Sidney's heroes, in the meantime, Prince Musidorus and Prince Pyrocles, the latter disguised as a woman under the name of the amazon Zelmane, are in love with the Princesses Pamela and Philoclea, daughters of the King of Arcady. A great many crosses are in the way of the lovers' happiness. They have to fight helots, lions, bears, enemies from Corinth. They lose each other, find each other again, and relate their adventures. The masculine amazon especially does wonders, for she has to fight not only with the sword, but in argument. She is so pretty in woman's costume that the old king Basilius, until then wise and virtuous, falls distractedly in love with her, as imprudent as Fior-di-Spina in Ariosto; while the queen, whom the disguise does not deceive, feels an intense passion spring up in her heart for the false amazon and a terrible jealousy of her own daughter, Philoclea. Disguises are numerous in this romance; they are also frequent in Shakespeare's plays and in most of the novels of the time. Parthenia gives herself out to her admirer, Argalus, as the Queen of Corinth, whom she resembles, and announces her own death. As pretended queen she offers her hand to Argalus, to prove him; but he refuses with horror; she then discovers herself to this paragon of lovers, and gives him his Parthenia alive and more loving than ever. When we read now of such disguises, of princes Pyrocles dressed as women, of Rosalinds dressed as pages, we are tempted to smile at the vain fancies of the novelists of the Shakespearean era.[193] But it must not be forgotten that, after all, there was not so much invention in these fancies, and that living examples were not rare from which writers might copy. Disguises were abundantly used in fetes and ceremonies, but they were also utilized in actual life. The manners of the time in this particular are well illustrated by the earnest entreaties of a certain ambassador to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, advising her to leave her palace secretly and travel over the country as his page. The Queen was in no way shocked, but rather pleased; she did not order the ambassador to be turned out of her palace, but heard him expound his plan, wishing she might have followed it. This happened in one of those curious conversations of which Melville, the ambassador of Mary Queen of Scots, has left us an account. Elizabeth was very desirous of seeing her "dear sister" of Scotland and of judging with her own eyes what truth there was in the reports concerning her beauty. "Then again," says Melville, "she wished that she might see the queen at some convenient place of meeting. I offered to convey her secretly to Scotland by post, clothed like a page, that under this disguise she might see the queen, as James the fifth had gone in disguise to France with his own Ambassadour, to see the Duke of Vendom's sister,[194] who should have been his wife. Telling her that her chamber might be kept in her absence, as though she