[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.