Note 720 — Chapter IX · THE SWORD-DANCE
Reading edition
The ‘Nine Worthies’ of Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 2, are a pageant not a dance, and the two sets of speeches quoted from Bodl. Tanner MS. 407, by Ritson, Remarks on Shakespeare, 38, one of which is called by Ashton, 127, the earliest mummers’ play that he can find, also probably belong to pageants. The following, also quoted by Ritson loc. cit. from Harl. MS. 1197, f. 101* (sixteenth century), looks more like a dance or play:
‘I ame a knighte And menes to fight And armet well ame I Lo here I stand With swerd ine hand My manhoud for to try. Thou marciall wite That menes to fight And sete vppon me so Lo heare J stand With swrd in hand To dubbelle eurey blow.’