THE TALK OF THE TUDOR WORLD
It is the talk of
the Tudor World.
But - the Hello Magazine
Time Machine
has managed to gatecrash
the "Princelye Pleasures
of the Queens
Majesty
and her Sommery
Progress."
It is the July
of 1575.
Trump wanted to go
but we said: "NO!"
He's messed up our Future
don't want him to mess up this Past.
Took a hairy Irish
poet instead.
So here we be
at Killing Worth Castle
Warwick Sheer, where
"All loves meet...
...to create one soul!"
as Mr. Decker has it.
Leicester and Eliza
dance the Volta
with lewd look
in eye.
The paparazzi
wet themselves!
The Queen deports
her self "in full sight!"
The famous fountain
spurting with "such vehemency!"
as to "moysten"
we time travellers
"...from top to toe!"
Already our passions
enflamed by carved erotica.
Such "rich and hard
white Marbl."
Oh that naughty Ovid
and his wicked tales.
The great fireworks
reflected in Eliza's eye.
Her Majesty skips
and dances high.
Leicester's hand
beneath her bust
takes her and turns her
with the lifting ******
of his mighty thigh
against the ******'s Royal backside.
Well...we never!
"Oh!" and ". . .ooooh!"
the Queen cries.
Sweet sweat trickles
through her make-up.
Three weeks of wooing
a Queen's hand
although it is rumoured he has
had much more than that!
The wondrous artificial lake
mirrors the falling sky.
Scotland and Ireland
are in uproar.
Eliza's "pirates"
attacking Spanish silver convoys.
Her procrastinating over Mary's fate
her famous "answerless answers."
Screams from the Tower.
Another turn of the rack.
Time to be gone
methinks!
Set the controls
for 2001.
Dancing, sayeth Philip Stubbes in 1583, is altogether a “horrible vice”. In his infamous work THE ANATOMIE OF ABUSES.
Stubbes ranted.... “what clipping, what culling, what kissing and bussing, what smouching and slabbering of one another: what filthy groping and unclean handling is not practised everywhere in these dancings... provoketh lust, and the fires of lust and once conceived…burst forth into the open action of whoredom and fornication.”
So dancing allowed certain libertien to be taken with the opposite *** but the dance that scandalised the then known world was the one and only ***** Volta -which of course made it a hit with the Elizabethan court. It had the inbuilt indecency of highly intimate contact between man and woman.
A guide to the dance advised that “if you wish to dance the volta…you must place your right hand on the damsel’s back, and the left below her bust, and, by pushing her with your right thigh beneath her buttocks, turn her”.
Slow and stately movements ruled the roost before the volta made its entrance.
Totally condemned throughout Europe among certain circles. In his 1592 work,‘A Godly Treatise on the Ungodly Dance’, Johann von Münster fumed that even kings were promoting the wicked dance:
“In this dance the dancer with a leap takes the young lady – who also comes to him with a high jump to the measures of the music – and grasps her in an unseemly place…With horror I have often seen this dance at the Royal Court of King Henry III in the year 1582, and together with other honest persons have frequently been amazed that such a lewd and unchaste dance, in which the King in person was first and foremost, should be officially permitted and publicly practiced.”
A century later, Johannes Praetorius, condemned the volta in his book on the practices of witchcraft, Blockes-Berges Verrichtung. He wrote:
“A new galliard, the volta ...a foreign dance in which they seize each other in lewd places and which was brought to France by conjurors from Italy… a whirling dance full of scandalous, beastly gestures and immodest movements…responsible for the misfortune that innumerable murders and miscarriages are brought about by it”.
In 1575, poor old Dudley still had hopes of winning Elizabeth and he staged an elaborate three week festival that was pretty much his last ditch do or die effort to impress her.
Her time was completely filled up with all of her favorite passions, elaborately choreographed.;There was dancing, riding, and hunting; as well as more public festivals and pageants
The cost was staggering – well over £1000/day, and was on a scale never before seen in England
There was one where a mechanical dolphin rose out from the water and concealed within were musicians and a singer
.A huge fireworks display lit up one night, there were new gardens with fountains built, and Elizabeth stayed in the new state apartments that Leicester built.
Even though Dudley was unsuccessful in his quest to win Elizabeth, the festival he created was the talk of the Tudor world for some time.
Now all we needed was a time machine and Hello magazine. Oh and one hairy Irish poet!