Richard Hakluyt, author of the seminal English travel anthology Principal Navigations, spent most of his childhood in London. He reminisced about it in his texts, recounting the visits to his cousin at the Middle Temple that first sparked his interest in travel. Most of his time, though, was spent at Westminster School, where he was one of the Queen’s Scholars: 40 boys who were selected based on their ability, good character, and financial need. They were granted special privileges and responsibilities at the school, and among them was the task of performing the annual Latin play. When Westminster School was re-established in 1560 by Elizabeth I, one of her instructions was that the School should hold a performance in Latin, ideally within twelve days of Christmas, to help the students both celebrate the season and learn the skills of ‘orderly action and elocution’. Though the modern equivalent may be a school nativity play, these were expensive affairs, with Elizabeth herself often in attendance as the guest of honour. This was the case in January 1565/6, when the play selected was Sapientia Solomonis [The Wisdom of Solomon].

Set in Jerusalem, the play staged events from the life of Solomon with some (debatably) comic interludes and a guest appearance from the Queen of Sheba. The performance was timed to coincide with Princess Cecilia of Sweden’s visit to England, and she attended the performance alongside Elizabeth. The play drew parallels between her visit to Elizabeth and the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon, with the Epilogue declaring that just as ‘the powerful Queen of Sheba was delighted to enjoy the countenance of Solomon’, so the ‘illustrious Princess Cecilia, enduring much by land and sea, now at long last gladly has looked upon her who is the rival of pious Solomon, and wishes to look upon her often’.^[1]

A detailed bill exists for the performance, which makes it possible to examine how Sapientia Solomonis was staged. Amongst other items, it records payments for ‘colors and golde foyle […] for coloring the childrens faces & in gylting the garland for the prologes’, ‘the bynding of one copie […] [of the play for the Queen, with] sylke ribben string(es)’, ‘perfumes for the chamber’, ‘a trumpeter’, and ‘a painter for drawing the cytee and temple of Jerusalem, & for paynting towres’. ^[2] It even records a payment given to ‘a woman that brawght hir childe to the stadge’ during the staging of the Judgement of Solomon. ‘Sugar candee’ was also bought to give the children backstage, a detail which would no doubt have been remembered by the performers.

The school spared no expense, spending far more on Sapientia Solomonis than they generally did on the Latin play. For example, the expense receipts for Plautus, staged in 1564, included payments to ‘mr Smythe for pap(er), inke & colors for the drawing of greate Lettres’, and Menthmi, staged the month after Sapientia Solomonis, included ‘golde foyle and colors bestowed on the garland(es)’, but there is no record of a backdrop being painted, nor of the gold foil bought at such expense being applied to the children themselves.^[3] These rich fabrics, painted backdrops and expensive perfumes must have made the performance a somatically spectacular occasion, especially when contrasted with the weather outside in early January.

In choosing Jerusalem as a setting and spending considerable sums of money on staging it, the school hoped to create a spectacular and multi-sensory experience which would impress both Elizabeth and her Swedish visitors, emphasising both their approval of Elizabeth’s religious policy and the wealth her Biblical wisdom had brought England. Just as Solomon was explicitly intended to be a mirror for Elizabeth – and the Queen of Sheba and her gifts a mirror for Cecilia — so Jerusalem was a mirror for London, home of a divinely ordained ruler and the place where luxuries could be provided at any cost. The real Jerusalem, part of the Ottoman empire, appeared by proxy through the spices, gold and perfumes sourced through European traders which filled the hall on that cold January day. Twenty-three years later, Richard Hakluyt would once again turn to the Ottoman empire as evidence of England’s ‘golden age’ — and he may well have been remembering his first encounter with it at Westminster.

[Image caption: frontispiece of the copy of Sapientia Solomonis produced as a gift for Elizabeth, British Library, Add MS 20061, fol. 1r]

[1] Elizabeth Rogers Payne, Sapientia Solomonis: Acted before the Queen by the Boys of Westminster School January 15 1565/6 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938), p. 130.

[2] Westminster Abbey, Muniments 54000.

[3] Ibid; Westminster Abbey, Muniments 38544.