially interesting in view of the fact that it is a distinctly American idea particularly well calculated, one would think, to be a vehicle for the expression of the American spirit. ”

“ There we seem to live the daily life of its courtly circle, and, through the vivid description of the sumptuous pageant, to take part in the three days' tournament, and in the merry revels which bring each day to a close. ”

“ To the same pageant wends its way
As that exalted here. ”

“ They formed the shouting, hoarse accompaniment of every pageant, they swarmed on the lower seats of every amphitheatre, howling much criticism as well as boisterous applause, and keeping in fear, and disgusted yet forced compliance with their coarse exactions, the players and showmen who supplied their lives with an object. ”

“ Historic episodes arranged in dramatic form enacted by living men and women, with all the vivid effect of life and movement, and heightened by all the resources of costume and heraldry and accessories proper to each period, the scenes, too, taking place in the open air, with green swards, noble trees, and the wide sky for proscenium leave an ineffaceable impression upon the eyes and minds of the spectators.
But what is wanted is a wider appeal. We might make the pageant a means of centralizing and unifying national life. ”

“ To and fro swayed the dancers, under the innumerable candles that filled the arched roof and upper walls of the ballroom; and each time the lines parted they disclosed at the farther end another pageant, to which that of the dance was in truth subordinate—a dais hung with blue and silver, and upon it a royal lady whose beauty, then in its first bloom, has been a national possession, since as, the "sea-king's daughter" she brought it in dowry to her adopted country. ”

“ After the fashion of a pageant it might marshal the activities of two thousand two hundred and fifty years. But unlike a pageant it would have to conclude dully. Alas! The modern city calls for no enthusiastic comment. ”

“ The lively ceremonies of the occasion formed no pompous pageant nor idle mockery—the smiles of the children alone shed a glow over the spot, and their merry peals of laughter rendered their sports hilarious and exhilarating to the more sober and advanced inhabitants, who acted only as spectators of this portion of the festivities. ”

“ This was a golden helm, to be placed upon the victor’s brow by the Queen of Beauty.
There was both a banquet and a ball on this day, and the excitement between the adventures of the morning and the prospects of the morrow was great. The knights, freed from their armour, appeared in fanciful dresses of many-coloured velvets. All who had taken part in the pageant retained their costumes, and the ordinary guests, if they yielded to mediaeval splendour, successfully asserted the taste of Paris and its sparkling grace, in their exquisite robes, and wreaths and garlands of fantastic loveliness. ”

“ Glance at the colonial procession which is even now wending its way through the streets, and you will marvel at the world-wide character of her sway. Here you see men of British race, dwellers in the most distant parts of the earth, all come from afar to grace their queen’s pageant, and all bearing themselves proudly in the eyes of their kinsfolk “at home.” Here, too, you see numerous foreign subjects of the queen, men of almost every variety of colour, creed, and language, equally proud to do her honour, equally ready to praise her beneficent sway. ”

“ When the Queen's Majesty had heard the child's oration and understood the meaning of the pageant at large; she marched forward towards Cornhill, always received with like rejoicing of the people.
And there, as Her Grace passed by the Conduit, which was curiously trimmed against that time, adorned with rich banners, and a noise of loud instruments upon the top thereof: she espied the second pageant. And because she feared, for the people's noise, that she should not hear the child which did expound the same, she inquired what that pageant was, ere that she came to it. ”

“ No deity, classic or Teutonic, could have been prettier than the flaxen-haired little maiden, who sat up stiffly, trying with great dignity to support her regal honours. Her courtiers walked behind her, and after came a band of morris dancers, jingling their bells as they went. The pageant paraded down the High Street, made a circuit round the market hall, and drew up round the may-pole on the strip of green. ”

“ The platform is very heavy and is borne by sixteen men, four on each side, four in front, and four in back, who support its weight on their padded shoulders on which rest beams. The procession is very slow, moving at a snail's pace, and as it proceeds, the pageant sways with a peculiar serpentine rhythm. ”

“ The pageant players should, if possible, have the sun at the side. It is very difficult to play facing a strong light. Choice of the time of day in which the pageant is given has much to do with its effectiveness. ”

“ At Fulham Palace one can compare the huge crowd of people acting in the Pageant with the huge crowd of people looking at it. There is a startling difference, but it is not a mere difference between gaiety and gloom. There is many a respectable young woman in the audience who has on her own hat more colours than the whole Pageant put together. ”

“ So every street had a pageant playing before it at one time, till all the pageants for the day appointed were played. When one pageant was near ended, word was brought from street to street, that so they might come in place thereof, exceeding orderly, and all the streets have their pageants before them, all at one time playing together, to see which plays was great resort and also scaffolds and stages made in the streets in those places where they determined to play their pageants. ”

“ To represent a pageant with broad historic effects one must have many characters and a great deal of perspective. But the beauty of it is that this great piece of work is one that can engage the interest of every last man, woman or child in the whole town. There are so many parts to the completed whole, there are so many kinds of ability that can be brought into play that every member of the community can be given a portion of the structure for his or her responsibility ”

“ The audience hung intently on every word. The admission of the perfect success of the performance was without dissent. The revival rewarded the managers with houses crowded to the ceiling for many nights, nor was this attributable to the pageant only, for the acting was of the highest order. ”

“ The one-act patriotic play shows one hero or one event; the pageant shows, through one-act plays used in chronological order, the development and upbuilding of America through the lives of her heroes. ”

“ The term Pageant Play, which is new, may require a word of explanation. A Pageant Play, as I conceive it, is a play written on the same principles as my English Pageants. In those the towns in which they took place were the heroes. In my Pageant Plays the hero is some outstanding figure: Drake—Joseph. As in my pageants I told the entire history of the town, so in these plays I attempt to tell the entire history of the man. The so-called unities of time and place are therefore of no consideration ”

“ For an indoor production of the pageant if a green woodland set cannot be had, green screens with pine branches fastened to them, a green or brown floor-cloth, and forest-green hanging filling in the background may be used. Pine trees in green stands around which green and brown burlap is banked is another way of having an inexpensive and realistic scene setting. The setting for the whole pageant is the same. It can be given in an assembly hall, gymnasium, or armory.
The costumes for the episodes have already been indicated. ”

“ On a very large pageant is a very rich seat of state, containing the representer of the Patron to the Goldsmiths' Company, Saint Dunstan, attired in a dress properly expressing his prelatical dignity, in a robe of fine white lawn, over which he weareth a cope or vest of costly bright cloth of gold, down to the ground ”

“ The development in meaning from " moving platform " to that of a " processional spectacle " or " show " is obvious.
The 20th century has seen in England what may in some respects be looked on as a revival but in general as a new departure in the shape of semi-dramatic spectacles illustrative of the history of a town or locality; to such spectacles the name of " Pageant " has been appropriately given. ”

“ After the several companies comes a pageant, containing an emblematical representation of its trade, and this pageant is followed by patron saints, most of which are of solid silver adorned with jewels. Bands of music, vocal and instrumental, attend the companies, the choruses of which are very solemn ”

“ We are transported from the eighteenth century, not actually to mediaeval England, but to a carefully arranged pageant displaying mediaeval costumes, tournaments and banquets. The actors speak in antique language to accord with the picturesque background against which they stand. ”

“ Formerly, when the pageant was of a more important character than now, the plough was drawn by oxen decorated with ribbons. The one who walks first in the procession is styled the Master, and is grotesquely attired, having on a large wig ”

“ Red Plume wears a headdress of brilliant scarlet feathers.
LIBERTY DANCE
This dance is for a pageant given on a very large scale. It is formed of commingled groups of the young people of all nations, and is symbolic of the Old World coming to the New. The peasant costumes of Germany, Russia, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, France and Sweden should be worn, and the dances should be the folk dances of the various nations, with their appropriate music. ”

“ I am spectator, not partaker, here.
To me it seems more like a pageant made
To represent mirth, than the mirth itself. ”

“ The next pageant that moved was a most stately, rich, and noble chariot, made of slit deal and pasteboard, and in it sitting a woman. * * * The rabble had got bullocks’ horns, which they filled with kennel-water, and poured it down people’s necks, and into their pockets, that it ran down their legs into their shoes, the innocent sufferers not readily discovering from whence it came. ”

“ Others take pagina as a translation of Gr. πῆγμα, platform, stage, a word from the same root pag-. Du Cange (Glossarium) quotes a use in Med. Lat. of pegma in this sense, Machina lignea in qua statuae collocabantur, and Cotgrave gives “Pegmate, a stage or frame whereon pageants be set or carried.”
As has been said, “pageant” is first found in the sense of a scene, a division or part of a play or of the platform on which such scene was played in the medieval drama. ”