The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1

THE mask is not primarily a drama; it is an episode in an indoor revel of dancing. Masked and otherwise disguised persons come, by convention unexpectedly, into the hall, as a compliment to the hosts or the principal guests. Often they bring them gifts; always they dance before them, and then invite them to join the dance. They bring torch-bearers and musicians, who light and accompany the choric evolutions. Their intention lends itself to elaboration by spokesmen or presenters, and to such spectacular decoration as a pageant or scene affords; thus it readily assumes a mimetic setting. It is necessary to lay stress on the fact that the guests mingle with the maskers in the dance. This intimacy between performers and spectators differentiates the mask from the drama to the end; its goal is the masked ball, not the opera. And as a corollary to this intimacy, the performers are of the same social standing as the audience; the mask is an amateur and not a professional performance.

I have attempted elsewhere to indicate a possible folk origin for the mask in the visits of excited worshippers, with fragments of a divine and immolated animal, from house to house of a village, in order that all may share the direct contact of the beneficent and potent thing. Those persistent vizards and torches may perhaps recall, the one the head and skin of the sacrificed victim, the other the brand snatched from the sacrificial fire, itself perhaps the survival of a sunshine charm even older than the sacrifice.[513] Obviously in the humanist and even sceptical court of Elizabeth any consciousness of the 'luck' of the mask must have been quite subliminal. It was a custom, like the rest, belonging of right to the twelve days of the Christmas rejoicing, but adaptable readily enough to a wedding or any other occasion of mundane festivity. As a medium of courtly compliment to a sovereign it is already well established in the fourteenth century. When Prince Richard, afterwards Richard II, was keeping Candlemas at Kennington in 1377, citizens of London, to the number of 130, rode to visit him with musicians and torch-bearers. They wore vizards and were dressed to represent the members of an imperial and a papal court. Entering the hall, they diced with the prince and his company for jewels, using loaded dice so as to be sure of losing. After the dicing the music sounded, and 'the prince and the lordes danced on the one syde and the mummers on the other a great while and then they dronck and tooke their leaue'. The whole proceeding is called 'mumming'.[514] It is to be noted that the 'lucky' character of the gifts is emphasized by the show of dicing, and that the fraternization of maskers and spectators in the dance is clearly marked. This is important, because during the changes of the fifteenth century this particular and primitive element was apparently forgotten. It was a period of literary and spectacular elaboration. The dance in disguise attracted to itself other forms of courtly entertainment that were then in vogue; the speech and dialogue of allegorical or mythological personages, the architectural pageant, the mimic tournament, even the interlude.[515] Splendid devices were shown in Westminster Hall before the sovereigns under their cloths of estate at the wedding of Prince Arthur and Katharine of Aragon in 1501.[516] On the first night three great pageants were successively wheeled in. The first was a castle drawn by four beasts and bearing eight disguised ladies. The second was a ship with mariners, whose 'counteynaunces speaches and demeanor' doubtless furnished an element of comedy. They brought Hope and Love, who were ambassadors from the third pageant, a Mount of Love, which bore eight knights. These descended and assaulted the castle, and finally the ladies yielded and knights and ladies danced together. On the second night the pageants represented an arbour and a lanthorn; on the third two mountains; on the fourth, at Richmond, a chapel. Very similar to these revels of Henry VII's reign are those described by the chronicler Halle during the early years of that of Henry VIII.[517] Many variations are possible. There is not always a pageant. The comic element may take the form of a 'morris'. The whole thing may form a setting or afterpiece to an interlude. Occasionally a dicing is introduced, and to this variety the term 'mumming' or 'mummery' appears by the sixteenth century to have been specialized.[518] The more generic term is 'disguising'. For all its elaboration, the early sixteenth-century disguising retained many of its original features. Vizards and torches are employed. The disguisers come in suddenly, as a surprise to the guests. But unlike the visitors of Richard II in 1377, they do not, so far as the records show, call upon the guests to take a part in the dancing. This characteristic feature of the primitive ceremony seems, under these particular conditions, to have dropped out. Generally, though not always, there are two sets of disguised persons, lords and ladies, corresponding to the 'double mask' of later days, and these dance together. When they go out, the guests very likely dance amongst themselves, before the 'void', or refreshment of wine and spices, comes in. But of direct contact between disguisers and guests, except in the old-fashioned 'mummery' with its dice-play, there is nothing.

This same divorce between performers and spectators seems to rule in the momeries and entremets, which correspond to the English disguisings in fifteenth-century France and Burgundy, and in many of the intermedii and trionfi of fifteenth-century Italy.[519] But somewhere in Italy, possibly in the carnival masks of Florence, the primitive practice must have survived; and from Italy it made its way back again to France, and also to England, under the rather unjustifiable colour of a novelty.[520] It was on the Twelfth Night of 1512, according to Halle, that 'the Kyng with xi other wer disguised, after the maner of Italie, called a maske, a thyng not seen afore in Englande, thei were appareled in garmentes long and brode, wrought all with gold, with visers and cappes of gold, and after the banket doen, these maskers came in, with sixe gentlemen disguised in silke bearyng staffe torches, and desired the ladies to daunce, some were content, and some that knew the fashion of it refused, because it was not a thyng commonly seen. And after thei daunced and commoned together, as the fashion of the maskes is, thei toke their leave and departed, and so did the Quene, and all the ladies.'[521] There has been much dispute as to what the precise nature of the innovation of 1512 was. I formerly thought that it lay in the introduction of some Italian detail of costume, probably the 'long gowns and hoods with hats' of which the contemporary Revels Account speaks.[522] But after a careful review of the earlier descriptions of disguisings, I now feel little doubt that those are right who find the point precisely in that 'commoning' between maskers and spectators which remained a characteristic feature of the mask throughout the days of its most sumptuous development, and which the good Halle could hardly be expected to recognize as merely a reversion to a fourteenth-century English usage.[523] Nor is there any reason to doubt that the impulse to the new-old mode, and perhaps also the name which, although in an English form, accompanied it, had an immediate origin in Italy.[524] Ronsard makes a similar acknowledgement for France:[525]

And in fact it is an Italian festivity of 1492 that furnishes the only clear account of a revel in which disguised persons took the ordinary guests out to dance that I have yet come across between 1377 and 1512.[526]

For some time the mask and the old-fashioned disguising are traceable side by side at the court of Henry VIII. Ultimately they amalgamated. By the end of the reign, 'mask' has become the official name, and 'disguising' is obsolete.[527] The 'commoning' between maskers and guests is firmly established. And the mask has taken to itself the elaborations of the disguisings, the introductory speeches, the pageant, the mimic fight, the double sets of dancers, the close association with the interlude.[528] Or, more strictly speaking, it can be either simple or elaborate, a mere masked dance, or a far-fetched and costly device, as occasion and economy may demand. As far as I can see, the whole evolution of the form, as we find it in the seventeenth century, was already complete under Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn, in 1532, led the first recorded mask in which women took lords out to dance.[529] Even the fixed scene had made its appearance, as an alternative to the movable pageant, before the end of the reign.[530]

The mask retained its vogue under Edward VI and Mary, and Elizabeth, with her special love of dancing, was not likely to neglect it.[531] The annals of her court, indeed, have left us few such detailed descriptions of masks as Halle affords for that of Henry VIII and the mask-writers themselves for that of James I. This may be an accident, or it may be that either economy or taste led Elizabeth to a preference for the mask simple over the mask spectacular, which most invites description. The story of the Elizabethan mask has to be pieced together from the account-books of the Revels Office, or, where these fail, from scattered sources. But though we would gladly have more detail, especially on the literary and dramatic side, the result of such a survey is sufficient to show that this particular type of mimesis contributed at least as much to the Christmas entertainment of Gloriana as to that of either her father or her successor.

The first mask of the reign was on Twelfth Night, 1559. Some of its details recall, across a space of two centuries, those of the Kennington 'mumming' of 1377. In both cases the performers represented ecclesiastical personages, and in both there was the somewhat exceptional feature of a parade in the streets. Naturally the Elizabethan show, with its crows, asses, and wolves dressed as cardinals, bishops, and abbots, made a characteristic sixteenth-century appeal to the sympathies of a reviving Protestantism.[532] But even in 1377 the satirical element had not been lacking, for after emperor and pope came riding at the end of the procession '8 or 10 arayed and with black vizerdes like deuils, nothing amiable, seeming like legates'. The 1559 mask appears to have been on a much larger scale than was customary. There were at least four cardinals and six priests. There were popes, monks, summoners, and vergers. And there were friars, in black, white, yellow, russet, and green, apparently a pair of each colour. The russet friars wore velvet garments, with sleeves of yellow velvet and purple satin 'partie paned'; the popes and cardinals rochets of white sarcenet; the monks kirtles and cowls of black taffeta with sleeves of purple satin. The Revels Office was careful to provide hats for the cardinals and 'croger-staves' for the bishops. Four other masks followed during the same winter. Two formed part of the festivities accompanying the coronation, which took place on 15 January. These were a mask, probably of Conquerors in white cloth of silver, on 16 January, and a mask, probably of six Moors, on 22 January. The Moors had apparel of cloth of gold and blue velvet, with sleeves of silver sarcenet and 'bases' of red satin. On their heads was curled hair made of black lawn and wreathed with red gold sarcenet and silver lawn. Their limbs and faces were of black velvet, and of these it is recorded that 'the lords that masked toke awey parte'. They carried darts of 'tree and paste paper gilded', and as the Revels Office also prepared bells and staves, it is probable that a morris was introduced. The torch-bearers to this mask were eight Moorish friars, with head-pieces of crimson satin. The remaining two masks were at Shrovetide. On the Sunday was a double mask, with an assault in it. The Queen's maids were rifled and rescued again.[533] One party consisted of eight Swart Rutters, in black and white jerkins and long breeches, with laced hats, dags, and silvered and gilded partisans; the other probably of six Hungarians in blue and purple cloth of gold. The torch-bearers were six Almayns, and the music a drum and fife. On the Tuesday was another double mask, but of women, being six Fisher Wives and eight Market Wives, dressed in bodies and kirtles of various cloths of gold and silver, with elaborate trimmings, and wearing wicker head-pieces painted with red and silver, and hats covered with gold lawn. They seem to have had Fishermen for torch-bearers, and six minstrels in yellow damask, as well as a drum and fife.

Four masks were given during the summer of 1559. One was on 24 May in a banqueting house built at Westminster, for the entertainment of the Duke of Montmorency, Constable of France, who came to ratify a treaty. This was of Astronomers, in long robes of Turkey red cloth of gold, with torch-bearers in green damask. The second was in a banqueting house at Greenwich on 11 July, after a tilt by the Queen's pensioners. The other two were in August during the progress. One was given by the Earl of Arundel at Nonsuch on 6 August.[534] The other was in a specially built banqueting house at Lord Admiral Clinton's place of West Horsley. This last was a double mask of Shipmen, appropriate to an Admiral, in blue cloth of gold, and Country Maids. Two 'grasyers or gentillmen of the cuntrye', whose black damask gowns appear in a Revels inventory, may have acted as presenters.

The winter masks of 1559-60 were five in number. On New Year's day was a mask of six Barbarians, in red cloth of gold, with Venetian commoners in white damask for torch-bearers. On Twelfth Night was a double mask, of six Venetian Patriarchs in green, with purple head-pieces, and six Italian Women in white and crimson. They were accompanied by torch-bearers and a drum and fife. On Shrove Tuesday was another double mask, of an elaborate mythological character, for which a device of 'a rocke of founteyne' was employed. The women represented Diana in purple and three pairs of Huntress Nymphs, in carnation, purple, and blue respectively; the men Actaeon and his six fellows, in purple, with orange buskins and gilt boar-spears. They had a drum and fife and, as torch-bearers, eight Maidens in purple with variously coloured kirtles, and eight Hunters in yellow with murrey buskins. And they were accompanied by twelve hounds. It is noted in the Revels inventory that Actaeon's garments were 'all to cutt in small panes and steyned with blood'. There were also a mask on New Year's Eve and a second mask at Shrovetide.[535] One of these was of six Nusquams, allegorical personages in white, crimson, and yellow, having the breasts of their scapulars 'steyned with the posy of poco a poco'. Their torch-bearers were six Turkish commoners in murrey and white. The other was of eight Clowns in red and green, with flails and spades of gilt wood, black high-laced shoes made out of the limbs of the previous year's Moors, hedging mittens, and white gold sarcenet aprons, which were 'gyven awaye by the maskers in the queenes presence'. They had eight Hinds for torch-bearers, and a shepherd for a minstrel.[536]

The absence of Revels Accounts renders it impossible to construct a full catalogue of masks between the Shrovetide of 1560 and the Christmas of 1571; but there is every reason to suppose that they were given yearly, and a number of scattered notices have survived. Brantôme, who came to court during October 1561, in the train of the Grand Prior Francis of Lorraine, describes a mask of Wise and Foolish Virgins, performed by Elizabeth's maids of honour, who did the Frenchmen the courtesy of taking them out to dance.[537] There was a mask at Baynard's Castle when Elizabeth visited the Earl of Pembroke on 15 January 1562, a 'grett maske' at Whitehall on 18 January after the performance of Gorboduc by the Inner Temple, and on 1 February 'the goodlyest masket that ever was seen', which came in procession from the city to the court.[538] During May 1562 elaborate masks were in preparation for a projected meeting between Elizabeth and Mary of Scots at Nottingham Castle.[539] The meeting never came off, but a scheme for the masks is preserved, and is sufficiently detailed to show the point which had been reached in the evolution of the form. It covers the entertainment of three successive nights. On the first a prison of Extreme Oblivion, under the keepership of Argus or Circumspection, is to be made in the hall. A mask of six or eight ladies is to enter, leading Discord and False Report captive, and preceded by Pallas riding on a unicorn and Prudentia and Temperantia on two lions. Pallas is to declare the intention to the queen in verse; Discord and False Report are to be committed to the prison; and 'then the trompettes to blowe, and thinglishe ladies to take the nobilite of the straunger and daunce'. On the second night the structure in the hall is to be a castle called the Court of Plenty, whereof Ardent Desire and Perpetuity, serving respectively Prudentia and Temperantia, are to be porters. The mask proper is again to consist of six or eight ladies, accompanied by Friendship on an elephant, drawing Peace in a chariot to dwell in the castle. Friendship is to speak explanatory verses. 'Then shall springe out of the cowrte of plentie condittes of all sortes of wynes, duringe which tyme thinglishe lordes shall maske with the Scottishe ladyes.' The third night's mask is to be a double one. Disdain and Prepensed Malice are to draw in six or eight lady maskers, sitting in an orchard of golden apples, and to demand on behalf of Pluto the surrender either of Discord and False Report, or of Peace. These are to be followed by six or eight lords, with Discretion and Valiant Courage or Hercules. Discretion is to offer the services of Valiant Courage as champion. Prudentia and Temperantia are to let down tokens of peace from their castle, a grandgarde and a girdle and sword, which are to be laid at the feet of the queens. There is to be an assault between Valiant Courage and Disdain and Prepensed Malice. 'After this shall come out of the garden, the vj, or viij, ladies maskers, with a song, that shalbe made herevppon, as full of armony, as maye be devised.' One may note the allegorical theme, the use both of fixed and of movable pageants, the persistent episode of the assault at arms, the gifts to the principal spectators, and the somewhat formal speeches of the presenters, eked out on the last night with a song, but not yet broken up into dramatic dialogue. The draft makes it clear that English and Scots are to mingle in the dance, but not quite so clear that the invitation is to come from the maskers, although that was probably the intention.[540]

There were 'gret mummeres and masks' again at Baynard's Castle on each of the four days, 17-20 February 1563, devoted to celebrating the double wedding of Lord Herbert of Cardiff to Lady Catherine Talbot and of Lord Talbot to Lady Anne Herbert. But we are not told that Elizabeth was present, although it is not improbable.[541] On 9 June 1564 there was a device for the entertainment of Artus de Cossé, Seigneur de Gonnor, who came as ambassador from France to confirm the treaty of Troyes. It was of a martial character and entailed the preparation of a castle and an arbour and three masks, and a total cost of £87 9s. 6d.[542] A month later, on 5 July, Elizabeth was entertained at the house of Sir Richard Sackville by maskers in her colours of black and white, who presented a sonnet in her honour. The host was the father of Thomas Sackville, afterwards Earl of Dorset, one of the authors of Gorboduc and of The Mirror for Magistrates.[543] During the winter of 1564-5 there were several masks, apparently given in close relation to the plays of the same season. One was at Christmas and another, of Hunters and Muses, on 18 February, while at Shrovetide no less than four were made ready, although only two, of Tilters and of Satyrs, were actually seen.[544] On 16 July 1565 Elizabeth attended the marriage at Durham Place of Henry, son of Sir Francis Knollys, to Margaret, daughter of Sir Ambrose Cave; and the entertainment included two masks.[545] Similarly, at Shrovetide 1566, she was present at the marriage of Henry Earl of Southampton, to Mary Browne, daughter of Anthony Lord Montague, and on 1 July 1566 at that of Thomas Mildmay to Frances, sister of Thomas Earl of Sussex, and on each occasion there was a mask with an oration 'spoken and pronounced' by Mr. Pound of Lincoln's Inn. The July mask introduced Venus, Diana, Pallas, and Juno.[546] We know that there were four masks during the winter of 1567-8, and that there were masks during those of 1568-9, 1569-70, and 1570-1, but practically we know no more.[547] For 1571-2, however, fuller information is available, since with this winter begins the series of detailed Revels Accounts, which extends, with occasional interruptions, to 1589. There were six masks, on unspecified dates. For two of these the costumes were 'translated' from old sets. Four were new made; one of yellow cloth of gold, with torch-bearers in red and yellow changeable taffeta; one of crimson, purple, and green cloth of gold, with torch-bearers in red damask; one of white and black branched loom-work, with torch-bearers in blue and yellow changeable taffeta; and one in murrey satin, with torch-bearers in changeable taffeta of an unspecified colour. The maskers were six or eight in number in each case, and wore vizards, gloves, at 6d. a pair, and strange heads. Devices of canvas were made for some or all of them. One set carried flowers of silk and gold, and before them went a child dressed as Mercury, with two special torch-bearers, who made a speech, and offered the Queen three similar flowers, signifying victory, peace, and plenty.[548] On 15 June 1572 an elaborate mask was given in honour of another French embassy under the Duc de Montmorency. The theme evidently bore some resemblance to the abandoned devices of 1562.[549] A vizard was made for Argus and a collar and shackles and curls of black silk for Discord. There were two pageants, a castle upon which Lady Peace was brought in, and a chariot measuring 14 ft. by 8 ft. with a rock and fountain for Apollo and the nine Muses. These were probably the dancers. The performance is called both a 'mask' and a 'triumph'. The total cost was £409 3s. 2d., exclusive of the value of stuffs supplied by the Wardrobe, and it is recorded that the chariot was broken and spoiled. Payments were made to a Mistress Swego, apparently for head-dressing, and to a 'muzisian that towghte the ladies'; also to Haunce Eottes for 'patternes', and to Petrucio, for his 'travell and paynes' taken in the preparations.[550] This is doubtless Petrucio Ubaldini, and it may also be assumed that the 'Mʳ. Alphonse', who apparently had the general direction or 'apoyntment' of the proceedings, and wore a pair of cloth-of-gold buskins, was Alfonso Ferrabosco, the musician.

This example attests the continuance of the spectacular element in the mask. Its literary aspect also finds illustration during 1572. The scene was again a house of Lord Montague, who was celebrating the double wedding of his son and daughter to those of Sir William Dormer. The dancers were eight kinsmen of the host, dressed as Venetians. There was a long introductory narrative, spoken by a boy-actor. The motive of this was suggested by the supposed community of blood between the Montagues of England and the Montagues of Venice. The actor represented a boy of the English house, who had been taken prisoner by the Turks, together with four English soldiers, who were the torch-bearers. He had been rescued by Italian Montagues, who were returning with him to Italy, when a storm drove them on the shores of Kent, and they took the opportunity to visit their kinsmen in London. After the mask there was a shorter speech by Master Thomas Browne, whom the actor drew from the company, and presented to the maskers to replace him as their 'trounchman', and the maskers then took their leaves. The author of the verses was George Gascoigne. They contain no indication that Elizabeth was present, and therefore she probably was not. But they furnish a very good example of the way in which introductory speeches, still stiff and undramatic, were used to give topical point and meaning to the disguises assumed by maskers.[551] With this Montague mask may be compared that at the wedding of Henry Unton, represented in one of the scenes from his life and death by which his portrait, now in the National Portrait Gallery, is surrounded. The wedding party is shown at table in a great chamber, overlooking a hall below, in which sit six minstrels. At each end of the hall are steps, and up and down these and over the floor of the chamber passes the mask procession, a drummer, a 'trounchman' with a paper in his hand, Mercury, Diana, six Nymphs, and ten Cupids, five white and five black, as torch-bearers.[552]

Finally, a curious document of this same year, 1572, indicates the widespread popularity which the mask had acquired, as a form of social entertainment. It is preserved amongst Lord Burghley's papers, and is a complaint by one Thomas Giles against the Yeoman of the Revels, who had the custody of the Queen's masks, and made a practice of letting them out on hire to persons of all degrees, noble and mean, both in the city and in the country.[553] Thomas Giles was a haberdasher, and from time to time supplied goods to the Revels. He bases his complaint mainly on the damage done to the royal property, but at the end he allows it to appear that he himself made a business of letting out masking apparel for hire, and found his prices undercut by those of the Yeoman. He appends a list of a score of occasions during the past year on which loans had taken place. The garments lent appear to have been mostly those made for the Court festivities of the previous winter. One set is described as 'the coper clothe of golde gownes which was last made'. This must have been the mask of Muses given on 15 June. It was lent with another mask, 'into the contre to the maryage of the dowter of my lorde Montague', at some date between 15 September and 6 October. This was the occasion of Gascoigne's verses just described, although it must have been the other mask, a mask of men, which those verses presented.

It may be collected from scattered items of expenditure that the Court masks of 1572-3 were two in number.[554] There was a mask of Janus on 1 January, with a snow-storm of comfits and a presentation of snowballs, made out of sponges covered with fine lamb's-wool, to the Queen. And on some later date there was a double mask of men and women, representing Fishermen and probably Fruit-women. Haunce Eottes is again said to have painted 'patternes' for the masks. There are some traces of a mask, with women, as well as Mariners and Turks, in it, when Elizabeth received the French ambassador Mareschal de Retz at Canterbury during the progress of 1573; and there was one at Greenwich, probably not at the royal expense, for the marriage of William Drury in the following November or December.[555] For the winter of 1573-4 a complete list is preserved.[556] There was a mask of Lance Knights in blue satin, with torch-bearers in black and yellow taffeta, on 27 December; a mask of Foresters in green satin and cloaks of crimson sarcenet, with Wild Men in moss and ivy as torch-bearers, on New Year's Day; and a mask of Sages in 'counterfeit' cloth of gold, with torch-bearers in red damask, on Twelfth Night. There were six maskers in each case. The Foresters were equipped with a hollow tree and with comfits made to resemble wild fruits; also with horns garnished with silver, 'which hornes', says the Revels account, 'the maskers detayned and yet doeth kepe them against the will of all the officers'. At Candlemas Haunce Eottes made designs for a mask of six ladies in green satin and gold sarcenet, representing Virtues, and carrying lights and 'properties', including a silk tree, in specially made candlesticks. Perfumes were prepared to burn at the end of matches, and speeches for delivery to Her Majesty written in fair text. But after all the mask was not shown 'for the tediusnesse of the playe that night'. Finally there were two masks on Shrove Tuesday. One was of seven Warriors, with a shipmaster to utter a speech, and six torch-bearers; the other of seven ladies, also with a 'tronchwoman', and torch-bearers. Probably this was a double mask, and in some way there came into it nine children, who had been drilled and taught their speeches by one Nicholas Newdigate, and in various ways gave a good deal of trouble.[557] During the winter of 1574-5 I can only trace with confidence one mask, on an uncertain date. It was a mask of six Pedlars, who had little hampers, and looking-glasses with posies written on them in fine yellow paint.[558] There were not improbably others, the details of which cannot now be disentangled in the Revels Accounts from those relating to plays. A mask, 'for riches of aray, of an incredibl cost', was planned as part of the Kenilworth festivities of July 1575; but was not in the end performed.[559] Nothing is known of the masks during the winter of 1575-6, for the Revels Accounts are missing. For Twelfth Night 1577 a 'longe' mask was prepared, of six dancers in murrey satin, with torch-bearers in crimson damask. There were to have been seven speeches 'framed correspondent to the daie', and Nicholas Newdigate again trained boys to deliver these. But for some reason the mask was put off, and given on Shrove Tuesday without any speeches at all.[560] The Revels Accounts of 1577-8 are missing. A mask by Henry Goldingham was given at Norwich on 21 August 1578 during the progress. It was of Gods and Goddesses, who entered the privy chamber with a presenter, torch-bearers, and musicians, marched about the room and gave characteristic gifts, but apparently did not dance.[561] On 11 January 1579 there was a double mask for the entertainment of the French ambassador, M. de Simier, who had come about the Alençon marriage. Patterns of the mask were submitted for approval to the Lord Chamberlain. One party consisted of six Amazons, the other of six Knights.[562] Each party had its torch-bearers and a 'troocheman', who made a speech to the Queen and delivered her a table with the speech written upon it. These speeches had been translated into Italian and inscribed upon the tables by Petruchio Ubaldini. The Amazons and Knights danced together and afterwards fought at barriers. Some of the plumes which had been hired for the Knights were 'dropt with torches', and the Revels Office had to pay damages for them. Patterns were also shown to the Lord Chamberlain of a 'Mores' mask intended for Shrove Tuesday, but this seems to have fallen through.[563] I do not know whether the invention of the Court poets had failed, or whether for some other reason Elizabeth had become discontent with masks; but, although there are full Revels Accounts for the winters of 1579-80 and 1580-1, and although plays were numerous, no single performance of a mask is recorded. But the spirit of revelry awoke in 1581, at the coming of French commissioners to complete negotiations for the Anjou marriage in the spring, followed by that of Anjou himself in the autumn. Patterns of masks were prepared and the construction of a mount begun in March.[564] These were not proceeded with at the time, and the famous tilt before the Fortress of Perfect Beauty was substituted as an entertainment for the commissioners. But in the winter there were two masks, and amongst the devices employed were a mount with a castle on the top of it, a dragon, an artificial tree, an artificial lion, and a horse made of wood.[565] These details suggest a revival of the scheme abandoned in the previous spring, for the personal delectation of Anjou.

Court masks are but little in evidence during the next few years. There was one of ladies, with torch-bearers and eight boys, on 5 January 1583, and during the same winter one of Seamen was prepared, but not brought into use.[566] There was a mask in 1583-4, of which no details are given; while for 1585-6 and 1586-7 no information, in the absence of the Revels Accounts, is forthcoming.[567] The accounts for 1584-5 and 1587-8 have a general reference to masks in their headings, which may be no more than common form.[568] In September 1589, however, a mask was prepared to be sent into Scotland, as a compliment to James VI on the occasion of his wedding to Anne of Denmark.[569] It does not appear to have been a very sumptuous affair, and only cost the Revels Office £17 10s. 10d. We are not told what the maskers represented.

There were six of them, with vizards and falchions, in purple coats, crimson bases, and orange and purple and white mantles. They had torch-bearers in red and yellow damask, and four persons garlanded with flowers 'to vtter speches'. The description of the torch-bearers reads uncommonly like that of the torch-bearers to the abandoned mask of Seamen, and if they wore 'translated' garments of 1583, there cannot have been much masking in the interval.

After 1589 the Revels Accounts altogether fail us, and although it is probable that the mask shared in the general renewal of festivity which followed the passing of the Spanish peril, we have only side-lights upon it during the last decade of the reign. Certainly it was still flourishing in the winter of 1594-5, when one Arthur Throgmorton planned to use it, with a rather skilful introduction of some personal abasement and the gift of a jewel, as a means of recovering the forfeited favour of the Queen. The occasion seems to have been the wedding of William Earl of Derby, and Lady Elizabeth Vere, granddaughter of Burghley, on 26 January 1595.[570] It was in this same winter, too, that a very magnificent Shrovetide mask was brought to Court by the men of Gray's Inn, as a wind-up to their notable Christmas revels under the Prince of Purpoole. Of this a detailed account is preserved in the Gesta Grayorum, with songs and speeches which can be assigned respectively to Thomas Campion and Francis Davison. These had for theme a controversy between certain adventurous knights and the sea-god Proteus, and for object the flattery of Elizabeth, the virtue of whose presence obliges Proteus to release the knights from their durance in an Adamantine Rock.[571] Of the place of this mask in the history of the literary form something will be said at a later point.

The gallantry of Gray's Inn was emulated a few years later by the Middle Temple, who, after presenting several masks in their own hall during the Christmas revels of their Prince d'Amour, did their devoir at Court on Twelfth Night with a mask in which the nine Passions issued from a Heart. The mask was followed by a barriers, and preceded by a cavalcade through the streets of a type of which examples have already been noted in 1377 and 1559.[572] In the summer of 1600 one of Elizabeth's maids of honour, Anne, daughter of Elizabeth Lady Russell, left the Court to be married to Henry Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Worcester. The Queen was present at the wedding on 16 June. She dined at Lady Russell's house in Blackfriars, and supped and lodged for the night in that of Lord Cobham hard by. After supper a mask came in. Eight Muses, represented by maids of honour and others, were come to seek their lost companion. After they had done their performance, they wooed the Queen to dance. She was not proof against the ready tongue of Mary Fitton, and complied. 'Elle dansa gayement et de belle disposition,' says the French ambassador, M. de Boississe, who was present.[573]

Finally, in the spring of 1602, negotiations were passing between Sir Robert Cecil and Sir John Popham on behalf of the Middle Temple, for some entertainment to gratify the Queen, for which the benchers were prepared to contribute 200 marks.[574] Probably this was a mask, but whether and when it actually came off is not known. It may have been designed to celebrate the coming of the Duke of Nevers and other Frenchmen in the following April, and it may have been the mask a song from which was copied by John Manningham, a member of the Middle Temple, on a fly-leaf of his diary with the date 'Nov. 2'.[575]

Under James I the material for tracing the history of the mask becomes remarkably abundant, owing to the regular practice, of which the Gesta Grayorum is the only Elizabethan example, of issuing elaborate descriptions, with copies of the songs and speeches used, for the information of those unable to be present, and the incidental glorification of performers, poets, and producers.[576] In view of the full details compiled from these descriptions and other sources in the bibliographical appendix, a brief chronicle will suffice for a conclusion of this chapter. The main factors to be borne in mind are, firstly, the personal participation of Queen Anne, who took a special delight in all kinds of spectacle and revelry;[577] secondly, the employment of such poets as Jonson, Campion, Daniel, Beaumont, and Chapman, to give the masks their literary setting;[578] and thirdly, the great development of the scenic element through the mechanical and decorative genius of Inigo Jones. Anne gave her first mask, of which no details are preserved, as a welcome to Prince Henry, when he came to join the Court at Winchester during the plague-stricken wanderings which filled the autumn of 1603. An English official describes it as 'a gallant mask', and the French ambassador, more critically, as less a 'ballet' than a 'masquarade champêtre'. At any rate it whetted the appetite of the Court for more to come, and there was soon talk of the splendours foreshadowed for the following Christmas.[579] This, still owing to the plague, was held at Hampton Court. The principal mask was danced by the Queen, with Lady Bedford and other ladies of the court, on 8 January. Through the influence of Lady Bedford, Samuel Daniel was employed as poet, and produced his Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. Queen Elizabeth's wardrobe was ransacked to provide material for the costumes. The lords of the Court, led by the Duke of Lennox, danced a mask of Indian and Chinese knights on 1 January, and certain Scotchmen one resembling a sword dance on Twelfth Night; but of neither of these has a full description been preserved. The masks of subsequent Christmases took place at Whitehall, where in 1607 the old timber banqueting house of 1581 gave way to a permanent structure designed to house them with magnificence. The Queen's mask of 1604-5 was the Mask of Blackness, and began the long and fruitful co-operation of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones. It was on Twelfth Night, and did honour to the creation of Prince Charles as Duke of York. A mask of Juno and Hymenaeus given on 27 December by friends of Sir Philip Herbert, in celebration of his marriage to Lady Susan Vere, has not been preserved. The only Christmas masks of the next two winters were of similar origin. Jonson's Hymenaei was given at the wedding of Robert Earl of Essex and Lady Frances Howard on 5 January 1606, and a mask of the Knights of Apollo by Thomas Campion, who had had a share in the verses for the Gray's Inn mask of 1595, at that of James Lord Hay and Honora Denny on 7 January 1607. As a mask must be accounted, I suppose, the extraordinary exhibition of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba before James and Christian of Denmark at Theobalds in July 1606, of which a description is forthcoming from the satirical pen of Sir John Harington.[580] By the winter of 1607-8 the new banqueting house was ready, and the series of Queen's masks was resumed with Jonson's Mask of Beauty on 10 January. In a second mask, sometimes called, although not by its author, The Hue and Cry after Cupid, for the wedding of John Viscount Haddington and Lady Elizabeth Radcliffe on 9 February, Jonson appears to have considered that he took a definite step forward in the evolution of the mask-form, by the introduction of an antimask or group of grotesque dancers as a foil to the mask proper. The Queen's mask for 1608-9 was Jonson's Mask of Queens at Candlemas, and there was no other. During the winter of 1609-10, which was devoted to Prince Henry's mimetic barriers, there was no mask at all, unless indeed the anonymous and undated Mask of the Twelve Months belongs to this year. But on the following 5 June came Daniel's Tethys' Festival, which was the Queen's contribution to the festivities attending the creation of Henry as Prince of Wales. In 1610-11 there was a Queen's mask, Jonson's Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly, on 3 February, and also a Prince's mask, Jonson's Oberon, on 1 January. Jonson's Love Restored was a Prince's mask of 6 January 1612. The masks of 1612-13 were all given in celebration of the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine of the Rhine, Frederick V, at Shrovetide. There were three of them. Campion's Lords' Mask was danced by lords and ladies of the Court on the actual day of the wedding, 14 February. The other two were contributed by the Inns of Court, and each was preluded by a public procession or triumph, such as had been found natural in earlier years when a mask came from London to the palace. The Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn came by road on 15 February with a mask of Virginians by George Chapman; the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn by water on 16 February, with a mask of Olympian Knights by Francis Beaumont. This, however, they were not able to dance until 20 February. Jonson took no part in these hymeneal festivities, and may have been abroad. The masks for the wedding of Robert Earl of Somerset and Lady Frances Howard on 26 December 1613 almost vied in magnificence, and more than vied in number, with those given for the princess. The bride had passed through stormy days since Jonson's Hymenaei hailed her first marriage in 1606, and was to pass through stormier still. Campion was again selected as the poet for the actual wedding day. In his mask, sometimes called the Mask of Squires, and danced by lords and gentlemen of the Court, he had the assistance, not of Jones, but of Constantine de' Servi, who does not appear to have been very successful. Jonson's Irish Mask, which was given on 29 December and repeated on 3 January, was a comparatively slight performance, danced by five Englishmen and five Scots. Thomas Middleton's Mask of Cupid, unfortunately lost, was an exceptional performance given not at Court, but by the City in the Merchant Taylors' hall on 4 January, after a request from the King that they should do honour to the earl. Finally the Mask of Flowers, the authors of which are only known by the initials I. G., W. D., and T. B., was given by Gray's Inn on 6 January, at the charges of Sir Francis Bacon, who had already taken an active part in promoting the joint Inner Temple and Gray's Inn mask of the previous year. When Anne married her favourite maid of honour, Jane Drummond, to Lord Roxborough on 2 February, she perhaps thought that another mask would be something of an anti-climax, and the performance in a little paved court at Somerset House took the shape of a pastoral, Daniel's Hymen's Triumph.

After the wedding carnivals of two successive years, the masks of 1614-15 and 1615-16 were comparatively insignificant, and even their chronology is not quite certain. To one of these winters belongs Jonson's Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists, but it is not certain to which, and to the other his Golden Age Restored. In each year there were duplicate performances, on 6 and 8 January 1615 and on 1 and 6 January 1616. Both masks were danced by lords and gentlemen of the Court. That of 1615 was contrived to serve the interests of George Villiers, who was soon to replace the already tottering Somerset in the esteem of his royal master. A mask, of which no details are known, seems also to have been given by the Spanish ambassador in February 1615. Of masks elsewhere than at Court during 1603-16 there are few to record. The Princess Elizabeth seems, on at least one occasion, to have had a mask for her private delectation.[581] One by John Marston formed part of the entertainment given by the Earl of Huntingdon to Alice Countess of Derby, at Ashby in August 1607, and one by Campion part of that given by Lord Knollys to Anne at Caversham on 27 April 1613. William Browne's Ulysses and Circe glorified the Inner Temple feast on 13 January 1615. The palmy days of the Jacobean mask close with our period. Henry was dead; Elizabeth was gone. Anne, ailing and retired during her later years, died in 1619. She had danced her last mask in 1611. Charles made his début as an adult masker in 1618, and most of the Court masks to the end of the reign are Prince's masks. But it takes a Queen to make a Court, and the English mask had to wait for its renouveau until the coming of Henrietta Maria.

VI
THE MASK (continued)

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.