The mask was announced by 9 Dec. (V. P. xi. 74). On 10 Dec. La Boderie (ii. 490) reported that it would cost 6,000 or 7,000 crowns, and that nearly all the ladies invited by the Queen to take part in it were Catholics. Anne’s preparations were in swing before 17 Dec. (V. P. xi. 76). On 22 Dec. La Boderie reported (iii. 6) that he had underestimated the cost, which would not be less than 30,000 crowns, and was causing much annoyance to the Privy Council. On 31 Dec. Donne (Letters, i. 182) intended to deliver a letter ‘when the rage of the mask is past’. Lord Arundel notes his wife’s practising early in Jan. (Lodge, App. 124). The original date was 6 Jan. ‘The Mask goes forward for Twelfth-day’, wrote Chamberlain to Carleton on 5 Jan. (S. P. D. Jac. I, xxxi. 2; Birch, i. 69), ‘though I doubt the new room will be scant ready’. But on 8 Jan. (S. P. D. Jac. I, xxxi. 4; Birch, i. 71) he wrote again:
‘We had great hopes of having you here this day, and then I would not have given my part of the mask for any of their places that shall be present, for I suppose you and your lady would find easily passage, being so befriended; for the show is put off till Sunday, by reason that all things are not ready. Whatsoever the device may be, and what success they may have in their dancing, yet you would have been sure to have seen great riches in jewels, when one lady, and that under a baroness, is said to be furnished far better then a hundred thousand pounds. And the Lady Arabella goes beyond her; and the queen must not come behind.’
The delay was really due to ambassadorial complications, which are reported by Giustinian (V. P. xi. 83, 86) and very fully by La Boderie (iii. 1–75; cf. Sullivan, 35, 201). The original intention was to invite the Spanish and Venetian, but not the French and Flemish ambassadors. This, according to Giustinian, offended La Boderie, because Venice was ‘the nobler company’. But the real sting lay in the invitation to Spain. This was represented to La Boderie about 23 Dec. as the personal act of Anne, in the face of a remonstrance by James on the ground of the preference already shown to Spain in 1605. La Boderie replied that he had already been slighted at the King of Denmark’s visit, that the mask was a public occasion, and that Henri would certainly hold James responsible. A few days later he was told that James was greatly annoyed at his wife’s levity, and would ask him and the Venetian ambassador to dinner; but La Boderie refused to accept this as a compliment equivalent to seeing the Queen dance, and supping with the King before 10,000 persons. He urged that both ambassadors or neither should be invited, and hinted that, if Anne was so openly Spanish in her tendencies, Henri might feel obliged to leave the mission in charge of a secretary. An offer was made to invite La Boderie’s wife, but this he naturally refused. The Council tried in vain to make Anne hear reason, but finally let the mask proceed, and countered Henri diplomatically by calling his attention to the money debts due from France to England. Meanwhile Giustinian had pressed for his own invitation in place of the Flemish ambassador, and obtained it. The Spanish and Venetian ambassadors were therefore present. La Boderie reported that much attention was paid to Giustinian, and little to the Spanish ambassador, and also that James was so angry with Anne that he left for a hunting trip the next day without seeing her. Giustinian admired the mask, which was, James told him (V. P. xi. 86), ‘to consecrate the birth of the Great Hall, which his predecessors had left him built merely in wood, but which he had converted into stone’. Probably this is the mask described in a letter of Lady Pembroke to Lord Shrewsbury calendared without date among letters of 1607–8 in Lodge, iii, App. 121. On 28 Jan. the Spanish ambassador invited the fifteen ladies who had danced to dinner (Lodge, iii. 223; La Boderie, iii. 81). On 29 Jan. Lord Lisle wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury regretting that he could not send him the verses, because Ben Jonson was busy writing more for the Haddington wedding (Lodge, App. 102).
A warrant for expenses was signed 11 Dec. (S. P. D. Jac. I, xxviii). A payment was made to Bethell (Reyher, 520).
Lord Haddington’s Mask [The Hue and Cry after Cupid]. 9 Feb. 1608
N.D. The Description of the Masque. With the Nuptiall Songs. Celebrating the happy Marriage of Iohn, Lord Ramsey, Viscount Hadington, with the Lady Elizabeth Ratcliffe, Daughter to the right Honor: Robert, Earle of Sussex. At Court On the Shroue-Tuesday at night. 1608. Deuised by Ben: Ionson. [No imprint.]
1616. [Part of F1.] The maskers were the twelve Signs of the Zodiac in carnation and silver; the antimaskers Cupid and twelve Joci and Risus, who danced ‘with their antic faces’; the presenters Venus, the Graces and Cupid, Hymen, Vulcan and the Cyclopes; the musicians Priests of Hymen, while the Cyclopes beat time with their sledges.
Pilasters hung with amorous trophies supported gigantic figures of Triumph and Victory ‘in place of the arch, and holding a gyrlond of myrtle for the key’. The scene was a steep red cliff (Radcliffe), over which clouds broke for the issue of the chariot of Venus. After the antimasque, the cliff parted, to discover the maskers in a turning sphere of silver. The maskers gave four dances, interspersed with verses of an epithalamion. The mask was given by the maskers, seven Scottish and five English lords and gentlemen, the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery, Lords D’Aubigny, De Walden, Hay, and Sanquhar, the Master of Mar, Sir Robert Rich, Sir John Kennedy, and Mr. Erskine. (Quarto and Lodge, iii. 223.) The ‘device and act of the scene’ were supplied by Inigo Jones, the tunes by Alphonso Ferrabosco, and two dances each by Hierome Herne and Thomas Giles, who also beat time as Cyclopes.
Rowland White told Lord Shrewsbury on 26 Jan. that the mask was ‘now the only thing thought upon at court’, and would cost the maskers about £300 a man (Lodge, iii. 223). Jonson was busy with the verses on 29 Jan. (Lodge, App. 102).
Sussex and Haddington intended to ask the French ambassador both to the wedding dinner and to the mask and banquet, but the Lord Chamberlain, having Spanish sympathies, would not consent. In the end he was asked by James himself to the mask and banquet, at which Prince Henry would preside. He accepted, and suggested that Henri should present Haddington with a ring, but this was not done. He thought the mask ‘assez maigre’, but Anne was very gracious, and James regretted that etiquette did not allow him to sit at the banquet in person. La Boderie’s wife and daughter, who danced with the Duke of York, were also present. Unfortunately he did not receive in time an instruction from Paris to keep away if the Flemish ambassador was asked, and did not protest against this invitation on his own responsibility, partly out of annoyance with the Venetian for attending the Queen’s mask without him, and partly for fear of losing his own invitation. The Fleming had had far less consideration than himself (La Boderie, iii. 75–144). So both the French and the Flemish ambassador were present, with two princes of Saxony (V. P. xi. 97).