[578] Jonson told Drummond in 1619 (Conversations, 4), 'That next himself, only Fletcher and Chapman could make a mask'. No independent mask by Fletcher is known, and that in The Maid's Tragedy is probably Beaumont's. Fletcher may have written the Triumph of Time in Four Plays or Morall Representations, which is practically a mask.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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).

[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).

[593] Cunningham, Jonson, iii. 211.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[597] Feuillerat, Eliz. 117; cf. Halle, ii. 87.

[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.

[599] Chamber Accounts; cf. Reyher, 358.

[600] Reyher, 367.

[601] Cf. ch. xx.

[602] Cf. ch. xix.

[603] Cunliffe, The Influence of Italian on Early Elizabethan Drama (M. P. iv. 597), and Early English Classical Tragedies, xl.

[604] F. A. Foster, Dumb Show in Elizabethan Drama before 1620 (E. S. xliv. 8); cf. ch. xviii.

[605] Cunliffe, xxxi, xxxix.

[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.

[607] Hamlet, iii. 2. 146. On the play within a play, cf. H. Schwab, Das Schauspiel im Schauspiel zur Zeit Shaksperes (1896).

[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'.

[609] Cf. Boas, 206.

[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.

[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).

[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).

[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.

[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.

[615] The maskers in Wit at Several Weapons, v. i, are 'something like the abstract of a masque'; cf. R. J. i. 4. 3—

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

[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.

[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. turjamān, interpreter, whence also dragoman.

[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'.

[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.

[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.

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

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

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

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

[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.

[627] Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 59.

[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'.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[632] Cf. p. 168.

[633] Cf. ch. xxiii (Daniel, Twelve Goddesses).

[634] Cf. ch. iv.

[635] R. J. i. 5. 95; Hen. VIII, i. 4. 95,

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.

[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'.

[637] This old phrase, known to Sir T. Elyot, The Governour, i. 22, is still traditional in folk dances.

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

[639] Lacroix, i. 256, 262.

[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'.

[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'.

[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.

[643] Winwood, ii. 40.

[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).

[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.

[646] Cf. p. 163, and D. N. B., s.v. Ferrabosco.

[647] Lafontaine, 63.

[648] Reyher, 79.

[649] Feuillerat, Eliz. 356.

[650] Reyher, 78.

[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.

[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.'

[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.

[654] Maid's Tragedy, i. 2. 32.

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

[656] Sullivan, Court Masques of James I; cf. my notes on the individual masks in ch. xxiii.

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

[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.

[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).

[660] Donne, Poems (ed. Grierson), i. 414; cf. Jonson, Conversations, 10.

[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'.

[662] Ambassades, iii. 13.

[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.'

[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'.

[665] Cf. ch. xxiii; also Busino in V. P. xv. 114.

[666] Winwood. ii. 43.

[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.