Carleton also mentions the trouble between the Spanish and French ambassadors, which is also referred to in a letter of O. Renzo to G. A. Frederico (S. P. D. Jac. I, vi. 37; cf. Sullivan, 195), and is the subject of several dispatches by and to the Comte de Beaumont (King’s MSS. cxxiv, ff. 328, 359v, 363, 373, 381, 383v, 389; cf. Reyher, 519, Sullivan, 193–5). was the object of the Court not to invite both ambassadors together, as this would entail an awkward decision as to precedence. Beaumont was asked first, to the mask on 1 Jan. He hesitated to accept, expressing a fear that it was intended to ask De Taxis to the Queen’s mask on Twelfth Night, ‘dernier jour des festes de Noël selon la facon d’Angleterre et le plus honnorable de tout pour la cérémonie qui s’y obserue de tout temps publiquement’. After some negotiation he extracted a promise from James that, if the Spaniard was present at all, it would be in a private capacity, and he then dropped the point, and accepted his own invitation, threatening to kill De Taxis in the presence if he dared to dispute precedence with him. On 5 Jan. he learnt that Anne had refused to dance if De Taxis was not present, and that the promise would be broken. He protested, and his protest was met by an invitation for the Twelfth Night to which he had attached such importance. But the Queen’s mask was put off until 8 Jan., a Scottish mask substituted on 6 Jan., and on 8 Jan. De Taxis was present, revelling it in red, while Anne paid him the compliment of wearing a red favour on her costume.
Reyher, 519, cites references to the Queen’s mask in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber and of the Office of Works. E. Law (Hist. of Hampton Court, ii. 10) gives, presumably from one of these, ‘making readie the lower ende with certain roomes of the hall at Hampton Court for the Queenes Maiestie and ladies against their mask by the space of three dayes’.
Allde’s edition must have been quickly printed. On 2 Feb. Lord Worcester wrote to Lord Shrewsbury (Lodge, iii. 87): ‘Whereas your Lordship saith you were never particularly advertised of the mask, I have been at sixpence charge with you to send you the book, which will inform you better than I can, having noted the names of the ladies applied to each goddess; and for the other, I would likewise have sent you the ballet, if I could have got it for money, but these books, as I hear, are all called in, and in truth I will not take upon me to set that down which wiser than myself do not understand.’
Tethys’ Festival. 5 June 1610
1610. Tethys Festiual: or the Queenes Wake. Celebrated at Whitehall, the fifth day of June 1610. Deuised by Samuel Daniel, one of the Groomes of her Maiesties most Honourable priuie Chamber. For John Budge. [Annexed with separate title-page to The Creation of Henry Prince of Wales (q.v.). A Preface to the Reader criticizes, though not by name, Ben Jonson’s descriptions of his masks.]
Edition in Nichols, James (1828), ii. 346.
The maskers, in sky-blue and cloth of silver, were Tethys and thirteen Nymphs of as many English Rivers; the antimaskers, in light robes adorned with flowers, eight Naiads; the presenters Zephyrus and two Tritons, whom with the Naiads Daniel calls ‘the Ante-maske or first shew’, and Mercury. Torchbearers were dispensed with, for ‘they would have pestered the roome, which the season would not well permit’.
The locality was probably the Banqueting Room at Whitehall. The scene was supplemented by a Tree of Victory on a mount to the right of ‘the state’. A ‘travers’ representing a cloud served for a curtain, and was drawn to discover, within a framework borne on pilasters, in front of which stood Neptune and Nereus on pedestals, a haven, whence the ‘Ante-maske’ issued. They presented on behalf of Tethys a trident to the King, and a sword and scarf to Henry, and the Naiads danced round Zephyrus. The scene was then changed, under cover of three circles of moving lights and glasses, to show five niches, of which the central one represented a throne for Tethys, with Thames at her feet, and the others four caverns, each containing three Nymphs.
The maskers marched to the Tree of Victory, at which they offered their flowers, and under which Tethys reposed between the dances. Of these they gave two; then took out the Lords for ‘measures, corantos, and galliardes’; and then gave their ‘retyring daunce’. Apparently as an innovation, ‘to avoid the confusion which usually attendeth the desolve of these shewes’, the presenters stayed the dissolve, and Mercury sent the Duke of York and six young noblemen to conduct the Queen and ladies back ‘in their owne forme’.
This was a Queen’s mask, and Daniel notes ‘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 maskers were the Queen (Tethys), the Lady Elizabeth (Thames), Lady Arabella Stuart (Trent), the Countesses of Arundel (Arun), Derby (Darwent), Essex (Lee), Dorset (Air), and Montgomery (Severn), Viscountess Haddington (Rother), and the Ladies Elizabeth Gray (Medway), Elizabeth Guilford (Dulesse), Katherine Petre (Olwy), Winter (Wye), and Windsor (Usk). The antimaskers were ‘eight little Ladies’. The Duke of York played Zephyrus, and two gentlemen ‘of good worth and respect’ the Tritons. ‘The artificiall part’, says Daniel, ‘only speakes Master Inago Jones.’