The Princely Pleasures, at the Court at Kenilworth

The Copies of all such Verses, Proses, or Poeticall inuentions, and other deuices of pleasure, as were there deuised, and presented by sundry Gentlemen, before the QVENES MAIESTIE: In the yeare 1575."

The Princely Pleasures is Gascoigne's version of the Kenilworth revels, which one scholar has described as "sixteenth-century England’s grandest and most extravagant party.

Printed c. 1580, it is entitled "A LETTER: whearin, part of the entertainment vntoo the Queenz Maiesty, at Killinwoorth Castl, in warwik Sheer, in this soomerz Progress.

"[10] The revels were intended for three purposes according to Goldring: first, to rebuild Dudley's family history and change it from "the son of the disgraced Duke of Northumberland, executed for treason in 1553, [to]... a princely descendant of King Arthur"; second, to advocate English military intervention in the Dutch revolt against Spain; and finally to propose marriage to the Queen.

[12] The paintings were intended to be life-sized and full length, a format befitting "Leicester’s princely ambitions and with the ongoing effort to use visual imagery to present himself as a would-be consort for the Queen.