The Time
The Masque Proper is concerned, symbolically, with no literal period of time, but with the waxing and waning of the life of dramatic art (and its concomitant, civilization) from primitive barbaric times to the verge of the living present.
The Interludes are concerned with ritualistic glimpses of the art of the theatre (in its widest, communal scope) during three historical periods: (1) Antiquity, (2) the Middle Ages, and (3) Elizabethan England.
The Epilogue is concerned with the creative forces of dramatic art from antiquity to the present, and—by suggestion—with the future of those forces.