Even in the way of pageantry and martial exercise it did not long survive the middle ages.
For all kinds of ceremonial he has all a lawyer's respect, and his pages are often adorned and encumbered with the pageantry and material garniture of the story.
Say hello to ' Snap ', our famous snapdragon, who was once part of the Norwich's historic pageantry.
Full closes and repeated sentences no longer confuse the issue, but in their absence we begin to notice the incessant squareness of the ostensibly free rhythms. The immense amount of pageantry, though (as in Tannhauser) good in dramatic motive and executed with splendid stage-craft, goes far to stultify Wagner's already vigorous attitude of protest against grand-opera methods; by way of preparation for the ethereally poetic end he gives us a disinfected present from Meyerbeer at the beginning of the last scene, where mounted trumpeters career round the stage in full blast for three long minutes; and the prelude to the third act is an outburst of sheer gratuitous vulgarity.
Thus the plan of the Ring was sketched in reverse order; and it has been remarked that Gotterdammerung shows traces of the fact that Wagner had begun his scheme in the days when French grand opera, with its ballets and pageantry, still influenced him.