Para1At the end of October each year, early modern London celebrated the election of a new mayor. After the mayor took his oath of allegiance to the monarch in Westminster, he barged back to the city. Except in years of plague or civil unrest, the mayor was welcomed with speeches and spectacles. The participants in the procession walked or rode along the traditional ceremonial route through the city, stopping for sermons, feasts, and pageants. Written and coordinated by leading playwrights of the day, the pageants comprised speeches and emblematic tableaus performed by amateur and professional actors. Although some people consider these events to be insubstantial pageants faded, the show was the best attended theatrical event of the year. Ordinary people crowded into the streets; ambassadors and rich merchants booked rooms overlooking the route. Firecrackers, music, food, and alcohol made the event noisy, celebratory, and sometimes dangerous.

Para2These events are described in commemorative pageant books, the best known but certainly not the only witnesses to mayoral shows. The MoEML Anthology of Mayoral Shows (MoMS) offers the world’s first anthology of all the surviving pageant books between 1585 and 1639. We aim to bring these books back to life with resources that help us understand the live performances and their spatial dimensions.