vii. 27), 'Last evening at the Court a double mummery was played: one

set of mummers rifled the Queen's ladies, and the other set, with wooden swords and bucklers, recovered the spoil. Then at the dance the Queen performed her part, the Duke of Norfolk being her partner, in superb array.']

[Footnote 534: Machyn, 204, 206.]

[Footnote 535: On 31 Jan. (Machyn, 221) 'ther was a play a-for her grace, the wyche the plaers plad shuche matter that they wher commondyd to leyff off, and contenent the maske cam in dansyng'.]

[Footnote 536: The succession of masks for 1558-60 is traceable with the aid of Il Schifanoya from an analysis of the following Revels documents, (_a_) an inventory of 26 March 1555 (Feuillerat, _Ed. and M._ 180), (_b_) the accounts from 26 March 1555 to 29 Sept. 1559 (Feuillerat, _Ed. and M._ 195-242; _Eliz._ 79-108), (_c_) an estimate of the cost of the 1559-60 masks (Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 110), (_d_) a 'rere-account' of the uses to which the masks inventoried in (_a_) and certain stuffs subsequently issued to the Masters of the Revels had been put during 1555-60 (Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 18), and (_e_) an inventory of _c._ May 1560 (Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 37). There were fifteen sets of masking garments in store in 1555, Mariners, Venetian Senators, Turkish Magistrates, Greek Worthies, Albanian Warriors, Turkish Archers, Irish Kerns, Galley-Slaves (torch-bearers), Falconers (torch-bearers), Palmers (torch-bearers), Turkish Commoners (torch-bearers), Huntresses, Venuses, Nymphs, and Turkish Women. Some of these were no longer serviceable and became fees; the rest were gradually pulled to pieces during 1555-60 and used with fresh material in constructing new sets. As a result the inventory of 1560 contains none of the sets of 1555, but seventeen of later origin, Patriarchs, Actaeons, Hunters (torch-bearers to Actaeons), Nusquams, Turkish Commoners (torch-bearers to Nusquams, not the set of 1555), Barbarians, Venetian Commoners (torch-bearers to Barbarians), Clowns, Hinds (torch-bearers to Clowns), Swart Rutters, Almayns (torch-bearers to Swart Rutters, although not so described), Moors, Diana and her Nymphs, Maidens (torch-bearers to Diana), Italian Women, Fishwives, and Marketwives. The rere-account shows that in the interim between 1555 and 1560 eleven other sets had come into existence and been picked to pieces again. There were Almayns (not the 1560 set), Palmers (not the 1555 set), Irishmen (not the 1555 set), Hungarians, Conquerors, Mariners, or Shipmen (not the 1555 set), Moorish friars (torch-bearers), Fishermen (torch-bearers), Astronomers, and unnamed torch-bearers to Astronomers and to Patriarchs. A number of ecclesiastical costumes had also been made, of which a few were still in store in 1560, and which evidently belong to the mask described by Il Schifanoya. It seems clear from the _Revels Accounts_ that the only new mask between 1555 and the end of Mary's reign was one of Almayns, Pilgrims, and Irishmen on 25 April 1557 (Feuillerat, _Edw and M._ 225). This accounts for three of the twelve interim sets. The other nine and the seventeen in the 1560 inventory must all be Elizabethan. The documents give or indicate dates for most of them. A process of exclusions obliges us to place the Conquerors, Moors, and Hungarians in the early part of 1559. Here are three vacant dates. Il Schifanoya tells us that there was a second company of maskers on Shrove Sunday, besides the Swart Rutters, whom the accounts assign to that day. The Hungarians would be appropriate antagonists to the Swart Rutters. There were also two unspecified masks at the time of the Coronation, one on the next day, 16 Jan., the other 'on the Sondaye seven nighte after the Coronacion', which as 15 Jan. was itself a Sunday, probably means 22 rather than 29 Jan. As part of the garments of the Moors had previously been used for the Conquerors (Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 20), the Moors must have been the later of the two. The masks of 11 July and 6 August 1559 were probably not given at the royal cost, as the Revels documents are quite silent about them. My list agrees in the main with that in Wallace, i. 199, which however has some errors. There is no evidence for masks on 2 Feb. and 6 Feb. 1559. The list in Feuillerat, _Eliz._ xiii, is incomplete.]

[Footnote 537: Brantôme, _Hommes illustres et Capitaines françois_ (ed. Buchon, i. 312), 'La reyne ... donna un soir à soupper, où après se fit un ballet de ses filles, qu'elle avoit ordonné et dressé, représentant les vierges de l'Évangile, desquelles les unes avoient leurs lampes allumées, et les autres n'avoient ny huille ny feu, et en demandoient. Ces lampes estoient d'argent, fort gentiment faictes et elabourées; et les dames estoient très-belles, bien honnestes et bien apprises, qui prindrent nous autres François pour dancer.']

[Footnote 538: Machyn, 275, 276, 'The furst day of Feybruary at nyght was the goodlyest masket cam owt of London that ever was seen, of a C. and d' [? 150] gorgyously be-sene, and a C. cheynes of gold, and as for trumpettes and drumes, and as for torchelyghte a ij hundered, and so to the cowrt, and dyvers goodly men of armes in gylt harnes, and Julyus Sesar played.' The last word is in a later hand, and according to Wallace, i. 200, is a nineteenth-century forgery.]

[Footnote 539: _M. S. C._ i. 144; Collier, i. 178; from _Lansd. MS._ v, f. 126, endorsed 'Maij 1562'. A warrant of 10 May 1562 for the delivery of silks for masks and revels to the Master of the Revels is in Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 114.]

[Footnote 540: I strongly suspect that the second night's mask was really intended to be one of lords, not ladies.]

[Footnote 541: Machyn, 300. Machyn, 215, 222, 248, 288, 300, records several masks in the City during 1559-63. The diary ends in August 1563.]

[Footnote 542: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 116, 'the ixᵗʰ of Iune repayringe and new makinge of thre maskes with thare hole furniture and diuers devisses and a castle ffor ladies and a harboure ffor lords and thre harrolds and iiij trompetours too bringe in the devise with the men of armes and showen at the courtte of Richmond before the Quenes Maiestie and the ffrench embassitours, &c.']

[Footnote 543: Froude, vii. 199; De Silva to Philip (_Sp. P._ i. 367, 385), 'after supper ... the Queen came out to the hall, which was lit with many torches, where the comedy was represented. I should not have understood much of it, if the Queen had not interpreted, as she told me she would do. They generally deal with marriage in the comedies.... The comedy ended, and then there was a mask of certain gentlemen who entered dressed in black and white, which the Queen told me were her colours, and after dancing a while one of them approached and handed the Queen a sonnet in English, praising her.' A banquet followed, ending at 2 a.m.]

[Footnote 544: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 116, 'Cristmas ... canvas to couer diuers townes and howsses and other devisses and clowds for a maske and a showe and a play by the childerne of the chaple.... The xviijᵗʰ of Fabruarie ... provicions for a play maid by Sir Percivall Hartts sones with a mask of huntars and diuers devisses and a rocke, or hill for the ix musses to singe vppone with a vayne of sarsnett dravven vpp and downe before them.... Shroftid ... foure maskes too of them nott occupied nor sene with thare hole furniture which be verie fayr and riche of old stuf butt new garnished with frenge and tassells to seme new'; cf. De Silva to Philip of the revel after a tilt on 5 March (_Sp. P._ i. 404). It began after supper with 'a comedy in English of which I understood just as much as the Queen told me. The plot was founded on the question of marriage, discussed between Juno and Diana, Juno advocating marriage and Diana chastity. Jupiter gave a verdict in favour of matrimony, after many things had passed on both sides in defence of the respective arguments. The Queen turned to me and said, "This is all against me". After the comedy there was a masquerade of Satyrs, or wild gods, who danced with the ladies, and when this was finished there entered 10 parties of 12 gentlemen each, the same who fought in the foot tourney, and these, all armed as they were, danced with the ladies; a very novel ball, surely.']

[Footnote 545: Hume, _Year after Armada_, 283; De Silva to Philip (_Sp. P._ i. 452), 'a ball, a tourney, and two masks'. These were after supper and ended at 1.30 a.m.]

[Footnote 546: Pound's speeches are in _Rawl. Poet. MS._ 108 (_Bodl. MS._ 14601), f. 24; De Silva to Philip (July 1566, _Sp. P._ i. 565), 'a masquerade and a long ball, after which they entered in new disguises for a foot tournament'. The chief challenger was Ormond. On Pound's career as a masker and its strange end, cf. ch. xxiii.]

[Footnote 547: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 119, 'the altering and newe makinge of sixe maskes out of ould stuff with torche bearers thervnto wherof iiijᵒʳ hathe byne shewene before vs, and two remayne vnshewen', 124, 125, 126.]

[Footnote 548: Ibid. 129, 134, 139, 146.]

[Footnote 549: Fleay, 19; Brotanek, 25. But the resemblances are only partial, cf. _M. S. C._ i. 144.]

[Footnote 550: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 153.]

[Footnote 551: G. Gascoigne, _A devise of a Maske for the right honorable Viscount Mountacute_ (_Works_, i. 75, from _The Posies_ of 1575). The date is fixed by Thomas Giles's letter.]

[Footnote 552: The reproductions in Strutt, _Manners and Customs_, iii, pl. xi, and Withington, i. 208, omit the wedding table. The pictures must be later than Sir H. Unton's death in 1596. Ashmole, _Berks_, iii. 313, dates his wedding with Dorothy, daughter of Sir Thomas Wroughton of Broad Hinton, Wilts, in 1580.]

[Footnote 553: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 409.]

[Footnote 554: Ibid., _Eliz._ 171-81, 'gloves for maskers', 'the lordes gloves', 'the torcheberers gloves', 'ladye maskers', 'women maskers', 'Haunce Eottes for painting of patternes for maskes', 'the masks on New Yeres daye', 'the dubble mask', 'a keye for Janus', 'ffyn white lam to make snoballs', 'spunges for snoballs', 'musk kumfettes ... corianders ... clove cumfettes ... synamon kumfettes ... rose water ... spike water ... gynger cumfettes ... all whiche served for fflakes of yse and hayle stones in the maske of Ianvs the roze water sweetened the balls made for snow-balles presented to her Maiestie by Ianvs', 'a nett for the ffishers maskers', 'berdes for fyshers vj', curled heare for fyshers capps', 'roches counterfet ... whitings ... thornebackes ... smeltes ... mackerells ... fflownders', 'wooll to stuf the fishes', 'banketting frutes', 'basketes of ffrute', 'mowldes to cast the frutes and ffishes in'.]

[Footnote 555: Ibid. 183, 191.]

[Footnote 556: Ibid. 193-221.]

[Footnote 557: Cf. p. 87.]

[Footnote 558: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 234-46, 'vj bandes for hattes for maskers', 'gloves for ... maskers', '23ᵒ Decembris ... Mirors or looking-glasses for the pedlers mask xij small at ijˢ the peece and vj greater at iiijˢ the peece', '29ᵒ Decembris ... ffayer wryting of pozies for the mask', '6ᵒ Ianuarii ... ix little hampers at xxᵈ the peece for the pedlers mask', 'ffyne yolow to wryte vpon the mirrors'.]

[Footnote 559: Laneham, 33; cf. chh. iv, p. 123, and xxiv.]

[Footnote 560: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 264-70.]

[Footnote 561: Cf. ch. xxiv.]

[Footnote 562: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 286, 294; _Sp. P._ ii. 627, 630, 'an entertainment in imitation of a tournament, between six ladies and a like number of gentlemen who surrendered to them'. Mr. Tresham and Mr. Knowles were Knights.]

[Footnote 563: Ibid. 308.]

[Footnote 564: Ibid. 340, 345, '1ᵒ Aprilis 1581, what monnie is to be allowed in prest for certayne shewes to be had at Whitehal ... The Mounte, Dragon with the fyer workes, Castell with the fallyng sydes, Tree with shyldes, Hermytage and hermytt, Savages, Enchaunter, Charryott, and incydentes to theis cc markes'.]

[Footnote 565: Ibid. 344 (table), 346.]

[Footnote 566: Ibid. 349.]

[Footnote 567: Ibid. 360 (table). The _Jervoise MSS._ (_H. M. C. Various MSS._ iv. 163) contain verses dated 1586 for a mask from Basingstoke to Richard Pawlett, doubtless a kinsman of the Marquis of Winchester at Basing.]

[Footnote 568: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 365, 378. A mask followed the play of _Catiline_, with which Lord Burghley was entertained at Gray's Inn on 16 Jan. 1588 (_M. S. C._ i. 179).]

[Footnote 569: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 392.]

[Footnote 570: Arthur Throgmorton to Robert Cecil (_Hatfield MSS._ v. 99; cf. _Sh. Homage_, 158), 'Matter of mirth from a good mind can minister no matter of malice, both being, as I believe, far from such sourness (and for myself I will answer for soundness). I am bold to write my determination, grounded upon grief and true duty to the Queen, thankfulness to my lord of Derby (whose honourable brother honoured my marriage), and to assure you I bear no spleen to yourself. If I may I mind to come in a masque, brought in by the nine muses, whose music, I hope, shall so modify the easy softened mind of her Majesty as both I and mine may find mercy. The song, the substance I have herewith sent you, myself, whilst the singing, to lie prostrate at her Majesty's feet till she says she will save me. Upon my resurrection the song shall be delivered by one of the muses, with a ring made for a wedding ring set round with diamonds, and with a ruby like a heart placed in a coronet, with this inscription _Elizabetha potest_. I durst not do this before I had acquainted you here with, understanding her Majesty had appointed the masquers, which resolution hath made me the unreadier: yet, if this night I may know her Majesty's leave and your liking, I hope not to come too late, though the time be short for such a show and my preparations posted for such a presence. I desire to come in before the other masque, for I am sorrowful and solemn, and my stay shall not be long. I rest upon your resolution, which must be for this business to-night or not at all.']

[Footnote 571: Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 417, and ch. xxiv.]

[Footnote 572: Cf. J. A. Manning, _Memoirs of Sir Benjamin Rudyerd_, 9, and _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 416, where, however, the date suggested is the Christmas of 1599-1600. But the Court was not in London that winter, and the indications of days of the week agree with 1597-8. The manuscript description written by Rudyerd is dated 'anno ab aula condita 27'. The Middle Temple hall was built in 1572. The masks in this hall were on 31 Dec. and 7 and 21 Jan. The maskers were accompanied to Court on 6 Jan. by nine torch-bearers carrying devices, eleven knights, eleven squires, and a hundred other torches, as well as trumpeters and heralds. 'Sur Martino', no doubt Richard Martin, the Prince d'Amour, was their leader. Doubtless they took out ladies, as Mrs. Nevill, afterwards a maid of honour, is said to have 'borne the bell away' in the revels.]

[Footnote 573: Boississe, i. 415. He says that some gentlemen masked with the _filles_, of which there is no trace in the other accounts. Letters from Lady Russell about the wedding are in _Cecil Papers_, x. 121, 175, and it is also referred to by Chamberlain, 79, 83. 'I doubt not but you have heard of the great mariage at the Lady Russell's ... and of the maske of eight maides of honour and other gentlewomen in name of the muses that came to seeke one of theire fellowes', and by Rowland Whyte (_Sydney Papers_, ii. 195, 197, 201, 203),'Mʳˢ Fitton led, and after they had done all their own ceremonies, these eight Ladies Maskers chose eight Ladies more to dance the measures. Mʳˢ Fitton went to the Queen, and wooed her to dance; her Majesty asked what she was. "Affection," she said. "Affection!" said the Queen, "Affection is false." Yet her Majesty rose and danced.' A picture of the Marcus Gheeraerts school (cf. L. Cust in _Trans. Walpole Soc._ iii. 22) probably representing Elizabeth's passage through Blackfriars on this occasion is extant in two versions at Melbury and Sherborne, and has often been reproduced; e. g. in _Shakespeare's England_, i. _f.p._]

[Footnote 574: Popham to Cecil, 8 Feb. 1602 (_Hatfield MSS._ xii. 47), 'I have so dealt with some of the Benchers of the Middle Temple as I have brought that the House will be willing to bear 200 marks towards the charge of what is wished to be done, to her Majesty's good liking, and if the young gentlemen will be drawn in to perform what is of their part, I hope it will be effected. Some of the young men have their humors, but I hope that will be over-ruled, for I send for them as soon as other business of her Majesty is dispatched. But the Ancients of the House, who wish all to be done to her Majesty's best content, depend upon your favour if anything through young men's error should not have that carriage in the course of it, as they would wish it might not yet be imputed unto them.' There is no reference to any mask in the records of the Middle Temple, which in 1601-2 kept a 'solemn' but not a 'grand' Christmas.]

[Footnote 575: Manningham, 1, 'Song to the Queene at the Maske at Court, Nov. 2'. The Song begins, 'Mighty Princes of a fruitfull land'. The November of 1602 is the only one covered by the period of the diary; but Elizabeth was then at Richmond, rather out of reach of a lawyers' mask.]

[Footnote 576: An Italian model for such printed descriptions may be found in that of G. Cecchi's Florentine _Esaltazione della Croce_ (1589); cf. A. D'Ancona, _Sacre Rappresentazioni_, iii. 1, 235; Symonds, _Renaissance in Italy_, iv. 282.]

[Footnote 577: J. A. Lester, _Some Franco-Scottish Influences on the Early English Drama_ (_Haverford Essays_, 1909), 145, notes the vogue of the mask at Holyrood under Mary Stuart and the _pompae_ written for such occasions by Buchanan. He asserts that Anne acquired the taste for masks during her thirteen years' residence in Scotland, but in fact he cites no example of a mask proper during 1590-1603, and only one, in 1581, during the reign of James. There were other forms of mimetic revelry. The pageants introduced by Bastien Pagez into a banquet at the baptism of James in 1566 and accompanied with verses by Buchanan are analogous to those at the baptism of Henry Frederick in 1594 (_Somers Tracts_, ii. 179).]

[Footnote 578: Jonson told Drummond in 1619 (_Conversations_, 4), 'That next himself, only Fletcher and Chapman could make a mask'. No independent mask by Fletcher is known, and that in _The Maid's Tragedy_ is probably Beaumont's. Fletcher may have written the Triumph of Time in _Four Plays or Morall Representations_, which is practically a mask.]

[Footnote 579: Lodge, iii. 58; Beaumont to Villeroy (27 Oct. 1603) in _King's MS._ 124, f. 175, 'Elle fit jl y' a quelques jourz vn ballet ou pour mieux dire vne masquarade champêtre. Car il n'y avoit ni ordre ni depense. Mais Elle se propose d'en faire d'autres plus beaux cet hiver en recompense et semble que le Roy et ses Principaux Ministres, qui sont toujourz en Jalousie de son Esprit, soient bien aises de le voir occupé en cet exercice.']

[Footnote 580: Harington, i. 349, 'One day, a great feast was held, and, after dinner, the representation of Solomon his Temple and the coming of the Queen of Sheba was made, or (as I may better say) was meant to have been made, before their Majesties, by device of the Earl of Salisbury and others. But alass! as all earthly thinges do fail to poor mortals in enjoyment, so did prove our presentment hereof. The Lady who did play the Queens part, did carry most precious gifts to both their Majesties; but, forgetting the steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish Majesties lap, and fell at his feet, tho I rather think it was in his face. Much was the hurry and confusion; cloths and napkins were at hand, to make all clean. His Majesty then got up and would dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber, and laid on a bed of state; which was not a little defiled with the presents of the Queen which had been bestowed on his garments; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other good matters. The entertainment and show went forward, and most of the presenters went backward, or fell down; wine did so occupy their upper chambers. Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and Charity: Hope did assay to speak, but wine rendered her endeavours so feeble that she withdrew, and hoped the King would excuse her brevity: Faith was then all alone, for I am certain she was not joyned with good works, and left the court in a staggering condition: Charity came to the King's feet, and seemed to cover the multitude of sins her sisters had committed; in some sorte she made obeysance and brought giftes, but said she would return home again, as there was no gift which heaven had not already given his Majesty. She then returned to Hope and Faith, who were both sick and spewing in the lower hall. Next came Victory, in bright armour, and presented a rich sword to the King, who did not accept it, but put it by with his hand; and, by a strange medley of versification, did endeavour to make suit to the King. But Victory did not tryumph long; for, after much lamentable utterance, she was led away like a silly captive, and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the anti-chamber. Now did Peace make entry, and strive to get foremoste to the King; but I grieve to tell how great wrath she did discover unto those of her attendants; and, much contrary to her semblance, most rudely made war with her olive branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose her coming.']

[Footnote 581: _Chamber Accounts_ (1610-11, Apparellings), 'for making ready the La: Eliz: Lodginges for a maske'.]

VI

THE MASK (_continued_)

The historical sketch given in the last chapter needs to be supplemented by some analysis of the stage of development which the mask had reached, in relation to its origins, by the Jacobean period. And first of all, on the side of scenic effect. Looking back over the reign of Henry VIII, in the light of what followed, we may discover two fairly distinct types of masks. There is the mask simple, in which the dancers, with their richly hued and sparkling costumes, their torch-bearers and their musicians, may be regarded as furnishing their own decoration. There is the mask spectacular, to which added éclat is given by the pageant, mobile, or towards the end of the reign stationary, with its additional lights, its carvings and mouldings, its gilt and colours, and the elements of illusion and surprise afforded by its facilities for the concealed entry of personages. Elizabeth, perhaps as has been hinted upon grounds of economy, perhaps from the more legitimate and attractive motive of a special interest in the dancer's art, used mainly the mask simple. But the pageant was not altogether forgotten, and recurs from time to time amongst the preparations for festivities on some exceptionally elaborate scale. The most notable example is perhaps to be found in the devices for the contemplated meeting with Mary of Scots in 1562, which involved the construction of a prison, a castle, and an orchard, and of which even Henry VIII would have had no reason to be ashamed. We hear also of a rock of fountain for the mask of Diana and Actaeon in 1560, of a castle and arbour at the visit of Artus de Cossé in 1564, of a rock with a veil of sarcenet for the mask of hunters in 1565, of a chariot and castle for the visit of the Duc de Montmorency in 1572, and of a mount, a castle, an orange tree, and a house for that of the Duc d'Anjou in 1581. The Gray's Inn maskers of 1595 had their Rock Adamantine, and those of the Middle Temple about 1598 sallied forth from a Heart.

I do not know that any special inferences need be drawn from the fact that on most of these occasions the English Court was putting its best foot foremost to entertain a visitor from France, for in fact during the greater part of Elizabeth's reign France was the only continental country of the first importance with which she maintained constant diplomatic relations.[582] Nor is enough known of the development of the French mask in the middle of the sixteenth century to make it possible to say how far, if at all, that country then gave the lead to England.[583] Brantôme reports how Catherine de Médicis would amuse herself by inventing 'quelques nouvelles danses ou quelques beaux ballets, quand il faisoit mauvais temps', and the writings of Clément Marot and Mellin de Saint-Gelais and of the Pléiade contain several sets of verses composed for the purposes of 'mommeries' and 'mascarades'.[584] I should suppose that the distinction drawn by M. de Beaumont in 1603 between a 'mascarade' and a 'ballet' corresponds pretty closely with that made above between the mask simple and the mask spectacular. The history of the 'ballet' proper in France seems to begin under Italian influences during the last quarter of the century. Its pioneer was one Baldassarino da Belgiojoso, a groom of the chamber to Catherine de Médicis and to her son Henri III, who came to France about 1555 and gallicized his name as Baltasar de Beaujoyeulx. When Henri, not yet King of France, left Paris to receive the crown of Poland in 1573, Baldassarino arranged the spectacle for his farewell. Sixteen nymphs issued from a movable rock, offered gifts, and danced in the hall. A printed description by Jean Dorat contains engravings of the rock and the dances, and verses in Latin and French, to which Ronsard and Amadis de Jamyn contributed.[585] This appears to have been a mask on lines already familiar in both France and England. But eight years later Baldassarino got an opportunity for a far more elaborate undertaking. His _Balet Comique de la Royne_ was devised for the wedding of the Queen's sister, Mlle de Vaudemont, to the Duc de Joyeuse on 15 October 1581.[586] His own share seems to have lain in the invention of the general scheme of the entertainment and in the dances; he had the assistance of M. de la Chesnaye for the verses, Lambert de Beaulieu for the music, and Jacques Patin for the painting. The Queen herself led the dancers. There was an intricate combination of choregraphy and mythological setting. The maskers proper were twelve Naiads in white and four Dryads in green; the presenters Circe, a Fugitive from her garden, Glaucus, Thetis, Mercury, Pan, Minerva, Jupiter; the musicians mermaids, tritons, satyrs, virtues, and others; the torch-bearers twelve pages. At the top of the hall was a daïs for the royal seats, and to the right and left in front places for ambassadors. Behind, and also lower down the hall, were tiers of seats, and above them two galleries; in all 9,000 or 10,000 spectators were present. On the left of the hall was a Gilded Vault for musicians, on the right the Grove of Pan, and at the foot the Garden of Circe, both veiled by curtains. In the roof, between the Vault and the Grove, hung a cloud. On each side of the Garden, trellises covered the entrance. After a preliminary episode between Circe and the Fugitive, the Naiads appeared on a movable fountain, and danced twelve geometrical figures as the 'première entrée du ballet'. They were then enchanted by Circe, and taken to her garden, with Mercury, who dropped from the cloud in a vain attempt at rescue. After two 'intermèdes' of music and song, during which the Dryads entered and the Grove of Pan was disclosed, came Minerva on a chariot, and called Jupiter from the cloud and Pan from the Grove for an assault on the Garden. Circe was captured, and her wand presented to the King. Then the Naiads and Dryads danced fifteen 'passages' as the 'entrée du grand ballet', and forty more of a geometrical character for the 'grand ballet' itself. Finally, they presented the King and gentlemen with 'choses de mer' and appropriate 'devises' or mottoes, and took them out for 'le grand bal' followed by 'bransles' and other dances.

So far as published documents go, the _Balet Comique_ is closely the prototype of the fully developed 'ballet' or court mask, as we find it both in France and in England.[587] The Gray's Inn mask of 1595, with its printed description and its theme of enchantment, confesses an influence; and there were only two directions in which the devisers of Henri IV and of James I were able to make any notable advance upon Baldassarino's model. One of these was the introduction of the antimask, to which it will be necessary to return; the other was the concentration of the scenic setting. The setting of the _Balet Comique_ is not concentrated but dispersed. It is not even all stationary. The interest of the spectators is not merely divided amongst the Garden of Circe at the foot of the hall, the Grove of Pan on the right, the musicians' vault on the left, and the cloud overhead. It is claimed at certain points by the movable fountain upon which the maskers enter and the chariot of Minerva. This dispersed setting recurs in the first of Queen Anne's great masks, Daniel's _Vision of the Twelve Goddesses_, in 1604. A mountain stood at the lower end of the hall in Hampton Court, and at the upper end a Cave of Sleep on one side and a Temple of Peace on the other. A contemporary observer notes an inconvenience of this arrangement. 'The Halle was so much lessened by the workes that were in it', writes Dudley Carleton, 'so as none could be admitted but men of apparance.' This difficulty proved fatal to the dispersed setting, and in all later Jacobean masks the setting was concentrated in a scene erected at the lower end of the hall, and ample space was thus left both for the evolutions of the dancers and for the seating of the spectators.[588]

This change at least synchronizes with the emergence of Inigo Jones and the beginning of the architectural domination which for nearly half a century he was destined to exercise over the mask. His is the first outstanding name which we can associate with the history of English scenic decoration. Under Elizabeth and her predecessors the apparel and pageantry of a mask were the care of the Revels officers, and they naturally called in such painters and other men of taste about the court as were likely to prove useful. These were often foreigners. Alfonso Ferrabosco, the musician, seems to have had the general oversight of an important mask in 1572, and amongst his collaborators was another Italian, Petruccio Ubaldini, while Hans Eottes drew the patterns. Eottes was similarly employed in 1573 and 1574, and Ubaldini was called upon again in 1579 to write out the speeches of a mask in his native Italian.[589] The responsibilities of Inigo Jones were much wider than those of any of these predecessors. His singular name has an Italian ring, but he was born of London parentage in 1573 and is said to have been apprenticed to a joiner.[590] Through the generosity of the third Earl of Pembroke he had opportunities of travel, and spent much of his early life in Italy and in the service of Christian IV of Denmark. He seems to have been back in England by 28 June 1603, when the accounts of the Earl of Rutland record a payment of £10 to 'Henygo Jones, a picture maker'. He is not known to have taken part in the masks of the following winter, but Jonson acknowledges that 'the bodily part' of the _Mask of Blackness_ on 6 January 1605 was his 'design and act', and in August of the same year he took charge of the plays given before James in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, and contrived their changes of scene with the aid of revolving triangular screens of Italian design. His place as an architect of court masks was now assured, and even the poets, to whom the descriptions of the performances naturally fell, found it impossible to conceal the fact that his functions were at least as important as their own. Jonson in his earlier descriptions is punctilious in rendering due credit to his colleague.[591] So too are Daniel and Campion.[592]

It was not until Caroline days that the smouldering antagonism between Jonson and Jones broke out into open warfare, and stung Jonson to various indiscretions, amongst them the ironical outburst of the famous _Expostulation_--

Painting and carpentry are the soul of masque![593]

Of thirteen spectacular masks given at court from 1605 to 1613 nine were certainly contrived by Jones, and there is no positive evidence that the other four were not his.[594] He had also a share in the preparations for Prince Henry's barriers of 1610. When the prince set up his household in the following December Jones was appointed surveyor of his works. After Henry's death he obtained a reversion of a similar appointment in the royal Office of Works, but this reversion did not fall in until the death of Simon Basil on 1 October 1615, and after the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth in 1613 Jones paid a visit of some duration to Italy. He therefore took no part in the masks for the Somerset wedding during the following winter. For one at least of these, Campion's _Mask of Squires_, his substitute was Constantine de' Servi, a Florentine who had also been in the service of Henry as his architect; but Campion was not pleased with his coadjutor, and wrote that 'he being too much of himself, and no way to be drawn to impart his intentions, failed so far in the assurance he gave that the main invention, even at the last cast, was of force drawn into a far narrower compass than was from the beginning intended'. Jones was back in England by 29 January 1615, and was to plan many more masks before his death in 1652. But none can be definitely ascribed to him before Jonson's _Mask of Christmas_ in 1617. During the latter part of his career he was busy as an architect, and the present banqueting-house in Whitehall, built during 1619-22, represents a fragment of one of his grandiose schemes for the complete reconstruction of the old palace.

The concentrated setting, as it took shape in the first period of Inigo Jones, appears to have been regularly designed on the principle of what is sometimes called the 'picture-stage'.[595] It was framed by a proscenium arch, from side to side of which stretched, at first view, a curtain. This arch was of a familiar Renaissance type. On either side were pilasters, or statuesquely modelled figures, or a combination of the two, which bore up a frieze. The decorations were in harmony with the theme of the mask and the frieze might contain a scroll or panel setting forth its title.[596] It cannot perhaps be demonstrated that Jones invariably used a proscenium from the beginning, but at any rate by 1608 (_Haddington Mask_) 'the arch' appears to have been a recognized element of a setting. The most elaborate description of a proscenium is that written by Jones himself for _Tethys' Festival_ in 1610. On this occasion the proscenium was itself covered by a curtain until the audience were seated. It is possible, however, that it sometimes framed a front curtain. The use of curtains was, of course, no innovation. They had served, when concealment and revelation were required, both in the mobile and in the fixed settings of earlier days. Thus for an Elizabethan mask of 1565, of which the pageant was 'a rock or hill for the ix musses to singe vppone', the Revels Office had provided 'a vayne of sarsnett drawen vpp and downe before them'.[597] The Jacobean curtain itself might form part of the setting. It was painted to represent a wooded 'landtschap' (_Blackness_), clouds (_Hay Mask_, _Tethys' Festival_), night (_Beauty_), a red cliff (_Haddington Mask_), a city wall and gate (_Flowers_). But at an early moment it was removed, to 'discover' a more solidly constructed scene within. Often it is called a 'traverse', and when it is 'drawne' it may either 'slide away', or 'sink down' (_Marston's Mask_).[598] I have not come across a certain case in which it was drawn up, either directly by a roller, or diagonally by cords towards the corners of the proscenium; but these methods may also have been employed. In some masks the drawing of the curtain 'discovered' the maskers on the scene; in others their entry was deferred and variously contrived. The maskers, and sometimes the presenters, had, before the actual dances began, to come forward through the proscenium arch to the dancing place, which was on the floor of the hall, or on a stage only slightly raised above it, and was regularly laid with green cloth by the official 'mattleyer' of the court.[599] This advance was managed in divers ways. The old device of a movable pageant might be revived, as an element subsidiary to the fixed scene, and the maskers brought in on a chariot (_Queens_, _Oberon_), or enthroned on a floating isle (_Beauty_). They might be let down by a cloud from the upper part of the scene (_Hymenaei_, _Lords' Mask_). For the _Mask of Blackness_ Jones made an artificial sea on a wheeled stage, which lifted them forwards in a concave shell. It was quite effective as a spectacle, if they stepped in their bravery down a slope (_Hay Mask_) or a double stairway (_Chapman's Mask_, _Squires_) leading from the scene to the lower level of the dancing place.

The adoption of the concentrated setting was a matter of convenience; it did not mean that the mask could dispense with the variety of interest which the multiplied scenes of the dispersed setting had afforded. Jones's chief problem as a producer was that of securing this variety of interest under new conditions, and if possible with some added sensation of curiosity or surprise. One device was to retain the multiplied scenes, and to juxtapose them, or to superimpose one upon another within the frame of the proscenium. It was easy enough to divide the curtain either vertically or horizontally and to 'draw' the sections separately. Thus in the _Hymenaei_, which was a double mask, the altar of Hymen and the globe containing the men maskers were first discovered below. Subsequently the 'upper part of the scene' opened, and the women maskers floated out on _nimbi_. In _Lord Hay's Mask_ there was a 'double veil' of which the lesser part covered a Bower of Flora on the right of the stage, and the greater part covered a House of Night on the left, and a grove and hill crowned by a Tree of Diana in the centre. This method paid homage to the tradition of the dispersed setting; another, which could be used in combination with the first, was capable of more intricate development. The manœuvre of the front curtain might be repeated. The whole, or a fragment, of the inner scene might be shifted, so as to discover a new vision which had at first been concealed. Often this was only a local and particular transformation. Thus it was in the two masks just cited, when the globe behind the altar of Hymen revolved and showed the maskers seated in a cave, or the trees in the grove of Diana were drawn into the ground, and the maskers appeared out of their cloven tops. Similarly the splitting of a rock, to let out personages concealed therein, is an incident which recurs in more than one mask (_Haddington Mask_, _Oberon_, _Chapman's Mask_). The development of the antimask, with the emphatic contrast between the grotesque and the magnificent which this implied, seems to have been the motive which led to the introduction of more wholesale changes of scene. In the _Mask of Queens_ the background for the antimask was a Hell, and when it was over 'the whole face of the scene altered, scarce suffering the memory of such a thing', and in place of the Hell appeared a House of Fame. In _Mercury Vindicated_, again, the Laboratory of the antimasks gave way to a Bower of Nature for the mask proper. In _Oberon_ the antimask was before a cliff with a rising moon, and thereafter the scene twice opened, to disclose, first the 'frontispiece' and then the interior of a palace of Fays. The art of transformation was perhaps carried to its greatest extent during this period in the _Lords' Mask_ for the Princess Elizabeth's wedding, of which the Venetian ambassador in his report to the Signory especially noted the three changes of scene as an outstanding feature. This elaborate spectacle affords examples of nearly all the devices of juxtaposition, superimposition, partial and complete transformation, by which a variety of scenic interest is reconciled with a concentrated setting. The original scene was horizontally divided. The lower half, which was first discovered, contained side by side a wood, a thicket of Orpheus, and a cave of Mania. Before this danced the antimask. Then a curtain fell from the upper part of the scene, and discovered amongst clouds Prometheus and eight Stars. The Stars were individually transformed to men maskers, and the clouds to the House of Prometheus. Beneath torch-bearers emerged and danced, still in front of the wood. The whole face of the scene was then overspread with a cloud on which the men maskers descended. The lower part of the scene was then changed from a wood to a façade of niches containing statues, which were individually transformed into women maskers. The mask proper followed, and when the dancing was over, there was a final change of the whole scene to a porticoed perspective, leading up to the obelisk of Sibylla. Even by 1613 the art of Jones had handsomely accomplished its task of ministering to the pride of the eyes. In his later or Caroline period he advanced to even greater triumphs, and did not shrink from the decorative and mechanical difficulties entailed by as many as five changes of scene.[600] The actual mechanism employed by Jones to obtain his effects is perhaps better known to us for this later period, in view of the numerous plans and designs preserved at Chatsworth and elsewhere, than for the earlier one. The action of a mask was in all cases 'continuous', and therefore he was happily debarred from the awkward modern convention of a drop-curtain. Jones ultimately worked out a system of back-cloths and shutters or flats, arranged and painted so as to produce a perspective and an illusion of solid scenery. These ran in horizontal grooves, so that those belonging to one scene could be placed close behind those belonging to another, and each set could be successively removed by lateral withdrawal. It was, in fact, a multiplied use of the primitive 'traverse' or sliding curtain. This system may have already been at his disposal in the Jacobean period; it was well adapted, in particular, for the splitting of a rock. But it is clear that he also used a device based upon a different principle, a _machina versatilis_, which by means of a circular motion was capable of displaying successively the different faces of a comparatively solid decorative structure placed upon it. Jonson applies the term _machina versatilis_ to the House of Fame in the _Mask of Queens_. Presumably the rotating globe in _Hymenaei_ and the rotating throne of Beauty in the _Mask of Beauty_ are other examples; and yet another is furnished by _Tethys' Festival_, where however the _truc_ was used, not to carry scenery, but to cover a change of scene by directing the attention of the spectators to three whirling circles of lights and glasses. It is hardly necessary to dwell upon such subsidiary devices as the trapdoors in the floor of the stage, or the pulleys by which floating clouds were let down from the heavens, for such obvious and primitive machinery had been familiar, long before the advent of Jones, as an element in the rudimentary technique of the popular theatre.[601]

The approximation of mask to drama entailed by the adoption of the concentrated setting was not the only point of interaction between these parallel forms of _mimesis_. In the first instance it was perhaps the drama, rather than the mask, which underwent an influence. The various forms of spectacular entertainment with which the mask became entangled during the fifteenth century might be introduced at more than one moment in the long story of a Renaissance festival. They were equally well adapted to enliven the intervals between the courses of a meal, and the intervals between the parts of an organized dramatic performance. The detached character of the Senecan chorus, and the Roman practice of dividing up tragedies and comedies into acts, which was itself a departure from the Greek principle of continuous action, facilitated this intrusive development; and in the history of the Italian stage, as it shaped itself at Ferrara and elsewhere from 1486 until the middle of the next century, nothing is more remarkable than the tendency to bury the actual play, tragedy or comedy, classical or modern, in a wilderness of decorative _intermedii_, ordinarily consisting of dances and song, framed in some ingenuity of allegorical, mythological, or other device.[602] It is, I think, a true affiliation which traces to the _intermedii_ the analogous dumb-shows of English usage.[603] These belong primarily to the learned court drama, with its admitted classical and Italian inspiration. To some extent they found their way also on to the popular stage, which had, moreover, its own simpler devices for the avoidance of monotony in the way of 'jigs' and 'themes'.[604] But the influence of the dumb-show upon the drama is not wholly to be measured by the extent to which it was adopted as a formal element in the structure of plays. It introduced a spectacular tendency, which continued to prevail long after the position of the dumb-show as an interact had been surrendered. Indeed, the extreme Italian development of the _intermedii_ constituted a danger against which the lovers of a purer dramatic art were soon in protest.[605] If tragedy and comedy had not succeeded in absorbing spectacle, they would have been overwhelmed by it. The first battle was won when it was admitted that the subjects of the _intermedii_ ought to be related to the theme of the drama, which was by no means always the case at Ferrara; the second when the spectacle was taken out of the intervals between the acts and treated as an integral part of the action. This is the normal, although not of course the invariable, Elizabethan practice. Elizabethan drama is abundantly spectacular, and often enough the spectacle is irrelevant or excessive, but as a rule it is, formally at least, within the plot. There are the drums and tramplings of battles and trials and funerals. There are the divine epiphanies in mythological pieces. There are the endless opportunities afforded for song and dance by banquets, weddings, and rustic merry-makings. And if all else fails, what more easy than to introduce a dumb-show in a dream or as a specimen of the magician's art?[606] A somewhat paradoxical type of incorporated spectacle is the play within the play, as we find it, for example, in _Hamlet_, where indeed the inner play has the further elaboration of its accompanying dumb-show.[607] And with the play within the play comes the mask within the play. In the _intermedii_ the mask, as already suggested, tended to lose its individuality. There were dancers, no doubt, and the dancers were disguised, and might be masked; and there are signs of an extended use of the term 'mask' to cover such an entertainment.[608] But the characteristic feature of the mask proper, the taking out of spectators to dances, did not lend itself to the conditions of performances given while the spectators sat at meat, or of performances on the raised and isolated stage of an interlude. When a mask proper was closely associated with an early Tudor play, it was as an afterpiece rather than as an inter-act. The dancers of the _intermedii_ kept to themselves, and if the sexes intermingled it was in a 'double' choir. But when the spectacles became episodes, instead of _intermedii_, the central incident of the mask could be restored. Dancers who were personages of a play could obviously 'take out' spectators who were also personages of the same play; and the introduction of a mask, generally as a revel in a royal feast or wedding banquet, becomes a regular dramatic device at least from the last decade of the sixteenth century onwards. Perhaps the first example is in an academic play, Gager's _Ulysses Redux_ of 1592, where at the beginning of Act II 'Proci larvati alicunde prodeunt, saltantque in scena', and as we learn from the criticism of Rainolds, some of Penelope's handmaids, seated amongst the audience, were 'entreated by the wooers to rise and danse upon the stage'.[609] Shakespeare has a mask in _Love's Labour's Lost_, and another in _Romeo and Juliet_, to which the episode is handed down from the ultimate source in Italian narrative.[610] Another early example is in _1 Richard II_ (iv. 2). Munday has a mask in his _Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon_ (_1598_; ii. 2), Dekker (ii. 204) in his _Whore of Babylon_ (_c. 1607_) and his _Satiromastix_ (_1601_; l. 2302), and Tourneur, if it was Tourneur, in his _Revenger's Tragedy_ (_c. 1607_; v. 3). These are examples from the public theatres. When the boys' companies came into existence at the end of the century, dance and song proved well within their means; and their principal writers, Marston, Chapman, Middleton, Field, Jonson, all make use of the mask.[611] So do Beaumont and Fletcher, both in plays for boys and in plays for men.[612] But the enumeration of earlier names is of itself enough to dispose of the theory that to Beaumont and Fletcher is due, in some special way, the transference of the court mask to the popular stage, and in particular the introduction of Shakespeare to the supposed new idea. Doubtless the mask in _A Maid's Tragedy_ is set out with somewhat greater elaboration of presentment than was usual in earlier plays, and doubtless the antimask of Beaumont's contribution to the Princess Elizabeth's wedding was furbished up again for the delight of a popular audience in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_. But it hardly follows that Shakespeare, after using the mask in _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _Romeo and Juliet_, had anything to learn from his younger rivals before he used it in _The Tempest_, and a writer who can assert that Ben Jonson 'did not mix his masques and plays' must have simply forgotten _Cynthia's Revels_.[613] The mask in this play is of special interest, because it is Elizabethan and antedates by some four years the first of the long series of Jonson's Jacobean masks. It occupies, in the quarto version, the greater part of the last seven scenes of the play. In iv. 5 Arete, a principal lady at court, desires revels for Cynthia, and Amorphus proposes a 'masque'. Arete undertakes to send for Criticus, and get his advice.[614] In iv. 6 Criticus hesitates to write for such revellers as Amorphus and his crew. Arete encourages him. The presence will restrain them when they are masked, and Cynthia needs the opportunity to reform them. Criticus then invokes Apollo and Mercury. In