The debt of the mask to the play may be traced in the increased skill in which the later masks are arranged around a 'device' or dramatic idea. The mask had had its presenters as far back as Lydgate. Even in a learned court, the more recondite forms of allegory or mythology sometimes require explanation. The maskers proper seem to have been traditionally mum and therefore unable to explain themselves. Let us remember that they were not professional actors, but English men and women of good birth and breeding, and that therefore their limbs could more easily be trained than their wits and voices. If explanation was required, it must be given in an introductory speech by a subsidiary performer. Such a spokesman seems to have been known to the Elizabethan Revels as a 'truchman' or interpreter.[618] In addition to his function of elucidation he became the natural vehicle of whatever compliment was to be paid by the mask, and when Arthur Throgmorton wished to turn the heart of Elizabeth in 1595, we find him undertaking the part himself. The Elizabethan truchmen do not seem to have got much beyond formal speeches, and the child dressed as Mercury or Cupid became rather banal through much repetition. If anything more dramatic was attempted, either through the presenters, or by dividing the dancers into a double mask, it was apt to be based upon the mediaeval idea of an assault. In the device for the abortive masks of 1562 the presenters were to do most of the fighting. In 1559, on the other hand, it was successive bands of maskers that rifled and rescued the Queen's maids. How far the mask of Diana and Actaeon in the following winter took a dramatic form we do not know. The development of the mask on dramatic lines seems to have been a slow business. Even Jonson, in Cynthia's Revels, has not got beyond Cupid and Mercury and the formal speeches. On the other hand, the Gray's Inn mask, which preceded Cynthia's Revels by some years, and nearly all the Jacobean masks, especially Jonson's, show a marked progress in this respect. A dramatic idea is nearly always dominant, and there is ingenuity in grouping the fixed elements of the mask about it. A comparison between Gascoigne's treatment of a wedding mask in 1572 and Jonson's in 1608 may serve to illustrate this. Gascoigne's maskers are Montagues of Italy, who have been driven by a storm to the shores of England, and take the opportunity to visit their English kinsmen, in whose house the wedding happens to be taking place. The idea is not without point, but it is all expounded in a single and inevitably tedious speech by the truchman, during which the dancers must remain motionless. When Jonson has to celebrate the wedding of James Ramsay and Elizabeth Radcliffe in 1608 he proceeds very differently. Even the curtain introduces the hymeneal theme with its graceful symbolism of a red cliff. From the top of this Venus descends with her Graces. She is in search of her son, and bids the Graces ask whether he is concealed in the eyes or between the swelling breasts of the ladies in the audience. The Graces sing their appeal for the discovery of 'Venus' runaway'. Cupid now emerges, with a train of Joci and Risus, each bearing two torches, who dance a dance of triumph. Venus captures Cupid, and demands the cause of his jubilation. He slips away, but the explanation is given by Hymen, in a speech of flattery to the King on the 'state', to the bridegroom who saved the King's life, and to the maid of the Red Cliff, who is the bride. Hymen is followed by Vulcan, who splits the cliff, and discloses a concave fashioned by his art, in which sit the maskers. They are the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, to each of whom is assigned some influence upon marriage. They advance and dance their measures, while Vulcan's attendants, the Cyclopes, Brontes and Steropes, beat time with their sledges, and in the pauses of the dancing the musicians, dressed as priests of Hymen, sing the verses of an epithalamion. How neatly it is all done! The maskers, the presenters, the torch-bearers, the musicians, all have their place in the scheme, and contribute towards the complimenting of the bridal pair.
It would perhaps be difficult to say how far the approximation to drama in the Jacobean masks was due to the subconscious mental processes of mask poets who were themselves playwrights, and how far to a deliberate intention to combine two arts.[619] As a rule it is safe to credit Jonson, at least, with fully conscious artistry. And here too the model set by Baldassarino's Balet Comique must not be neglected. The printed description of this contains a preface, in which Baldassarino justifies his use of the term 'comique' on the ground that he has arranged his 'balet' in acts and scenes like a comedy, and claims to be an innovator in this interweaving of poetry with the dance, to which 'le premier tiltre et honneur' are still left. The Jacobean poets did not essay a treatment by acts and scenes, which indeed has no great significance even in the Balet Comique. But Baldassarino's main idea, of the inhibition of the dance by the magic of Circe until the gods come to the rescue, may fairly be regarded as responsible for the several episodes of disenchantment or transformation which recur in the work of his successors.[620]
Jonson's mask for the Ramsay-Radcliffe wedding in 1608 represents a stage of importance in the evolution of the dramatic form. The entry of the maskers is preluded by a dance of the torch-bearing Joci and Risus. In describing his Mask of Queens of the following year, Jonson says, 'And because her majesty (best knowing that a principal part of life in these spectacles lay in their variety) had commanded me to think on some dance, or shew, that might precede hers, and have the place of a foil, or false masque, I was careful to decline, not only from others, but mine own steps in that kind, since the last year, I had an antimasque of boys; and therefore now devised that twelve women, in the habit of hags or witches, sustaining the persons of Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, &c., the opposites to good Fame, should fill that part, not as a masque, but a spectacle of strangeness, producing multiplicity of gesture, and not unaptly sorting with the current and whole fall of the device'. I am not quite sure what Jonson intends by the distinction here drawn between a 'masque' and a 'spectacle', for in fact the Hags dance 'a magical dance full of preposterous change and gesticulation', which is interrupted by a burst of loud music and an alteration in the face of the scene, heralding the introduction of the Queens in the House of Fame. However this may be, Jonson's innovation, with its obvious advantages of added variety, must have been immediately successful, for in practically all subsequent examples of the period the antimask appears as a fixed element in the scheme, preceding and setting off what Beaumont calls the 'maine' mask, and usually divided from it by a change of scene.[621] There are some slight further elaborations to record. In Oberon, in the Lords' Mask, and in Chapman's Mask, the antimask is followed by a dance of torch-bearers, to which also Chapman gives the name of 'antimask'. Beaumont's Mask, the Mask of Squires, Mercury Vindicated, and Browne's Mask have each two regular antimasks, and in the Mask of Squires the second antimask is interpolated in the middle of the dances of the main mask. There is only one antimask in The Twelve Months, but two dances are assigned to it. The Mask of Flowers has, besides the antimask 'of dances', a preliminary antimask 'of song'. The name 'antimask' has given some trouble. Jonson's references to 'a foil, or false masque' and to 'opposites' suggest clearly enough that he used the prefix 'anti' to indicate an antithesis or contrast. But in Tethys' Festival Daniel uses the form 'antemasque', and this spelling, probably due to a misunderstanding by the worthy Daniel of the point of the innovation, recurs in Chapman's Mask and in The Twelve Months.[622] The Mask of Flowers, again, affords a third variation, in 'anticke-maske', and this also, I think, pace Dr. Brotanek, must have its origin in a misunderstanding.[623] An 'antic' dance is a grotesque dance, and this epithet is often applied to the personages of the antimasks and their evolutions, from the Haddington Mask onwards, since the characteristic antithesis which the antimask renders possible is precisely the antithesis between the grotesque prelude and the splendour of the main mask that follows.[624] I want to emphasize the point that this element of contrast introduced by the juxtaposition of mask and antimask is analogous to what critics have always regarded as a special feature of the Elizabethan, and particularly the Shakespearian drama, the juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy, either in the form of what is called tragicomedy, or by the inclusion of scenes of 'comic relief' in tragedy proper. It is perhaps worth noting that in the French masks of 1610 and 1612 printed by Lacroix we find side by side with the 'grand ballet' elements variously described as the 'première et plaisante entrée' (1610) and 'la bouffonnerie' (1612), which appear to serve just the same purpose as the English antimask.[625] But, of course, I do not mean to suggest that either in France or in England the grotesque made its way into the mask for the first time during the seventeenth century. The clowns, mariners, 'wodwoses' and so forth of the earlier Elizabethan revels must have lent themselves to humorous treatment, and indeed mirth has at all times been of the essence of revels. There is some reason to think that a traditional form of grotesque mask at court was the morris. This is of course a familiar type of folk-dance, and may owe its Tudor name to the moresche, which were dances introduced as intermedii into Italian plays.[626]
The spectacular and literary elaboration of the Jacobean mask must not be allowed to blind our eyes to the fact that after all it was not a dramatic illusion but a choregraphic compliment which remained the central purpose of the entertainment. Scenery and speech and song occupy perhaps a disproportionate share of the attention of the poets who, to their own glorification and that of the architects, wrote the descriptions; but the greater part of the considerable number of hours during which the mask lasted was devoted to the actual dancing. And the dancing involved an intimacy, and not a detachment, in the relation between performers and spectators. It is true that some of the traditional features which accompanied the mask, when court ceremonial first took it up from folk custom, tended under the new conditions to pass into the state of survivals. Thus the torch-bearers, whether or not their burning brands represent some original element of ritual in the folk festival, were certainly de rigueur as a concomitant of the mask during the sixteenth century. They had two clear functions. They provided, in dim halls, the abundance of light which was so necessary to give full value to the bright stuffs and metallic spangles worn by the dancers. And their own costumes, harmonized or contrasting with those of the dancers, afforded the variety of interest which otherwise, while the presenters were still limited to one or two 'truchmen', might have been lacking. They were always kept in strict subordination to the maskers proper. They were their attendants; Hinds in a mask of Clowns, Almains in a mask of Swart Rutters, Moorish friars in a mask of Moors. Their garments were inferior, taffeta, as against satin or cloth of gold. When George Ferrers, as Lord of Misrule in 1552, had occasion to complain of the apparel furnished by the Master of the Revels for his councillors, he wrote that the gentlemen who were to take the parts 'wolde not be seen in London so torchebererlyke disgysed for asmoche as they ar worthe or hope to be worthe'.[627] And when the measures began, they had little to do, but to stand and look on.[628] In the seventeenth century they were not so indispensable, either for illumination, which could be better supplied by fixed lights upon the scene, or for variety.[629] And with the multiplication of other purposes the room which they took up could ill be spared. In Tethys' Festival, given exceptionally during the heat of summer, there were no torch-bearers, on the ground that 'they would have pestered the roome, which the season would not well permit'. And therewith begins a tendency either, as already indicated, to merge them in the antimask, or to omit them altogether.[630] The vizard again and the ceremonial unvizarding at the end of the performance, although usual, and of course essential parts of the tradition, do not appear to have been quite invariable under James I.[631] As early as the Mask of Blackness in 1605, blackened faces and arms were substituted, which, says a contemporary writer, were 'disguise sufficient' and an 'ugly sight', and the experiment was not repeated. I do not know that for any historic period there is evidence that the maskers regularly brought gifts with them, although they sometimes did, and one may suspect that such gifts represented the 'luck' of the primitive custom. A jewel was all very well when Arthur Throgmorton wanted to use a mask as a medium for recovering the lost favour of Elizabeth.[632] But it may be assumed that Elizabeth would think it a useless expense, when a mask was only conventionally a surprise visit, and was really designed on her own instructions in her own Office of the Revels. And although James did on one occasion pay no less than £40,000 for the jewel used in the mask of Indian and Chinese Knights, this was in the first year of his reign, when his predecessor's hoarded wealth was still there for the lavishing, and the special purpose was to be served of impressing Henri IV through his diplomatic representative.[633] When there were gifts, they were as a rule trifling, and incidental to the 'device' of the mask. The abortive scheme of 1562 provides for a grandguard and a sword and girdle. Elizabeth got on one occasion flowers of silk and gold, signifying victory, peace, and plenty; on another snowballs of lamb's wool sweetened with rose-water in a mask of Janus; on a third looking-glasses with posies inscribed on them in a mask of Pedlars. In The Twelve Goddesses the maskers presented their emblems, and Sibylla laid them in the temple. In the Mask of Blackness the Daughters of Niger presented their fans. In Tethys' Festival there were a trident for James and a sword, worth 20,000 crowns, and a scarf for Henry. In the Mask of Squires Anne plucked a bough from a golden tree, wherewith to disenchant the Knights. Often the gifts were represented by the merely conventional offering of a copy of verses, or of shields bearing imprese or painted allegorical devices, such as were also brought by the runners in tilts.[634] These sometimes required interpretation and led to some preliminary 'commoning' with the guests of honour. Interchanges of wit at this stage between Elizabeth and Mary Fitton in 1600 and James and Philip Herbert in 1604 are upon record. But of course the chief 'commoning' was when the maskers 'took out' the principal spectators of the opposite sex to dance. Whether the Jacobean maskers kissed the ladies whom they took out I do not know, but this was the earlier custom.[635] At any rate the 'taking out' is the critical moment of intimacy between performers and spectators in the mask, and serves, even more than the gifts and even more than the personal compliments in theme and speech, to distinguish it from the drama.[636] The period of 'intermixed' dancing (Hymenaei), which it introduced, served as a sequel to the greater part of the mask proper, and is sometimes described as 'the revels' (Love Freed; Twelve Months). More precisely, the order of the dancing, subject to minor variations, was as follows. After the dialogue of presentation and the antimask, the maskers entered and began a series of 'masque dances' (Oberon; Love Freed), 'changes' (Malecontent; Insatiate Countess), or 'strains' (Hymenaei; Cynthia's Revels; A Woman is a Weathercock). These are also called the 'single' dances, to distinguish them from the 'intermixed' dances (Blackness) or more usually and simply, the maskers 'own' dances or the 'new' dances. Sometimes the 'first' dance is distinguished from the 'main' dance (Twelve Months; Lords' Mask; Mercury Vindicated; Golden Age). After one, two, or three 'new' dances, the maskers 'dissolved' (Hymenaei) and 'took out' for the 'revels'. Finally they gathered again for their 'going off' (Twelve Months), the 'last', 'parting', 'departing' or 'retiring' dance, which sometimes took them 'into the work' (Oberon). If they did not dance back 'into the work', they probably unmasked at this stage, after a ceremonial reverence to the company, known as the 'honour' (Hay Mask; Your Five Gallants; A Woman is a Weathercock).[637] The revels consisted partly of the solemn figured dances known as 'measures', partly of 'lighter' dances (Hay Mask). Those most often mentioned are the galliard, coranto, and lavolta; others were the brawl (Browne's Mask), duretto (Beaumont's Mask; Mask of Flowers), and morasco (Mask of Flowers).[638] Of course, only 'ordinary' measures (Indian and Chinese Knights) and familiar court dances were available for the revels. The mask dances proper, on the other hand, as the epithet 'new' indicates, were specially designed and carefully learnt for each occasion. They appear to have always been 'measures'. Baldassarino regards 'meslanges geometriques' as being of the essence of the mask. The dances were a technical matter, with which the poets were not much concerned, and they do not as a rule attempt any notation, or even detailed description of the figures. An occasional literary touch was, however, to their fancy. In Hymenaei some of the figures were 'formed into letters very signifying to the name of the bridegroom', and again in the Mask of Queens one of the dances was 'graphically disposed into letters, and honouring the name of the most sweet and ingenious Prince, Charles, Duke of York'. These graphic dances, which Bacon deprecates, were also used in the French Ballet de Monseigneur le Duc de Vandosme of 1610.[639]
It is of a piece with the intimacy between maskers and spectators that the former appear always to have been volunteers, and that to dance in a mask, at any rate at court, was not derogatory even to persons of the highest rank. I have no proof that Queen Elizabeth ever masked in person, as her father and brother certainly did, but in view of her notorious fondness for the exercise of the dance it is extremely probable. Unfortunately we know very little of the personnel of the Elizabethan masks. The Revels Accounts, a source of generous information on many points, never name the maskers. Scattered notices elsewhere suggest that they may not infrequently have been the maids of honour. It was so when Brantôme was present in 1561, and at Anne Russell's wedding in 1600, when Elizabeth, contrary to the ordinary rule of sex-exchange, was 'taken' out by Mary Fitton. Among the stray names of revellers that have floated to us down the stream of time are those of George Brooke, who came to the scaffold in 1603, and Sir Robert Carey, who boasts of his share in all court triumphs in 1586.[640] Naunton is the authority for the statement that Sir Christopher Hatton first appeared before Elizabeth in one of the masks which were sent from time to time as the contributions of the Inns of Court to the royal gaiety.[641] Lists of the dancers in most of the Jacobean masks are preserved. That of James himself is not among them; he was ungainly and indolent except on horseback. But Anne danced in her own 'Queen's' masks of 1604, 1605, 1608, 1609, 1610, and probably 1611, and allowed herself to be 'taken out' as a compliment to her hosts at Caversham as late as the summer of 1613. With her in 1610 was the Princess Elizabeth, and in 1608 and 1610 the Lady Arabella Stuart. Henry was 'taken out' as a boy and 'tost from hand to hand like a tennis bal' by the ladies in the Twelve Goddesses of 1604.
He masked himself in Oberon (1611) and in the undatable Twelve Months. The only appearance of Charles before 1618 was as Zephyrus amongst the presenters of Tethys' Festival (1610). Next to Anne herself, the most conspicuous performer in the Queen's masks was perhaps Lucy Countess of Bedford, who had already won her reputation as a 'fine dancing dame' at the end of the previous reign, and whose costume in one at least of her extant portraits is conjectured to represent masking attire.[642] Other names which recur frequently in the lists are those of Elizabeth Countess of Derby and her sister Susan Countess of Montgomery, Alethea Countess of Arundel, Anne Countess of Dorset, and Audrey Lady Walsingham; while amongst the men shone the two brothers Herbert, William Earl of Pembroke and Philip Earl of Montgomery, and that most splendid and extravagant of all the Jacobean courtiers, James Lord Hay. The Earl of Somerset does not appear to have been a dancer, but when the star of George Villiers was rising in 1615 his friends were careful to give him his opportunity of shining in a mask. It is not surprising to find that the numerous sons and daughters of the Earl of Suffolk, Lord Chamberlain, and the Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse, who shared the official oversight of the masks, were not seldom called upon to display their skill. One fears that there must often have been heart-burnings. Lady Hatton's pique at being left out in 1605 contributed something to the strained relations with her husband, Lord Coke, which long made mirth for London.[643]
The masks could not dispense altogether with professional assistance. In the Mask of Beauty the torch-bearing Cupids were 'chosen out of the best and ingenious youth of the kingdom'. In Tethys' Festival the presenters included, in addition to the Duke of York, two gentlemen 'of good worth and respect', who played the Tritons, and the antimask included eight 'little ladies, all of them the daughters of Earls or Barons'. But this mask was for the exceptional occasion of the creation of Henry as Prince of Wales, and Daniel expressly boasts that 'there were none of inferior sort mixed among these great personages of state and honour (as usually there have been); but all was performed by themselves with a due reservation of their dignity'. The normal practice seems to have been to hire players and their boys for the antimask and for the speaking parts, which of course required a trained elocution.[644] Sometimes, however, a part might be taken by one of the numerous persons employed as devisers or trainers. I do not know that the statement that 'Ben Jonson turned the globe of the earth standing behind the altar' in Hymenaei necessarily implies Jonson's personal presence on the stage, actor though he had been, for in fact the globe seems to have been moved by unseen machinery, without even the apparent assistance of a presenter. But the dance-masters Thomas Giles and Jerome Heron certainly played the Cyclopes in the Haddington Mask, and Giles also played Thamesis in the Mask of Beauty. The musicians again, some or all of whom were generally disguised, were a professional body, of which the nucleus was probably formed by members of the various bands of the royal households. Thus John Allen, who sang in the Mask of Queens and the Mask of Squires, was 'her majesty's servant', and Nicholas Lanier, who also sang in the Mask of Squires, was one of the King's flutes. Both musicians and dancing-masters had other important functions in connexion with the masks, outside the actual performances. The former had to compose the airs and set them for the musical instruments and the dances; the latter had to arrange the dances and to drill the dancers.[645] Campion, being a composer as well as a poet, was naturally responsible for his own music, and the musical element in his masks tended to be predominant. Jonson seems generally to have obtained the co-operation of Alfonso Ferrabosco, probably a son of the Ferrabosco who was devising masks for Elizabeth about 1572.[646] He was originally a lutenist, but at the time of his death in 1627 'enjoyed four places, viz. a musician's place in general, a composer's place, a violl's place, and an instructor's place to the prince in the art of musique'.[647] Amongst the musicians who gave minor assistance, either as composers or as executants, were Thomas Ford (Chapman's Mask), John Cooper (Lords; Squires), the lutenists Robert Johnson (Oberon; Love Freed; Lords; Chapman's Mask), John and Robert Dowland (Chapman's Mask), and Philip Rossiter (Chapman's Mask), and the violinists Thomas Lupo the elder (Hay Mask; Oberon; Love Freed; Lords), Rowland Rubidge (Oberon), and Alexander Chisan (Oberon).[648] As dancing-masters we hear of Thomas Cardell under Elizabeth in 1582;[649] and under James of Jerome Heron (Haddington Mask; Queens; Oberon; Lords), Confess (Oberon; Love Freed), Bochan (Love Freed; Lords), and Thomas Giles (Hymenaei; Beauty; Haddington Mask; Queens; Oberon; Lords), who was musician and teacher of the dance to Henry, and may be identical with the Thomas Giles who became Master of the Paul's boys in 1584.[650]
The court masks ordinarily took place in what was called the banqueting-house, but might with more appropriateness have been called the masking-house, at Whitehall.[651] The occasional exceptions readily explain themselves. Whitehall was under the ban of plague in the winter of 1604, and the masks were in the great hall of Hampton Court. During the winter of 1606, when the Elizabethan banqueting-house had been pulled down and the Jacobean one was not yet ready, the great hall of Whitehall itself was used. Here also was given Chapman's Mask, on the second night of the Princess Elizabeth's wedding, doubtless because the banqueting-house was still encumbered with the scenery belonging to the Lords' Mask of the previous night. The hall had also been assigned to Beaumont's Mask on the third night, but when this was put off for a few days, the greater dignity of the banqueting-house was granted as a compensation for the disappointment of the dancers. The aspect of the room and its arrangements are well described in 1618, only a year before the first Jacobean banqueting-house was burnt down, by Orazio Busino, almoner to the Venetian ambassador, Piero Contarini.[652] This may be supplemented by Campion's description of the great hall at Whitehall as arranged for the mask at Lord Hay's wedding, and by the careful note of John Finett, then an assistant to the Master of the Ceremonies, upon the seating of the ambassadors in 1616.[653] At the lower or screen end was the scene; at the upper end, and divided from the scene by the dancing-place, was the royal 'state', on a raised daïs and under a canopy. Behind the state, along the sides of the room to right and left of the dancing-place, and in galleries above, were tiers of seats, some of which were divided into boxes. James himself seems always to have been present, returning if necessary from his hunting journeys for mask nights, and sometimes starting off again the next morning at daybreak. Busino's account suggests that he liked to see vigorous and sustained dancing; but his patience failed him when he was asked to sit through three masks on successive nights in 1613, and he insisted on putting off the third, although the maskers had already come, telling Sir Francis Bacon, who protested that this was to bury them quick, that the alternative was to bury him quick, for he could last no longer. On the other hand, he was sufficiently gratified by the Irish Mask in 1613 and Mercury Vindicated in 1615 to be willing to call for a second performance in each case. With the King sat members of the royal family and sometimes ambassadors or other specially honoured guests. Finett records that in 1616 the French, Venetian, and Savoyard ambassadors were all on the King's right hand, but in places of nicely graded dignity, 'not right out, but byas forward'. The ambassadorial suites appear to have been accommodated in boxes raised above the level of the state, to the right and left. Guests of honour, but of lesser honour, might be placed on special benches assigned to lords and privy councillors. Evidently the masks were solemn occasions, and the laws of precedence strictly followed. An allusion in The Maid's Tragedy suggests that ladies, other than those ladies of the court and ambassadors' wives who formed the king's 'troop', were ordinarily seated in the galleries.[654] One of the principal objects of the masks was the entertainment of ambassadors, and the jealousies amongst them were constantly involving James and his Council in awkward diplomatic questions.[655] These have recently been the subject of a special study, and need not here be described in detail.[656] By far the most important was the standing conflict for precedence between the representatives of France and Spain. James consistently refused to commit himself to either claim, and was careful not to invite both ambassadors to the same function.[657] But some occasions were more honourable than others, and it seems clear that in the minds of the ambassadors themselves the bestowal or withholding of an invitation often counted for a diplomatic triumph or rebuff. Matters were complicated during the earlier years of the reign by Anne's far from discreet advocacy of the Spanish cause, and the dispatches of M. de Beaumont in 1605 and M. de la Boderie in 1608 are largely occupied with the embarrassment caused to James and the humiliation inflicted upon those ambassadors themselves by the Queen's determination that her masks should be graced by the presence of the astute and courtly Spaniard, Juan de Taxis. In the latter year James had to stave off an open rupture with Henri IV by an opportune demand for the repayment of a long-standing debt. The relations between France and Spain were paralleled by similar feuds for precedence between Venice and Flanders and between Florence and Savoy, while the King of Spain was naturally unwilling that his representative should be received on terms of equality with the representative of Holland and thus appear to acknowledge the claims of rebellious provinces to rank as a sovereign state. Occasional visitors of rank had their own points of etiquette to raise. Thus in 1604 the Duke of Holstein stood for three hours rather than sit below the Venetian ambassador. Generally speaking, indeed, the newly established office of Master of the Ceremonies must have been anything but a bed of roses. The chief mask of the year, which every ambassador intrigued to attend, was traditionally danced on Twelfth Night; but often it was put off to a later date, in order to meet diplomatic exigencies.[658]
The banqueting-house, with the 'state' in it, was probably regarded as technically part of the Presence Chamber. At any rate, it was under the supervision of the Lord Chamberlain and the officers of the Chamber, headed by the Gentleman Usher. They seated the audience, kept the doors against the turbulent crowds knocking for admission, cleared the dancing-place when the King was seated, and supplied the principal guests with programmes or abstracts of the device prepared by the poet.[659] The Chamberlain's white staff was no mere symbol when there was whiffling to be done, and even Ben Jonson, 'ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a mask' on 6 January 1604, the year before his own sovereignty over masks began, required to be consoled by his fellow in misfortune, Sir John Roe, with the reminder,—