ephant in Blue Beard,
Stuffed by his hand, wound round his lithe proboscis
As spruce as he who roared in Padmanaba.

But no doubt an artificial elephant is more easily to be fabricated
than an artificial horse. We do not encounter real elephants at every
turn with which to compare the counterfeit. The animal is of bulky
proportions and somewhat ungainly movements. With a frame of
wicker-work and a hide of painted canvas, the creature can be fairly
represented. But a horse is a different matter. Horses abound,
however, and have proved themselves, time out of mind, apt pupils.
They can readily be trained and taught to perform all kinds of feats
and antics. So the skill of the property-maker is not taxed. He stands
on one side, and permits the real horse to enter upon the mimic scene.

When Don Adriano de Armado, the fantastical Spaniard of "Love's
Labour's Lost," admits that he is "ill at reckoning," and cannot tell
"how many is one thrice told," his page Moth observes "how easy it is
to put years to the word three, and study three years in two words,
the dancing horse will tell you." This is without doubt an allusion to
a horse called Marocco, trained by its master, one Banks, a Scotchman,
to perform various strange tricks. Marocco, a young bay nag of
moderate size, was exhibited in Shakespeare's time in the courtyard of
the Belle Sauvage Inn, on Ludgate Hill, the spectators lining the
galleries of the hostelry. A pamphlet, published in 1595, and entitled
"Maroccos Exstaticus, or Bankes Bay Horse in a Traunce; a Discourse
set down in a Merry Dialogue between Bankes and his Beast," contains a
wood-print of the performing animal and his proprietor. Banks's horse
must have been one of the earliest "trained steeds" ever exhibited.
His tricks excited great amazement, although they would hardly now be
accounted very wonderful. Marocco could walk on his hind legs, and
even dance the Canaries. At the bidding of his master he would carry a
glove to a specified lady or gentleman, and tell, by raps with his
hoof, the numbers on the upper face of a pair of dice. He went
through, indeed, much of what is now the regular "business" of the
circus horse. In 1600 Banks amazed London by taking his horse up to
the vane on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. Marocco visited Scotland
and France, and in these countries his accomplishments were generally
attributable to witchcraft. Banks rashly encouraged the notion that
his nag was supe