Vortigern Studies Index

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Dumb show 1.

Music.

Dumb show: Fortune is discovered upon an altar, in her hand a golden round full of lots.[1] Enter Hengist and Horsus with others; they draw lots and hang them up with joy: so all depart saving Hengist and Horsus, who kneel and embrace each other as partners in one fortune. To them enter Roxena, seeming to take her leave of Hengist her father, but especially privately and warily of Horsus her lover; she departs weeping, and Hengist and Horsus go to the door and bring in their soldiers with drum and colours, and so march forth.

NOTES

^[1] Fortune is discovered...full of lots: Bald cites Ovid's account of the goddess Fortune's modus operandi: when she was consulted as an oracle, tablets were drawn from a chest at random and given as the answer. Click here for the Elizabethan/Jacobean symbolism of Fortune.

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