[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'.