v. 1 Cynthia, awaiting the mask, holds flattering discourse with Arete

on its author. In v. 2 enters 'the first masque'. Cupid 'disguised like Anteros', presents four virgins from the palace of Perfection, Storge, Aglaia, Euphantaste, and Apheleia. He interprets their devices, and presents on their behalf a crystal, in which Cynthia sees her own image. In v. 3 Cynthia discusses the mask with Criticus and Arete. In v. 4 enters 'the second masque'. Mercury presents and interprets the four sons of Eutaxia, who are Eucosmos, Eupathes, Eutolmos, and Eucolos. In iv. 5 'the masques joyne'. They dance the first, second, and third 'straine', while Cupid and Mercury converse, outside the _cadre_ of the mask. The dancers do not proceed to 'take out' spectators, but that is presumably because they are interrupted by Cynthia, who bids them unmask and administers her reproof.

The masks inserted in plays are rarely described with anything like the fullness of _Cynthia's Revels_, although there is a fair amount of detail in _The Maid's Tragedy_ and a somewhat less amount in _Your Five Gallants_ and in _No Wit, no Help, like a Woman's_. It must be borne in mind that the main action of a mask was mute, and that the stage directions of the printed texts are not intended to be descriptive. Moreover, the structural place of the mask in a plot often leads, as in _Cynthia's Revels_, to its abrupt termination. The disguises cover an intrigue of murder (_2 Antonio and Mellida_, _Revenger's Tragedy_) or of robbery (_A Mad World, my Masters_), or of elopement (_A Woman is a Weathercock_). Or a quarrel breaks out (_Dutch Courtesan_), or a masker is discovered to be dead (_Satiromastix_). As a rule, too, the presenters' speeches are omitted or cut short, since it is spectacle, and not mere dialogue, that is required.[615] Nevertheless, in its main features, the dramatized mask confirms what we know of the mask from other sources. It has its dancers, its presenters, its torch-bearers, and its music.[616] _Your Five Gallants_ adds 'shield boys' to carry the 'devices'. When the performers have finished their measures, they generally take out the ladies. At the end they unmask, 'honour' the guests (_A Women is a Weathercock_), and depart, or proceed to a banquet. And in some interesting points the dramatized mask supplements other information. To begin with, it is a simpler type of mask than is represented by the full Jacobean descriptions. For obvious reasons architectural pageantry could hardly be introduced. In _The Maid's Tragedy_ there is a rock, in _Satiromastix_ a chair; in _May Day_ Cupid 'descends', a feat, as already noted, well within the compass of an ordinary theatre. And that is about all. You get the mask as it was practised at Elizabeth's court, rather than at that of James. Then there are sometimes subsidiary scenes, which throw light upon aspects of the mask, not much dwelt on in the Jacobean descriptions. Often there is a scene of preparation, when the 'maskery' is planned, and a 'device', 'imprezza', or 'mott' ordered of the painter, or 'a few tinsel coats' of the vizard-maker (_1 Antonio and Mellida_, _Insatiate Countess_, _A Mad World, my Masters_, _Your Five Gallants_, _A Woman is a Weathercock_). Or there is a scene of bustle, when a 'state' and canopy are set up in the 'presence' (_Satiromastix_) and room is made for the dancers, either by the cry of 'A hall, a hall!' (_Romeo and Juliet_, _May Day_) or by the more violent ministrations of the torch-bearers (_A Woman is a Weathercock_) or of court officials. Thus in _The Maid's Tragedy_ the mask is preluded by the activities of Calianax, the lord chamberlain, who 'would run raging among them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own in the twinkling of an eye', and of Diagoras the gentleman usher, who is keeping the doors against the impatient crowd without, and placing the ladies, all except those who come in 'the king's troop', in a gallery 'above'. There is a similar scene in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Four Plays in One_, a piece which consists of three short playlets, divided by 'triumphs' or _intermedii_, and concluded by a mask. This may be regarded as an experiment, in which the influence of the mask-tradition has exceptionally modified the typical structure of the drama. Nor does it stand quite alone. Peele's _Arraignment of Paris_ is of course spectacular throughout, and the last scene, in which the golden apple is handed to Elizabeth, is clearly, in its recognition of the audience, a divergence from the normal detachment of the drama.[617] Perhaps the same may be said of the epithalamic end of _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, but as a rule the element of mask remains an episode, and does not dominate the play which admits it.

The debt of the mask to the play may be traced in the increased skill in which the later masks are arranged around a 'device' or dramatic idea. The mask had had its presenters as far back as Lydgate. Even in a learned court, the more recondite forms of allegory or mythology sometimes require explanation. The maskers proper seem to have been traditionally mum and therefore unable to explain themselves. Let us remember that they were not professional actors, but English men and women of good birth and breeding, and that therefore their limbs could more easily be trained than their wits and voices. If explanation was required, it must be given in an introductory speech by a subsidiary performer. Such a spokesman seems to have been known to the Elizabethan Revels as a 'truchman' or interpreter.[618] In addition to his function of elucidation he became the natural vehicle of whatever compliment was to be paid by the mask, and when Arthur Throgmorton wished to turn the heart of Elizabeth in 1595, we find him undertaking the part himself. The Elizabethan truchmen do not seem to have got much beyond formal speeches, and the child dressed as Mercury or Cupid became rather _banal_ through much repetition. If anything more dramatic was attempted, either through the presenters, or by dividing the dancers into a double mask, it was apt to be based upon the mediaeval idea of an assault. In the device for the abortive masks of 1562 the presenters were to do most of the fighting. In 1559, on the other hand, it was successive bands of maskers that rifled and rescued the Queen's maids. How far the mask of Diana and Actaeon in the following winter took a dramatic form we do not know. The development of the mask on dramatic lines seems to have been a slow business. Even Jonson, in _Cynthia's Revels_, has not got beyond Cupid and Mercury and the formal speeches. On the other hand, the Gray's Inn mask, which preceded _Cynthia's Revels_ by some years, and nearly all the Jacobean masks, especially Jonson's, show a marked progress in this respect. A dramatic idea is nearly always dominant, and there is ingenuity in grouping the fixed elements of the mask about it. A comparison between Gascoigne's treatment of a wedding mask in 1572 and Jonson's in 1608 may serve to illustrate this. Gascoigne's maskers are Montagues of Italy, who have been driven by a storm to the shores of England, and take the opportunity to visit their English kinsmen, in whose house the wedding happens to be taking place. The idea is not without point, but it is all expounded in a single and inevitably tedious speech by the truchman, during which the dancers must remain motionless. When Jonson has to celebrate the wedding of James Ramsay and Elizabeth Radcliffe in 1608 he proceeds very differently. Even the curtain introduces the hymeneal theme with its graceful symbolism of a red cliff. From the top of this Venus descends with her Graces. She is in search of her son, and bids the Graces ask whether he is concealed in the eyes or between the swelling breasts of the ladies in the audience. The Graces sing their appeal for the discovery of 'Venus' runaway'. Cupid now emerges, with a train of Joci and Risus, each bearing two torches, who dance a dance of triumph. Venus captures Cupid, and demands the cause of his jubilation. He slips away, but the explanation is given by Hymen, in a speech of flattery to the King on the 'state', to the bridegroom who saved the King's life, and to the maid of the Red Cliff, who is the bride. Hymen is followed by Vulcan, who splits the cliff, and discloses a concave fashioned by his art, in which sit the maskers. They are the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, to each of whom is assigned some influence upon marriage. They advance and dance their measures, while Vulcan's attendants, the Cyclopes, Brontes and Steropes, beat time with their sledges, and in the pauses of the dancing the musicians, dressed as priests of Hymen, sing the verses of an epithalamion. How neatly it is all done! The maskers, the presenters, the torch-bearers, the musicians, all have their place in the scheme, and contribute towards the complimenting of the bridal pair.

It would perhaps be difficult to say how far the approximation to drama in the Jacobean masks was due to the subconscious mental processes of mask poets who were themselves playwrights, and how far to a deliberate intention to combine two arts.[619] As a rule it is safe to credit Jonson, at least, with fully conscious artistry. And here too the model set by Baldassarino's _Balet Comique_ must not be neglected. The printed description of this contains a preface, in which Baldassarino justifies his use of the term 'comique' on the ground that he has arranged his 'balet' in acts and scenes like a comedy, and claims to be an innovator in this interweaving of poetry with the dance, to which 'le premier tiltre et honneur' are still left. The Jacobean poets did not essay a treatment by acts and scenes, which indeed has no great significance even in the _Balet Comique_. But Baldassarino's main idea, of the inhibition of the dance by the magic of Circe until the gods come to the rescue, may fairly be regarded as responsible for the several episodes of disenchantment or transformation which recur in the work of his successors.[620]

Jonson's mask for the Ramsay-Radcliffe wedding in 1608 represents a stage of importance in the evolution of the dramatic form. The entry of the maskers is preluded by a dance of the torch-bearing Joci and Risus. In describing his _Mask of Queens_ of the following year, Jonson says, 'And because her majesty (best knowing that a principal part of life in these spectacles lay in their variety) had commanded me to think on some dance, or shew, that might precede hers, and have the place of a foil, or false masque, I was careful to decline, not only from others, but mine own steps in that kind, since the last year, I had an antimasque of boys; and therefore now devised that twelve women, in the habit of hags or witches, sustaining the persons of Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, &c., the opposites to good Fame, should fill that part, not as a masque, but a spectacle of strangeness, producing multiplicity of gesture, and not unaptly sorting with the current and whole fall of the device'. I am not quite sure what Jonson intends by the distinction here drawn between a 'masque' and a 'spectacle', for in fact the Hags dance 'a magical dance full of preposterous change and gesticulation', which is interrupted by a burst of loud music and an alteration in the face of the scene, heralding the introduction of the Queens in the House of Fame. However this may be, Jonson's innovation, with its obvious advantages of added variety, must have been immediately successful, for in practically all subsequent examples of the period the antimask appears as a fixed element in the scheme, preceding and setting off what Beaumont calls the 'maine' mask, and usually divided from it by a change of scene.[621] There are some slight further elaborations to record. In _Oberon_, in the _Lords' Mask_, and in _Chapman's Mask_, the antimask is followed by a dance of torch-bearers, to which also Chapman gives the name of 'antimask'. _Beaumont's Mask_, the _Mask of Squires_, _Mercury Vindicated_, and _Browne's Mask_ have each two regular antimasks, and in the _Mask of Squires_ the second antimask is interpolated in the middle of the dances of the main mask. There is only one antimask in _The Twelve Months_, but two dances are assigned to it. The _Mask of Flowers_ has, besides the antimask 'of dances', a preliminary antimask 'of song'. The name 'antimask' has given some trouble. Jonson's references to 'a foil, or false masque' and to 'opposites' suggest clearly enough that he used the prefix 'anti' to indicate an antithesis or contrast. But in _Tethys' Festival_ Daniel uses the form 'antemasque', and this spelling, probably due to a misunderstanding by the worthy Daniel of the point of the innovation, recurs in _Chapman's Mask_ and in _The Twelve Months_.[622] The _Mask of Flowers_, again, affords a third variation, in 'anticke-maske', and this also, I think, _pace_ Dr. Brotanek, must have its origin in a misunderstanding.[623] An 'antic' dance is a grotesque dance, and this epithet is often applied to the personages of the antimasks and their evolutions, from the _Haddington Mask_ onwards, since the characteristic antithesis which the antimask renders possible is precisely the antithesis between the grotesque prelude and the splendour of the main mask that follows.[624] I want to emphasize the point that this element of contrast introduced by the juxtaposition of mask and antimask is analogous to what critics have always regarded as a special feature of the Elizabethan, and particularly the Shakespearian drama, the juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy, either in the form of what is called tragicomedy, or by the inclusion of scenes of 'comic relief' in tragedy proper. It is perhaps worth noting that in the French masks of 1610 and 1612 printed by Lacroix we find side by side with the 'grand ballet' elements variously described as the 'première et plaisante entrée' (1610) and 'la bouffonnerie' (1612), which appear to serve just the same purpose as the English antimask.[625] But, of course, I do not mean to suggest that either in France or in England the grotesque made its way into the mask for the first time during the seventeenth century. The clowns, mariners, 'wodwoses' and so forth of the earlier Elizabethan revels must have lent themselves to humorous treatment, and indeed mirth has at all times been of the essence of revels. There is some reason to think that a traditional form of grotesque mask at court was the morris. This is of course a familiar type of folk-dance, and may owe its Tudor name to the _moresche_, which were dances introduced as _intermedii_ into Italian plays.[626]

The spectacular and literary elaboration of the Jacobean mask must not be allowed to blind our eyes to the fact that after all it was not a dramatic illusion but a choregraphic compliment which remained the central purpose of the entertainment. Scenery and speech and song occupy perhaps a disproportionate share of the attention of the poets who, to their own glorification and that of the architects, wrote the descriptions; but the greater part of the considerable number of hours during which the mask lasted was devoted to the actual dancing. And the dancing involved an intimacy, and not a detachment, in the relation between performers and spectators. It is true that some of the traditional features which accompanied the mask, when court ceremonial first took it up from folk custom, tended under the new conditions to pass into the state of survivals. Thus the torch-bearers, whether or not their burning brands represent some original element of ritual in the folk festival, were certainly _de rigueur_ as a concomitant of the mask during the sixteenth century. They had two clear functions. They provided, in dim halls, the abundance of light which was so necessary to give full value to the bright stuffs and metallic spangles worn by the dancers. And their own costumes, harmonized or contrasting with those of the dancers, afforded the variety of interest which otherwise, while the presenters were still limited to one or two 'truchmen', might have been lacking. They were always kept in strict subordination to the maskers proper. They were their attendants; Hinds in a mask of Clowns, Almains in a mask of Swart Rutters, Moorish friars in a mask of Moors. Their garments were inferior, taffeta, as against satin or cloth of gold. When George Ferrers, as Lord of Misrule in 1552, had occasion to complain of the apparel furnished by the Master of the Revels for his councillors, he wrote that the gentlemen who were to take the parts 'wolde not be seen in London so torchebererlyke disgysed for asmoche as they ar worthe or hope to be worthe'.[627] And when the measures began, they had little to do, but to stand and look on.[628] In the seventeenth century they were not so indispensable, either for illumination, which could be better supplied by fixed lights upon the scene, or for variety.[629] And with the multiplication of other purposes the room which they took up could ill be spared. In _Tethys' Festival_, given exceptionally during the heat of summer, there were no torch-bearers, on the ground that 'they would have pestered the roome, which the season would not well permit'. And therewith begins a tendency either, as already indicated, to merge them in the antimask, or to omit them altogether.[630] The vizard again and the ceremonial unvizarding at the end of the performance, although usual, and of course essential parts of the tradition, do not appear to have been quite invariable under James I.[631] As early as the _Mask of Blackness_ in 1605, blackened faces and arms were substituted, which, says a contemporary writer, were 'disguise sufficient' and an 'ugly sight', and the experiment was not repeated. I do not know that for any historic period there is evidence that the maskers regularly brought gifts with them, although they sometimes did, and one may suspect that such gifts represented the 'luck' of the primitive custom. A jewel was all very well when Arthur Throgmorton wanted to use a mask as a medium for recovering the lost favour of Elizabeth.[632] But it may be assumed that Elizabeth would think it a useless expense, when a mask was only conventionally a surprise visit, and was really designed on her own instructions in her own Office of the Revels. And although James did on one occasion pay no less than £40,000 for the jewel used in the mask of Indian and Chinese Knights, this was in the first year of his reign, when his predecessor's hoarded wealth was still there for the lavishing, and the special purpose was to be served of impressing Henri IV through his diplomatic representative.[633] When there were gifts, they were as a rule trifling, and incidental to the 'device' of the mask. The abortive scheme of 1562 provides for a grandguard and a sword and girdle. Elizabeth got on one occasion flowers of silk and gold, signifying victory, peace, and plenty; on another snowballs of lamb's wool sweetened with rose-water in a mask of Janus; on a third looking-glasses with posies inscribed on them in a mask of Pedlars. In _The Twelve Goddesses_ the maskers presented their emblems, and Sibylla laid them in the temple. In the _Mask of Blackness_ the Daughters of Niger presented their fans. In _Tethys' Festival_ there were a trident for James and a sword, worth 20,000 crowns, and a scarf for Henry. In the _Mask of Squires_ Anne plucked a bough from a golden tree, wherewith to disenchant the Knights. Often the gifts were represented by the merely conventional offering of a copy of verses, or of shields bearing _imprese_ or painted allegorical devices, such as were also brought by the runners in tilts.[634] These sometimes required interpretation and led to some preliminary 'commoning' with the guests of honour. Interchanges of wit at this stage between Elizabeth and Mary Fitton in 1600 and James and Philip Herbert in 1604 are upon record. But of course the chief 'commoning' was when the maskers 'took out' the principal spectators of the opposite sex to dance. Whether the Jacobean maskers kissed the ladies whom they took out I do not know, but this was the earlier custom.[635] At any rate the 'taking out' is the critical moment of intimacy between performers and spectators in the mask, and serves, even more than the gifts and even more than the personal compliments in theme and speech, to distinguish it from the drama.[636] The period of 'intermixed' dancing (_Hymenaei_), which it introduced, served as a sequel to the greater part of the mask proper, and is sometimes described as 'the revels' (_Love Freed_; _Twelve Months_). More precisely, the order of the dancing, subject to minor variations, was as follows. After the dialogue of presentation and the antimask, the maskers entered and began a series of 'masque dances' (_Oberon_; _Love Freed_), 'changes' (_Malecontent_; _Insatiate Countess_), or 'strains' (_Hymenaei_; _Cynthia's Revels_; _A Woman is a Weathercock_). These are also called the 'single' dances, to distinguish them from the 'intermixed' dances (_Blackness_) or more usually and simply, the maskers 'own' dances or the 'new' dances. Sometimes the 'first' dance is distinguished from the 'main' dance (_Twelve Months_; _Lords' Mask_; _Mercury Vindicated_; _Golden Age_). After one, two, or three 'new' dances, the maskers 'dissolved' (_Hymenaei_) and 'took out' for the 'revels'. Finally they gathered again for their 'going off' (_Twelve Months_), the 'last', 'parting', 'departing' or 'retiring' dance, which sometimes took them 'into the work' (_Oberon_). If they did not dance back 'into the work', they probably unmasked at this stage, after a ceremonial reverence to the company, known as the 'honour' (_Hay Mask_; _Your Five Gallants_; _A Woman is a Weathercock_).[637] The revels consisted partly of the solemn figured dances known as 'measures', partly of 'lighter' dances (_Hay Mask_). Those most often mentioned are the galliard, coranto, and lavolta; others were the brawl (_Browne's Mask_), duretto (_Beaumont's Mask_; _Mask of Flowers_), and morasco (_Mask of Flowers_).[638] Of course, only 'ordinary' measures (_Indian and Chinese Knights_) and familiar court dances were available for the revels. The mask dances proper, on the other hand, as the epithet 'new' indicates, were specially designed and carefully learnt for each occasion. They appear to have always been 'measures'. Baldassarino regards 'meslanges geometriques' as being of the essence of the mask. The dances were a technical matter, with which the poets were not much concerned, and they do not as a rule attempt any notation, or even detailed description of the figures. An occasional literary touch was, however, to their fancy. In _Hymenaei_ some of the figures were 'formed into letters very signifying to the name of the bridegroom', and again in the _Mask of Queens_ one of the dances was 'graphically disposed into letters, and honouring the name of the most sweet and ingenious Prince, Charles, Duke of York'. These graphic dances, which Bacon deprecates, were also used in the French _Ballet de Monseigneur le Duc de Vandosme_ of 1610.[639]

It is of a piece with the intimacy between maskers and spectators that the former appear always to have been volunteers, and that to dance in a mask, at any rate at court, was not derogatory even to persons of the highest rank. I have no proof that Queen Elizabeth ever masked in person, as her father and brother certainly did, but in view of her notorious fondness for the exercise of the dance it is extremely probable. Unfortunately we know very little of the personnel of the Elizabethan masks. The _Revels Accounts_, a source of generous information on many points, never name the maskers. Scattered notices elsewhere suggest that they may not infrequently have been the maids of honour. It was so when Brantôme was present in 1561, and at Anne Russell's wedding in 1600, when Elizabeth, contrary to the ordinary rule of sex-exchange, was 'taken' out by Mary Fitton. Among the stray names of revellers that have floated to us down the stream of time are those of George Brooke, who came to the scaffold in 1603, and Sir Robert Carey, who boasts of his share in all court triumphs in 1586.[640] Naunton is the authority for the statement that Sir Christopher Hatton first appeared before Elizabeth in one of the masks which were sent from time to time as the contributions of the Inns of Court to the royal gaiety.[641] Lists of the dancers in most of the Jacobean masks are preserved. That of James himself is not among them; he was ungainly and indolent except on horseback. But Anne danced in her own 'Queen's' masks of 1604, 1605, 1608, 1609, 1610, and probably 1611, and allowed herself to be 'taken out' as a compliment to her hosts at Caversham as late as the summer of 1613. With her in 1610 was the Princess Elizabeth, and in 1608 and 1610 the Lady Arabella Stuart. Henry was 'taken out' as a boy and 'tost from hand to hand like a tennis bal' by the ladies in the _Twelve Goddesses_ of 1604.

He masked himself in _Oberon_ (1611) and in the undatable _Twelve Months_. The only appearance of Charles before 1618 was as Zephyrus amongst the presenters of _Tethys' Festival_ (1610). Next to Anne herself, the most conspicuous performer in the Queen's masks was perhaps Lucy Countess of Bedford, who had already won her reputation as a 'fine dancing dame' at the end of the previous reign, and whose costume in one at least of her extant portraits is conjectured to represent masking attire.[642] Other names which recur frequently in the lists are those of Elizabeth Countess of Derby and her sister Susan Countess of Montgomery, Alethea Countess of Arundel, Anne Countess of Dorset, and Audrey Lady Walsingham; while amongst the men shone the two brothers Herbert, William Earl of Pembroke and Philip Earl of Montgomery, and that most splendid and extravagant of all the Jacobean courtiers, James Lord Hay. The Earl of Somerset does not appear to have been a dancer, but when the star of George Villiers was rising in 1615 his friends were careful to give him his opportunity of shining in a mask. It is not surprising to find that the numerous sons and daughters of the Earl of Suffolk, Lord Chamberlain, and the Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse, who shared the official oversight of the masks, were not seldom called upon to display their skill. One fears that there must often have been heart-burnings. Lady Hatton's pique at being left out in 1605 contributed something to the strained relations with her husband, Lord Coke, which long made mirth for London.[643]

The masks could not dispense altogether with professional assistance. In the _Mask of Beauty_ the torch-bearing Cupids were 'chosen out of the best and ingenious youth of the kingdom'. In _Tethys' Festival_ the presenters included, in addition to the Duke of York, two gentlemen 'of good worth and respect', who played the Tritons, and the antimask included eight 'little ladies, all of them the daughters of Earls or Barons'. But this mask was for the exceptional occasion of the creation of Henry as Prince of Wales, and Daniel expressly boasts that 'there were none of inferior sort mixed among these great personages of state and honour (as usually there have been); but all was performed by themselves with a due reservation of their dignity'. The normal practice seems to have been to hire players and their boys for the antimask and for the speaking parts, which of course required a trained elocution.[644] Sometimes, however, a part might be taken by one of the numerous persons employed as devisers or trainers. I do not know that the statement that 'Ben Jonson turned the globe of the earth standing behind the altar' in _Hymenaei_ necessarily implies Jonson's personal presence on the stage, actor though he had been, for in fact the globe seems to have been moved by unseen machinery, without even the apparent assistance of a presenter. But the dance-masters Thomas Giles and Jerome Heron certainly played the Cyclopes in the _Haddington Mask_, and Giles also played Thamesis in the _Mask of Beauty_. The musicians again, some or all of whom were generally disguised, were a professional body, of which the nucleus was probably formed by members of the various bands of the royal households. Thus John Allen, who sang in the _Mask of Queens_ and the _Mask of Squires_, was 'her majesty's servant', and Nicholas Lanier, who also sang in the _Mask of Squires_, was one of the King's flutes. Both musicians and dancing-masters had other important functions in connexion with the masks, outside the actual performances. The former had to compose the airs and set them for the musical instruments and the dances; the latter had to arrange the dances and to drill the dancers.[645] Campion, being a composer as well as a poet, was naturally responsible for his own music, and the musical element in his masks tended to be predominant. Jonson seems generally to have obtained the co-operation of Alfonso Ferrabosco, probably a son of the Ferrabosco who was devising masks for Elizabeth about 1572.[646] He was originally a lutenist, but at the time of his death in 1627 'enjoyed four places, viz. a musician's place in general, a composer's place, a violl's place, and an instructor's place to the prince in the art of musique'.[647] Amongst the musicians who gave minor assistance, either as composers or as executants, were Thomas Ford (_Chapman's Mask_), John Cooper (_Lords_; _Squires_), the lutenists Robert Johnson (_Oberon_; _Love Freed_; _Lords_; _Chapman's Mask_), John and Robert Dowland (_Chapman's Mask_), and Philip Rossiter (_Chapman's Mask_), and the violinists Thomas Lupo the elder (_Hay Mask_; _Oberon_; _Love Freed_; _Lords_), Rowland Rubidge (_Oberon_), and Alexander Chisan (_Oberon_).[648] As dancing-masters we hear of Thomas Cardell under Elizabeth in 1582;[649] and under James of Jerome Heron (_Haddington Mask_; _Queens_; _Oberon_; _Lords_), Confess (_Oberon_; _Love Freed_), Bochan (_Love Freed_; _Lords_), and Thomas Giles (_Hymenaei_; _Beauty_; _Haddington Mask_; _Queens_; _Oberon_; _Lords_), who was musician and teacher of the dance to Henry, and may be identical with the Thomas Giles who became Master of the Paul's boys in 1584.[650]

The court masks ordinarily took place in what was called the banqueting-house, but might with more appropriateness have been called the masking-house, at Whitehall.[651] The occasional exceptions readily explain themselves. Whitehall was under the ban of plague in the winter of 1604, and the masks were in the great hall of Hampton Court. During the winter of 1606, when the Elizabethan banqueting-house had been pulled down and the Jacobean one was not yet ready, the great hall of Whitehall itself was used. Here also was given _Chapman's Mask_, on the second night of the Princess Elizabeth's wedding, doubtless because the banqueting-house was still encumbered with the scenery belonging to the _Lords' Mask_ of the previous night. The hall had also been assigned to _Beaumont's Mask_ on the third night, but when this was put off for a few days, the greater dignity of the banqueting-house was granted as a compensation for the disappointment of the dancers. The aspect of the room and its arrangements are well described in 1618, only a year before the first Jacobean banqueting-house was burnt down, by Orazio Busino, almoner to the Venetian ambassador, Piero Contarini.[652] This may be supplemented by Campion's description of the great hall at Whitehall as arranged for the mask at Lord Hay's wedding, and by the careful note of John Finett, then an assistant to the Master of the Ceremonies, upon the seating of the ambassadors in 1616.[653] At the lower or screen end was the scene; at the upper end, and divided from the scene by the dancing-place, was the royal 'state', on a raised daïs and under a canopy. Behind the state, along the sides of the room to right and left of the dancing-place, and in galleries above, were tiers of seats, some of which were divided into boxes. James himself seems always to have been present, returning if necessary from his hunting journeys for mask nights, and sometimes starting off again the next morning at daybreak. Busino's account suggests that he liked to see vigorous and sustained dancing; but his patience failed him when he was asked to sit through three masks on successive nights in 1613, and he insisted on putting off the third, although the maskers had already come, telling Sir Francis Bacon, who protested that this was to bury them quick, that the alternative was to bury him quick, for he could last no longer. On the other hand, he was sufficiently gratified by the _Irish Mask_ in 1613 and _Mercury Vindicated_ in 1615 to be willing to call for a second performance in each case. With the King sat members of the royal family and sometimes ambassadors or other specially honoured guests. Finett records that in 1616 the French, Venetian, and Savoyard ambassadors were all on the King's right hand, but in places of nicely graded dignity, 'not right out, but byas forward'. The ambassadorial suites appear to have been accommodated in boxes raised above the level of the state, to the right and left. Guests of honour, but of lesser honour, might be placed on special benches assigned to lords and privy councillors. Evidently the masks were solemn occasions, and the laws of precedence strictly followed. An allusion in _The Maid's Tragedy_ suggests that ladies, other than those ladies of the court and ambassadors' wives who formed the king's 'troop', were ordinarily seated in the galleries.[654] One of the principal objects of the masks was the entertainment of ambassadors, and the jealousies amongst them were constantly involving James and his Council in awkward diplomatic questions.[655] These have recently been the subject of a special study, and need not here be described in detail.[656] By far the most important was the standing conflict for precedence between the representatives of France and Spain. James consistently refused to commit himself to either claim, and was careful not to invite both ambassadors to the same function.[657] But some occasions were more honourable than others, and it seems clear that in the minds of the ambassadors themselves the bestowal or withholding of an invitation often counted for a diplomatic triumph or rebuff. Matters were complicated during the earlier years of the reign by Anne's far from discreet advocacy of the Spanish cause, and the dispatches of M. de Beaumont in 1605 and M. de la Boderie in 1608 are largely occupied with the embarrassment caused to James and the humiliation inflicted upon those ambassadors themselves by the Queen's determination that her masks should be graced by the presence of the astute and courtly Spaniard, Juan de Taxis. In the latter year James had to stave off an open rupture with Henri IV by an opportune demand for the repayment of a long-standing debt. The relations between France and Spain were paralleled by similar feuds for precedence between Venice and Flanders and between Florence and Savoy, while the King of Spain was naturally unwilling that his representative should be received on terms of equality with the representative of Holland and thus appear to acknowledge the claims of rebellious provinces to rank as a sovereign state. Occasional visitors of rank had their own points of etiquette to raise. Thus in 1604 the Duke of Holstein stood for three hours rather than sit below the Venetian ambassador. Generally speaking, indeed, the newly established office of Master of the Ceremonies must have been anything but a bed of roses. The chief mask of the year, which every ambassador intrigued to attend, was traditionally danced on Twelfth Night; but often it was put off to a later date, in order to meet diplomatic exigencies.[658]

The banqueting-house, with the 'state' in it, was probably regarded as technically part of the Presence Chamber. At any rate, it was under the supervision of the Lord Chamberlain and the officers of the Chamber, headed by the Gentleman Usher. They seated the audience, kept the doors against the turbulent crowds knocking for admission, cleared the dancing-place when the King was seated, and supplied the principal guests with programmes or abstracts of the device prepared by the poet.[659] The Chamberlain's white staff was no mere symbol when there was whiffling to be done, and even Ben Jonson, 'ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a mask' on 6 January 1604, the year before his own sovereignty over masks began, required to be consoled by his fellow in misfortune, Sir John Roe, with the reminder,--

Forget we were thrust out; it is but thus, God threatens Kings, Kings Lords, as Lords do us.[660]

Obviously, as John Chamberlain suggests in a letter to Dudley Carleton, to be befriended at court was to secure the easier admission. But subject to the limitations of space and the discretion of the door-keepers, the performances seem to have been open to all comers, although the wicked wit of the dramatists is apt to suggest that citizens' wives sometimes found access more readily than the citizens themselves.[661] It is difficult to say how many the room would hold. One of De la Boderie's dispatches speaks of 10,000, which was probably a considerable over-estimate.[662] Many of those who besieged the doors must of course have been disappointed, and perhaps many of those who got in experienced more satisfaction than comfort.[663] In order to save space, it was decreed in 1613 that no ladies should be admitted in farthingales, and the repetition of the _Irish Mask_ of 1613 and the _Mercury Vindicated_ of 1615 may have been due in part to an unsatisfied demand for seats as well as to the intrinsic merit of the performances.

The mask, beginning after supper, was prolonged far into the night. That at Sir Philip Herbert's wedding lasted three hours; _Tethys' Festival_ was not over until hard upon sunrise. The pent-up audience dissolved in some confusion. Apparently the Tudor custom of finishing the proceedings by rifling the pageant and the dresses of their decorations had not been wholly abandoned.[664] A hardly less riotous scene followed. A banquet was spread in another room, the great chamber in 1605, the presence chamber in 1616, the specially built 'marriage' room in 1613. It was not etiquette for the King to partake of this with his guests, but he usually conducted the maskers to the tables, and took a survey of them before he retired. Then the fray began. The banquet was 'dispatched with the accustomed confusion', says a chronicler in 1604. In 1605 it 'was so furiously assaulted that down went tables and tressels before one bit was touched'. _Tethys' Festival_ in 1610 closed with 'views and scrambling'. At Beaumont's mask in 1613, 'after the King had made the tour of the tables, everything was in a moment rapaciously swept away'.[665] Tired and unfed, the ladies made their way out into the courtyards of the palace, perhaps to find, as in 1604, that chains and jewels were gone, and that they were even 'made shorter by the skirts'.[666]

Next day the poets sat down to turn the programmes into books, which the stationers could print and sell at sixpence each, and so save them from being pestered for copies of the verses.[667] And the Lord Chamberlain's Secretary sat down to compare his expenses with his imprests, and to draw up his accounts for endorsement by his lord and the Master of the Horse, and presentation at the Exchequer. Any estimate of the cost of masking that we can now form must be approximate in character. Under Elizabeth, so long as masks were the care of the Revels, their expenses naturally appear in the accounts of that office; but in part only, since requisitions appear to have been made upon the Wardrobe and the Office of Works, and the services rendered by these departments not charged to the Revels. Moreover, the methods of bookkeeping employed by the officers of the Revels did not provide for distinguishing expenditure upon masks and upon plays when, as was usually the case, both types of entertainment were in concurrent preparation.[668] It is therefore rarely that the cost of an Elizabethan mask can be isolated, and still more rarely that it can be assumed to be complete. Four masks in the winter of 1559 only cost the Revels £127 11_s._ 2_d._, and it was estimated that two more at Shrovetide would cost another £100. The spectacular mask in June 1572 cost £506 11_s._ 8_d._, but it is noted that the 'Warderobe stuf' was 'excepted' from the reckoning. An estimate for another spectacular mask in April 1581 amounts to about £380, and again it is clear that the materials for garments are not included. It is rather surprising to find that a mask intended to accompany the embassy to Scotland at the time of James VI's wedding cost no more than £17 10_s._ 10_d._, but this was a simple mask without a pageant, and garments already in store were 'translated' for the purpose.[669] Nor did Elizabeth desire to do any excessive honour to her cousin. On the other hand, the accounts, and particularly the inventories attached to those for the earliest years of the reign, show that the richest materials were used without stint to deck out the maskers. Clothes of gold and silver, shot with innumerable hues and often further enriched with embroidered 'works', velvets and sarcenets, satins, taffetas, and damasks; all recur in a truly royal profusion, and at a cost of anything up to a guinea or so a yard. The cheaper stuffs were no doubt used for torch-bearers, and there was room for economy in the Cologne and Venice gold and silver and other forms of tinsel that served for fringes and trimmings.[670] Copper lace, as the Duke of Newcastle gravely informed Charles II at the Restoration, looked as well as gold for the two or three nights before it tarnished: 'All Queen Elizabethes dayes shee had itt, & Kinge James.'[671] Burghley's reorganization of the Revels in 1597 apparently left the office without any responsibility for the preparation of masks, and it is not clear what arrangements were made for these during the last few years of the reign. Under James the Revels claimed fees for the personal attendance of the officers at masks, for the lighting of the banqueting-house, for small repairs to its fittings, and for no more.[672] Small sums also appear in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber for services of the mat-layer in making ready the dancing-floor, and of Grooms of the Chamber in attendance on the maskers, and in those of the Office of Works for the erection of stages and scaffolds. The incidence of the main expenditure of course depended upon whether the mask was ordered by James himself, or contributed out of the loyalty of others. James appears to have paid, in whole or in part, for at least fourteen of the twenty-five court masks traceable during the years 1603-16. These include the six Queen's masks (_Twelve Goddesses_, _Blackness_, _Beauty_, _Queens_, _Tethys' Festival_, _Love Freed_), two Prince's masks (_Oberon_, _Love Restored_), and five other masks by lords and gentlemen, one at the first Christmas of the reign (_Indian and Chinese Knights_), one at his daughter's wedding (_Lords_), one at Somerset's (_Squires_), and two of later date (_Mercury Vindicated_, _Golden Age Restored_). He may also have paid for the _Mask of Scots_ in 1604 and the _Irish Mask_ in 1613, but these were probably non-spectacular and cheap. As to the finance of the Winchester mask of 1603 and of the _Twelve Months_ nothing is known, or whether the latter, evidently planned for a Prince's mask, was ever in fact performed. To _Oberon_ and _Love Restored_ James contributed amounts of at least £387 and at least £280 respectively, but so far as _Oberon_ is concerned this was by no means the whole cost, for a sum of £1,076 6_s._ 10_d._ was charged to Henry's personal account, and it is probable that the burden of _Love Restored_ was similarly divided. I have no evidence that Anne's personal account was ever charged with any part of the cost of the Queen's masks. Certainly it was not so with _Love Freed_ in 1611, for of this mask, and of this alone, a full balance-sheet happens to be available. It was a comparatively cheap mask, deliberately so, because _Tethys' Festival_ in the summer before had been 'excessively costly'. It was intended that it should cost no more than £600. In fact the total expenditure came to £719 1_s._ 3_d._ Of this £238 16_s._ 10_d._ went to Inigo Jones on 'his byll', doubtless for the scenery; £69 17_s._ 5_d._ in minor items of costume; £292 in 'rewards', making a total of £600 14_s._ 3_d._, of which £400 had already been received from the Exchequer. This agrees closely with the original estimate, but there was a further amount of £118 7_s._ due to the Master of the Wardrobe for materials which he had supplied for costumes, and the document concludes with a memorandum signed by the Earls of Suffolk and Worcester to the effect that this amount, over and above the £600 14_s._ 3_d._, is payable. These lords, one as Lord Chamberlain, the other as Master of the Horse, seem regularly to have had the supervision of 'emptions and provisions for masks given at the royal expense'.[673] The financial procedure was as follows. At an early date, the King directed a warrant under the privy seal to the Exchequer, in which the names of the supervising officers were set out, and the Treasurer was authorized to make payments upon certificates by them.[674] A letter of 1608 suggests that up to that date it had been usual to name a maximum cost in the warrant, but thenceforward the supervising officers seem normally to have had a free hand.[675] Their own methods varied. Sometimes they asked the Exchequer, as occasion arose, to pay small sums direct to Inigo Jones and others; sometimes they wrote acknowledgements on the bills of furnishers, and sent these forward for Exchequer payment; sometimes they authorized a subordinate officer to draw one or two large sums and meet the expenditure out of these. For 'rewards' no doubt the last was the more convenient way. We find one Bethell, a gentleman usher of the chamber, thus designated as payee in 1608, Henry Reynolds in 1609, Meredith Morgan in 1612, 1613, 1614, and 1616, Walter James in 1615, and Edmund Sadler in 1616.[676] The balance-sheet for _Love Freed_, although it contains items for the dresses of the presenters, antimaskers, and musicians, contains none which can be assigned to those of the main maskers, and there is other evidence for thinking that, even in a royal mask, the lords or ladies who danced were expected to dress themselves. Thus John Chamberlain tells us of the _Mask of Squires_ that the King was to bear the charge, 'all saving the apparel'. The practice, however, was probably not invariable, for the Exchequer documents relating to _Tethys' Festival_ contain a silkman's bill for lace used for the dresses of fourteen ladies. For the _Twelve Goddesses_ warrants were issued to Lady Suffolk and Lady Walsingham to take Queen Elizabeth's robes from the wardrobe in the Tower. The list of 'rewards' for _Love Freed_ can be supplemented from similar lists for _Oberon_ and the _Lords' Mask_ and a few scattered records. The largest amounts went to the poets and the architect. Jones had £50 for the _Lords' Mask_ and £40 each for _Love Freed_ and _Oberon_, Jonson £40 for _Love Freed_, Daniel £20 for _Tethys' Festival_, Campion, being both poet and musician, £66 13_s._ 4_d._ for the _Lords' Mask_. Dancers and composers got from £10 to £40; lutenists and violinists £1 or £2; players £1 each. For the total cost we are mainly reduced to guess-work, although contemporary gossip, sometimes a little disturbed at the extravagance, may help us, if it was not itself based on guess-work.[677] We hear of £2,000 to £3,000 for the _Twelve Goddesses_ and the two other masks of the first winter, £3,000 and 25,000 _scudi_ for _Blackness_, 6,000 or 7,000 and later 30,000 _scudi_ for _Beauty_, £1,500 for _Mercury Vindicated_, £2,000 for _Queens_, which, however, M. Reyher estimates from Exchequer documents which he does not print, at more than £4,000.[678] These figures probably include the contributions of the Wardrobe, as these were to be repaid out of the special allowances in 1611. There is yet one other source of information. A return of extraordinary disbursements of the Exchequer for 1603-9, during which period there were six or seven royal masks, gives £4,215 under this head, and a similar return for 1603-17, during which there were from fourteen to sixteen, including the _Vision of Delight_ in 1617, gives £7,500.[679] But this last figure is specifically stated not to include 'the provisions had out of the Warderobe and materials and workmen from the Office of the Works'. At a venture, I should say that a royal mask cost about £2,000 on the average. Something may also be gleaned about the finance of those masks that were not wholly charged on the Exchequer. _Oberon_, to which both James and Henry contributed, was supervised by the chamberlain of Henry's household, Sir Thomas Chaloner. The Inns of Court masks brought to the Princess Elizabeth's wedding were paid for out of admission fees to chambers and levies raised upon the members of the Inns, according to their status. Chamberlain estimated the cost of the two masks as 'better than £4,000', and the accounts that have been preserved show that in fact Chapman's mask cost Lincoln's Inn and the Middle Temple £1,086 8_s._ 11_d._ each, and Beaumont's cost Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple over £1,200 each. On the other hand, the whole cost of the _Mask of Flowers_, given by Gray's Inn at the Earl of Somerset's wedding, being over £2,000, was met by Sir Francis Bacon, who refused an offered contribution of £500 from Sir Henry Yelverton. The masks at the weddings of Sir Philip Herbert, Lord Essex, Lord Hay, and Lord Haddington were all, certainly or probably, complimentary offerings of friends of the hymeneal couples. Lady Rutland, who danced in _Hymenaei_, paid £80 to Bethell, and £26 11_s._ more for her own apparel. The _Haddington Mask_ cost each of the twelve dancers £300, and must therefore have been one of the most expensive masks of the period. Obviously the highest estimates for the masks do not include the value of the jewels with which the dancers bedizened themselves. In the _Twelve Goddesses_ Anne is said to have worn £100,000 worth and the other ladies £20,000 worth. Of _Hymenaei_ John Pory says, 'I think they hired and borrowed all the principall jewels and ropes of perle both in court and citty. The Spanish ambassador seemed but poore to the meanest of them.' Even this Chamberlain could cap for _Beauty_. 'One lady, and that under a baroness, is said to be furnished for better than a hundred thousand pounds. And the Lady Arabella goes beyond her; and the queen must not come behind.' Thus they revelled it.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 582: Perhaps Jonson's persistent use of 'masque' for the older 'mask' confesses a sense of derivation in his mind.]

[Footnote 583: The data are collected by Prunières, 34.]

[Footnote 584: Brantôme (ed. Soc. H. F.), vii. 346; Prunières, 48 sqq.; Brotanek, 291.]

[Footnote 585: _Magnificentissimi spectaculi ... in Henrici Regis Poloniae ... gratulationem Descriptio Io Aurato Poeta Regio Autore_ (1573); cf. Lacroix, i. xxi, and the engraving reproduced by Prunières as pl. 2. Prunières, 70, thinks that Baltasar had already taken part in the 'mascarade', half-tilt, half-dance, at the wedding of Henri of Navarre in 1572.]

[Footnote 586: _Balet comique de la Royne faict aux Nopces de Monsieur le Duc de Joyeuse et de Mademoyselle de Vaudemont, sa Sœur, par Baltasar de Beaujoyeulx, Valet de Chambre du Roy et de la Royne, sa Mere_ (1582). This is reprinted, but without the engravings, by Lacroix, i. 1; cf. Prunières, 75, who gives one of the engravings as his pl. 3.]

[Footnote 587: Prunières, 94 _sqq._ Lacroix, i. 89, 109, 237, 271, 305, prints four French masks which allow of a useful comparison with those of England, viz. _Ballet des Chevaliers François et Béarnois_ (1592), _Balletz representez devant le Roy_ (1593), _Ballet de Monseigneur le Duc de Vandosme_ (1610); _Ballet du Courtisan et des Matrones_ (1612); also a description of _Le Grand Bal de la Reine Marguerite_ (1612), which shows the relation of the mask to the contemporary non-mimetic state ball. On French masks of 1605, 1609, 1612, and 1615, cf. Sullivan, 29, 52, 67, 99.]

[Footnote 588: Exceptionally, the main scene was supplemented by a throne 'in midst of the hall' in the _Mask of Beauty_ and by a mount and tree at the upper end of the hall in _Tethys' Festival_.]

[Footnote 589: On Hans Eottes, or Eworth, first traceable as Jon Eeuwowts of Antwerp in 1540, and the considerable body of portrait work now ascribed to him, cf. L. Cust, _The Painter E_ (_Annual of Walpole Soc._ ii. 1; iii. 113). On Ferrabosco and Ubaldini, ch. xiv (Italians).]

[Footnote 590: For the career of Jones, cf. _D. N. B._, Reyher, 75; R. Blomfield in _Portfolio_ (1889), 88, 113, 126; and _Renaissance Architecture in England_, i. 97; H. P. Horne, _An Essay on the Life of Inigo Jones, Architect_ in _The Hobby Horse_ (1893), 22, 64; Cunningham, _Inigo Jones_ (1848). Designs by Jones for the scenery, stage-machinery, and dresses of masks and other court entertainments are in _Lansdowne MS._ 1171, and in the collections of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth and of the Royal Institute of British Architects. They are mostly of the Caroline rather than the Jacobean period. A few have been reproduced by Cunningham, Reyher, and Lawrence, ii. 97. P. Simpson (_Sh. England_, ii. 311) gives eight figures for the _Mask of Queens_.]

[Footnote 591: 'The design and act of all which, together with the device of their habits, belong properly to the merit and reputation of Master Inigo Jones, whom I take modest occasion in this fit place to remember, lest his own worth might accuse me of an ignorant neglect from my silence' (_Hymenaei_); 'The structure and ornament ... was entirely Master Jones's invention and design.... All which I willingly acknowledge for him; since it is a virtue planted in good natures, that what respects they wish to obtain fruitfully from others they will give ingenuously themselves' (_Queens_).]

[Footnote 592: 'The artificiall part onely speakes Master Inago Jones' (_Tethys' Festival_); 'I suppose few have ever seen more neat artifice than Master Inigo Jones shewed in contriving their motion, who in all the rest of the workmanship which belonged to the whole invention shewed extraordinary industry and skill, which if it be not as lively exprest in writing as it appeared in view, rob not him of his due, but lay the blame on my want of right apprehending his instructions for the adorning his art' (_Lords_).]

[Footnote 593: Cunningham, _Jonson_, iii. 211.]

[Footnote 594: _Mask of Blackness_ (1605); _Hymenaei_ (1606); _Haddington Mask_ (1608); _Mask of Queens_ (1609); _Tethys' Festival_ (1610); _Oberon_ (1611); _Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly_ (1611); _Lords' Mask_ (1613); _Chapman's Mask_ (1613). The designers of the _Hay Mask_ (1607), _Beaumont's Mask_ (1613), and the _Mask of the Twelve Months_ are not named. Jonson says that the scene of the _Mask of Beauty_ (1608) was 'put in act' by the King's Master Carpenter. This was an officer of the Works, one William Portington (Jupp, _Carpenters' Company_, 165). He was not necessarily the designer, but Jonson does not, as one would expect, mention Jones. _Love Restored_ (1612) had a chariot, but perhaps no scene. The _Irish Mask_ (1613) seems to be a Jacobean example of the simple mask. The _Caversham Mask_ (1613) is another, but this was not at court.]

[Footnote 595: A far more thorough treatment than is possible for me will be found in the chapter on _La Mise en Scène_, in Reyher, 332.]

[Footnote 596: Designs by Jones for _proscenia_ (of Caroline date) are reproduced by Lawrence (i. 97), _The Mounting of the Carolan Masques_; on proscenium titles, cf. Lawrence, i. 46.]

[Footnote 597: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 117; cf. Halle, ii. 87.]

[Footnote 598: An ingenious paper on _The Story of a Peculiar Stage Curtain_ in Lawrence, i. 109, suggests an affiliation between this sinking curtain and the Roman _aulaeum_.]

[Footnote 599: _Chamber Accounts_; cf. Reyher, 358.]

[Footnote 600: Reyher, 367.]

[Footnote 601: Cf. ch. xx.]

[Footnote 602: Cf. ch. xix.]

[Footnote 603: Cunliffe, _The Influence of Italian on Early Elizabethan Drama_ (_M. P._ iv. 597), and _Early English Classical Tragedies_, xl.]

[Footnote 604: F. A. Foster, _Dumb Show in Elizabethan Drama before 1620_ (_E. S._ xliv. 8); cf. ch. xviii.]

[Footnote 605: Cunliffe, xxxi, xxxix.]

[Footnote 606: For the spectacle as dream, cf. _Henry VIII_, iv. 2; _Cymbeline_, v. 4, which, like the epiphany in _A. Y. L._ v. 4, perhaps illustrates the point all the better in that it is probably an interpolation; for the spectacle as magic show, Marlowe, _Dr. Faustus_, 515, 721, 1263; _Macbeth_, iv. 1; _Tempest_, iii. 3, and the mock magic of _Merry Wives_, v. 5. The mask of _Tempest_, iv. 1, is of course both mask and magic.]

[Footnote 607: _Hamlet_, iii. 2. 146. On the play within a play, cf. H. Schwab, _Das Schauspiel im Schauspiel zur Zeit Shaksperes_ (1896).]

[Footnote 608: In _Spanish Tragedy_, i. 5, Hieronimo brings in a 'pompous jest' in which three knights hang up their scutcheons and capture three kings. This is called a 'mask' (l. 23), but there is no dance, only a dumb-show interpreted by Hieronimo. Similarly the 'Maske of Cupid' in Spenser, _F. Q._ III. xii, is merely an allegorical procession, without a dance. Later, Dekker and Ford's play of _The Sun's Darling_ (1656) is described on the title-page as 'a moral masque'.]

[Footnote 609: Cf. Boas, 206.]

[Footnote 610: _L. L. L._ v. 2; _R. J._ i. 4, 5. Similarly the mask in _Hen. VIII_, i. 4, is suggested by the historic source. In _M. V._ ii. 5, 28, Shylock warns Jessica against masks in the street, with their drum and 'wry-necked fife', but none is shown.]

[Footnote 611: Marston, _1 Antonio and Mellida_ (_1599_; v. 1), _2 Antonio and Mellida_ (_1599_; v. 1, 2), _Dutch Courtesan_ (_1603_; iv. 1), _Malcontent_ (_1604_; v. 2, 3), _Insatiate Countess_ (_c. 1610_; ii. 1); Chapman, _May Day_ (_1602_; v. 1), _Widow's Tears_ (_1605_; iii. 2), _Byron's Tragedy_ (_1608_; ii. 1); Middleton, _The Old Law_ (a mask in a tavern, _1599_; iv. 1), _Blurt Master Constable_ (_c. 1600_; ii. 2), _A Mad World, my Masters_ (_c. 1604-6_; ii. 2, 4, 5), _Your Five Gallants_ (_1607_; iv. 8; v. 1, 2), _No Wit, no Help, like a Woman's_ (_c. 1613_; iv. 2); Field, _A Woman is a Weathercock_ (_c. 1609_; v. 1, 2); Jonson, _Cynthia's Revels_ (_1601_; iv. 5, 6; v. 1-5).]

[Footnote 612: _The Coxcomb_ (_1610_; i. 1), _Maid's Tragedy_ (_1611_; i. 1, 2), _Four Plays in One_ (_1612_; i. v), _Two Noble Kinsmen_ (not strictly a mask, _1613_; iii. 5), _Henry VIII_ (_1613_; i. 4), _Wit at Several Weapons_ (_1614_; v. 1).]

[Footnote 613: A. H. Thorndike, _The Influence of the Court-Masques on the Drama_ (_M. L. A._ xv. 114); _The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere_, 130, 148.]

[Footnote 614: I think Criticus must here be taken to be Jonson's self-portrait. He told Drummond in 1619 that 'by Criticus is understood Done' (_Conversations_, 6); but the reference there appears to be to the lost 'preface of his _Arte of Poesie_'. In the folio text of the play Criticus becomes Crites.]

[Footnote 615: The maskers in _Wit at Several Weapons_, v. i, are 'something like the abstract of a masque'; cf. _R. J._ i. 4. 3--

The date is out of such prolixity. We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf, Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath, Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper; Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke After the prompter, for our entrance. ]

[Footnote 616: _Satiromastix_, 2325, 'The watch-word in a maske is the bolde drum'.]

[Footnote 617: I do not wish to exaggerate this detachment. Peele builds upon the customary prayer for the queen or lord at the end of an interlude (cf. chh. x, xviii, xxii), and there are the plays with inductions, such as _The Taming of the Shrew_ and _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, in which the personages of the induction mediate between the action and the audience.]

[Footnote 618: I find 'tronchwoman' (Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 217), 'troocheman' (Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 287), 'trounchman' (Gascoigne, i. 85), and as interpreters of mimetic tilts 'crocheman' (Halle, i. 13), 'trounchman' (Peele, _Polyhymnia_, 47); also 'an interpreter or a truchman' accompanying the 'orator speaking a straunge language' in the train of the Lord of Misrule in 1552-3 (Feuillerat, _Edw. and M._ 89, 123). W. D. Macray has the following note to 'truckman' which appears in the text of Clarendon, _History_, i. 75, 'i. e. _truchman_ = _dragoman_. In the old editions the word "interpreter" was substituted as an explanation; in the last editions "trustman" was given as the reading of the MS.'. _N. E. D._ gives the earliest use of the word as 1485 and derives through Med. Lat. _turchemannus_ from Arab. _turjam[=a]n_, interpreter, whence also _dragoman_.]

[Footnote 619: Generally speaking, the themes of the Jacobean masks are more literary than those of their Elizabethan precursors. The following analysis is based upon the disguises of the maskers, which may be classed under four main heads: _National Types_--(Elizabethan), Moors, Swart Rutters, Lance-Knights, Hungarians, Barbarians, Venetian Patriarchs, Italian Women, Venetians, Turks; (Jacobean), Indian and Chinese Knights, Virginians, Irishmen. _Occupations_--(Elizabethan), Ecclesiastics, Fisherwives, Marketwives, Astronomers, Shipmen, Country Maids, Clowns, Hunters, Tilters, Fishermen and Fruitwives, Mariners, Foresters, Warriors, Pedlars, Seamen; (Jacobean), none. _Inanimate Objects_--(Elizabethan), none; (Jacobean), Signs of Zodiac, Stars and Statues, Flowers. _Abstractions_--(Elizabethan), Nusquams, Virtues, Passions; (Jacobean), Humours and Affections, Ornaments of Court, Months. _Historical and Mythical Personages_--(Elizabethan), Conquerors, Huntsmen of Actaeon and Nymphs of Diana, Wise and Foolish Virgins, Satyrs, Greek Goddesses, Janus, Sages, Wild Men, Amazons and Knights, Knights of Purpulia, Muses; (Jacobean), Goddesses, Daughters of Niger (_bis_), Powers of Juno, Knights of Apollo, Sons of Mercury, Nymphs of English Rivers, Knights of Oberon, Daughters of Morn, Knights of Olympia, Disenchanted Knights, Sons of Nature, Circe's Lovers, Sons of Phoebus. It is possible that the mediaeval _barbatoriae_ (_Mediaeval Stage_, i. 362) were dances representing national types. Jean d'Auton (_Chroniques_, ii. 99) describes, amongst other _mommeries_ at the court of Louis XII in 1501, 'une danse en barboire, en laquelle fut dancé à la mode de France, d'Allemaigne, d'Espaigne et Lombardye, et à la fin en la manière de Poictou ... lesquelz estoyent tous habillez à la sorte du pays dont ils dancerent à la mode'.]

[Footnote 620: _Gesta Grayorum_; _Hay Mask_; _Lords' Mask_; _Mask of Squires_; _Mask of Flowers_; _Browne's Mask_ (introducing Circe). As late as 1632 Aurelian Townshend and Inigo Jones borrow the episode of Circe and the Fugitive in _Tempe Restored_.]

[Footnote 621: An exception is _Love Restored_, where the place of an antimask is taken by the long comic induction by Masquerado, Plutus, and Robin Goodfellow.]

[Footnote 622: Chapman also uses the phrase 'mocke-maske', which is analogous to Jonson's 'antimasque'.]

[Footnote 623: Brotanek, 141. I find 'antick Maske' also in an Exchequer record (Reyher, 509) relating to the _Lords' Mask_ of 1613.]

[Footnote 624: Cf. the opening stage-direction to _James IV_ (1598), 'Enter after Oberon, King of Fayries, an Antique, who dance about a Tombe'.]

[Footnote 625: Lacroix, i. 241, 262, 291, 296.]

[Footnote 626: The relation of the morris-dance to the folk is described in _The Mediaeval Stage_, i. 195, but I think that the history of the name requires further examination. There are traces of morris-dances at court in 1559 and 1579, and there was a sword-dance on 6 Jan. 1604.]

[Footnote 627: Feuillerat, _Edw. and Mary_, 59.]

[Footnote 628: _Romeo and Juliet_, i. 4. 38, 'I'll be a candle-holder and look on'; cf. Reyher, 90, citing W. Rankins, _Mirrour of Monsters_ (1587), 'There were certain petty fellows ready, as the custom is in maskes, to carry torches'; _Westward Hoe_, i. 2, 'He is just like a torch-bearer to maskers; he wears good clothes, and is ranked in good company, but he doth nothing'; Overbury, _Characters_ (1614, ed. Rimbault, 55, _An Ignorant Glory Hunter_), 'In any shew he will be one, though he be but a whiffler or a torch-bearer'.]

[Footnote 629: A disguising of 1501 had already 'a goodly pageant made round after the fashion of a lanthorne cast out with many proper and goodly windows fenestred with fine lawne wher in were more than an hundred great lightes' (Reyher, 503).]

[Footnote 630: Before 1610 torch-bearers may have been omitted from _Hymenaei_ and the _Haddington Mask_; after 1610, they are only noticed in _Oberon_, the _Lords' Mask_, and _Chapman's Mask_.]

[Footnote 631: The descriptions often say nothing of vizards, but probably they take them for granted, for as late as 1618 Chamberlain writes of the Gray's Inn _Mask of Mountebanks_ (Birch, ii. 66), 'I cannot call it a masque, seeing they were not disguised, nor had vizards'. Similarly the unmasking is rarely described (_Indian and Chinese Knights_; _Twelve Goddesses_; _Hay Mask_), and may have been omitted as a formal stage, especially when the maskers danced off into the pageant.]

[Footnote 632: Cf. p. 168.]

[Footnote 633: Cf. ch. xxiii (Daniel, _Twelve Goddesses_).]

[Footnote 634: Cf. ch. iv.]

[Footnote 635: _R. J._ i. 5. 95; _Hen. VIII_, i. 4. 95,

I were unmannerly to take you out. And not to kiss you.

The amorous tradition of the 'commoning' which apparently frightened some of the ladies at Henry's court, survived under Elizabeth. In Lyly's _Euphues and his England_ (_Works_, ii. 103), Philautus takes Camilla by the hand in a mask and begins 'to boord hir' in this manner, 'It hath ben a custome faire Lady, how commendable I wil not dispute, how common you know, that Masquers do therfore couer their faces that they may open their affections, & vnder yᵉ colour of a dance, discouer their whole desires'; cf. Reyher, 23.]

[Footnote 636: _Maid's Tragedy_, i. 1. 9, 'They must commend their King, and speak in praise Of the assembly, bless the Bride and Bridegroom, In person of some God; th'are tyed To rules of flattery'.]

[Footnote 637: This old phrase, known to Sir T. Elyot, _The Governour_, i. 22, is still traditional in folk dances.]

[Footnote 638: On these dances, cf. Reyher, 441.]

[Footnote 639: Lacroix, i. 256, 262.]

[Footnote 640: Goodman, i. 70, 'George Brooks ... brother to Cobham ... was a great reveller at court in the masques where the queen and greatest ladies were'; Carey, 6, 'In all triumphs I was one; either at tilt, tourney, or barriers, in masque or balls'.]

[Footnote 641: Naunton, 44, 'Sir Christopher Hatton came into the court ... as a private gentleman of the inns of court in a mask, and for his activity and person, which was tall and proportionable, taken into favour'.]

[Footnote 642: C. C. Stopes, _A Lampoon on the Opponents of Essex, 1601_ (_Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xlvi. 21); Reyher, 98, apparently referring to the full-length portrait by Marc Geeraerts at Woburn Abbey, reproduced in Henderson, _James I_, 232. It is a fantastic costume, but not obviously that of a mask.]

[Footnote 643: Winwood, ii. 40.]

[Footnote 644: _Dekker His Dream_ (1620, _Works_, iii. 7), 'I herein imitate the most courtly revellings; for if Lords be in the grand masque, in the antimasque are players'; Jonson, _Love Restored_ (_Works_, iii. 83). 'The rogue play-boy, that acts Cupid, is got so hoarse, your majesty cannot hear him half the breadth of your chair'. The accounts for _Oberon_ include £10 to 'xiijⁿ Holt boyes' and £15 to 'players imployed in the maske'; those for _Love Freed_ £10 to '5 boyes, that is 3 Graces Sphynx and Cupid', and £12 to 'the 12 fooles that danced', and those for the _Lords' Mask_ £1 each to '12 madfolkes' and '5 speakers' (Reyher, 508).]

[Footnote 645: The rehearsals were a serious business, lasting in 1616 no less than fifty days; cf. Reyher, 35. There were dress rehearsals; cf. Osborne in note to p. 206, _infra_.]

[Footnote 646: Cf. p. 163, and _D. N. B._, s.v. Ferrabosco.]

[Footnote 647: Lafontaine, 63.]

[Footnote 648: Reyher, 79.]

[Footnote 649: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 356.]

[Footnote 650: Reyher, 78.]

[Footnote 651: _Blackness_ certainly and _Hymenaei_ probably were in the Elizabethan room. The Jacobean room was first used for _Beauty_ (10 Jan. 1608). It was also used for _Queens_, _Oberon_, _Lords_, _Beaumont's_, _Squires_, and _Flowers_, and probably for all others from 1608 to 1616 except _Chapman's_.]

[Footnote 652: Busino, _Anglopotrida_ (_V. P._ xv. 110), describing Jonson's _Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue_ on 6 Jan. 1618, 'A large hall is fitted up like a theatre, with well secured boxes all round. The stage is at one end and his Majesty's chair in front under an ample canopy. Near him are stools for the foreign ambassadors.... Whilst waiting for the king we amused ourselves admiring the decorations and beauty of the house with its two orders of columns, one above the other, their distance from the wall equalling the breadth of the passage, that of the second row being upheld by Doric pillars, while above these rise Ionic columns supporting the roof. The whole is of wood, including even the shafts, which are carved and gilt with much skill. From the roof of these hang festoons and angels in relief with two rows of lights. Then such a concourse as there was, for although they profess only to admit the favoured ones who are invited, yet every box was filled notably with most noble and richly arrayed ladies, in number some 600 and more according to the general estimate;... On entering the house, the cornets and trumpets to the number of fifteen or twenty began to play very well a sort of recitative, and then after his Majesty had seated himself under the canopy alone, the queen not being present on account of a slight indisposition, he caused the ambassadors to sit below him on two stools, while the great officers of the crown and courts of law sat upon benches. The Lord Chamberlain then had the way cleared and in the middle of the theatre there appeared a fine and spacious area carpeted all over with green cloth. In an instant a large curtain dropped, painted to represent a tent of gold cloth with a broad fringe; the background was of canvas painted blue, powdered all over with golden stars. This became the front arch of the stage.']

[Footnote 653: Finett, 32. The plan from _Lansd._ 1171 in Reyher, 346, dates from 1635 and represents the great Hall arranged not for a mask but for a pastoral; but the general scheme was probably much the same.]

[Footnote 654: _Maid's Tragedy_, i. 2. 32.]

[Footnote 655: Birch, i. 24 (27 Nov. 1603), 'many plays and shows are bespoken, to give entertainment to our ambassadors'.]

[Footnote 656: Sullivan, _Court Masques of James I_; cf. my notes on the individual masks in ch. xxiii.]

[Footnote 657: De Silva's dispatches of 1564-6 (cf. p. 26) show that a precisely similar situation had established itself at Elizabeth's court.]

[Footnote 658: Beaumont in _B. M. Kings MS._ cxxiv, f. 328, 'le ... ballet ... de la Reine qui se devoit danser au vendredy dernier jour des festes de Noël selon la façon d'Angleterre et le plus honnorable pour la ceremonie qui s'y obserue de tout temps publiquement'; Finett, 6, 'il se pourroit soustenir que le dernier jour seroit a prendre pour le plus gran jour comm'il s'entend en plusiours autres cas, et nommement aux festes de Noël, que le Jour des Roys qui est le dernier se prend pour le plus gran jour'. The chief masks of 1606-7, 1611-12, 1613-14, and 1614-16, were on 6 Jan. In 1603-4, 1607-8, and 1608-9, the Queen's masks were planned for that day, but put off. In 1605-6 and 1609-10 the day was given to barriers.]

[Footnote 659: Cf. p. 39. The accounts for the _Lords' Mask_ include fees of £1 each to three Grooms of the Chamber; those of _Chapman's Mask_, given exceptionally in the great Hall, £1 to the Ushers of the Hall. The manuscript of the _Mask of Blackness_ appears to be an abstract for use at the performance. In 1613 a Groom of the Chamber was also paid £7 for 42 nights watching in the banqueting-house while workmen were there (_Chamber Accounts_).]

[Footnote 660: Donne, _Poems_ (ed. Grierson), i. 414; cf. Jonson, _Conversations_, 10.]

[Footnote 661: _Four Plays in One_, 2, 'Down with those City-Gentlemen, &c. Out with those ---- I say, and in with their wives at the back door'; _Love Restored_, 'By this time I saw a fine citizen's wife or two let in; and that figure provoked me exceedingly to take it'. Here Robin Goodfellow is recounting his various attempts to secure admission, as an engineer, a tirewoman, a musician, a feather-maker of Blackfriars and the like. Carleton wrote of the mask on 27 Dec. 1604 (_S. P. Dom. Jac. I_, xii. 6), 'One woeman among the rest lost her honesty for which she was caried to the porters lodge being surprised at her bassnes on the top of the taras'.]

[Footnote 662: _Ambassades_, iii. 13.]

[Footnote 663: Osborne, _James_, 75, 'So disobliging were the most grateful pleasures of the Court; whose masks and other spectacles, though they wholly intended them for show, and would not have been pleased without great store of company, yet did not spare to affront such as come to see them; which accuseth the King no less of folly, in being at so vast an expense for that which signified nothing but in relation to pride and lust, than the spectators (I mean such as were not invited) of madness, who did not only give themselves the discomposure of body attending such irregular hours, but to others an opportunity to abuse them. Nor could I, that had none of their share who passed through the most incommodious access, count myself any great gainer (who did ever find some time before the grand night to view the scene) after I had reckoned my attendance and sleep; there appearing little observable besides the company, and what Imagination might conjecture from the placing of the Ladies and the immense charge and universal vanity in clothes, &c.']

[Footnote 664: Jonson, _Mask of Blackness_, 7, 'Little had been done to the study of magnificence in these, if presently with the rage of the people, who (as a part of greatness) are privileged by custom to deface their carcases, the spirits had also perished'; cf. Halle, i. 27, 117. At _Tethys' Festival_ the Duke of York and six young noblemen led off the maskers 'to avoid the confusion which usually attendeth the desolve of these shewes'.]

[Footnote 665: Cf. ch. xxiii; also Busino in _V. P._ xv. 114.]

[Footnote 666: Winwood. ii. 43.]

[Footnote 667: On 2 Feb. 1604, the Earl of Worcester wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury of _The Twelve Goddeses_ (Lodge, iii. 87), 'I have been at sixpence charge with you to send you the book'. He adds that the books of another _ballet_ were 'all called in'. After the _Mask of Beauty_ Lord Lisle wrote to Shrewsbury (Lodge, App. 102) that he could not get the verses, because Jonson was busy writing more for the Haddington wedding.]

[Footnote 668: Cf. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 669: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 110, 153, 168, 345, 392.]

[Footnote 670: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 18, 112, _et passim_.]

[Footnote 671: Newcastle, _On Government_ (S. A. Strong, _Cat. of Documents at Welbeck_, 223). The direct reference is to tilts, but an earlier passage runs, 'Well Sʳ Then your Maᵗᶦᵉ is well returned to White-Halle & ther prepare a maske for twelve-tyde,--Etaliens makes the Seanes beste,--& all butt your Maᵗᶦᵉ maye have their Glorius Atier off Coper which will doe as well for two or three nightes as Silver or Golde & much less charge, which otherwise will bee much founde falte withall by those thatt attendes your Maᵗᶦᵉ in the maske'.]

[Footnote 672: Cunningham, 203-17; cf. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 673: They certainly supervised _Queens_, _Tethys' Festival_, _Love Freed_, _Lords' Mask_.]

[Footnote 674: The privy seal of 1 Dec. 1608 for _Queens_ is in _S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxviii. 1, and that of 7 Jan. 1613 for the _Lords' Mask_ in Collier, i. 364; a certificate of 25 May 1610 for _Tethys' Festival_ is printed by Sullivan, 219, from _S. P. D. Jac. I_, liv. 74.]

[Footnote 675: Sullivan, 201, misdated 27 Nov. 1607 for 1608, from _S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxvii. 96. The mask was _Queens_.]

[Footnote 676: Reyher, 508, 520; cf. ch. xxiii.]

[Footnote 677: W. ffarington writes on 7 Feb. 1609 (_Chetham Soc._