English criticisms were more kindly than La Boderie’s. Sir Henry Saville described it to Sir Richard Beaumont on the same night as a ‘singular brave mask’, at which he had been until three in the morning (Beaumont Papers, 17), and Chamberlain wrote to Carleton on 11 Feb. (S. P. D. Jac. I, xxxi. 26; Birch, i. 72): ‘I can send you no perfect relation of the marriage nor mask on Tuesday, only they say all, but especially the motions, were well performed; as Venus, with her chariot drawn by swans, coming in a cloud to seek her son; who with his companions, Lusus, Risus, and Janus [? Jocus], and four or five more wags, were dancing a matachina, and acted it very antiquely, before the twelve signs, who were the master maskers, descended from the zodiac, and played their parts more gravely, being very gracefully attired.’
Mask of Queens. 2 Feb. 1609
[MSS.] (a) B.M. Harl. MS. 6947, f. 143 (printed Reyher, 506). [Apparently a short descriptive analysis or programme, without the words of the dialogue and songs.]
(b) B.M. Royal MS. 18 A. xlv. [Holograph. Epistle to Prince Henry.]
S. R. 1609, Feb. 22 (Segar). ‘A booke called, The maske of Queenes Celebrated, done by Beniamin Johnson.’ Richard Bonion and Henry Walley (Arber, iii. 402).
1609. The Masque of Queenes Celebrated From the House of Fame: By the most absolute in all State, And Titles. Anne, Queene of Great Britaine, &c. With her Honourable Ladies. At White-Hall, Febr. 2. 1609. Written by Ben: Ionson. N. Okes for R. Bonian and H. Wally. [Epistle to Prince Henry.]
1616. [Part of F1.]
Edition in J. P. Collier, Five Court Masques (1848, Sh. Soc. from Royal MS.).
Jonson prefaces that ‘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 as a spectacle of strangeness’ [it is called a ‘maske’ in the programme] ‘producing multiplicity of gesture, and not unaptly sorting with the current and whole fall of the device’.
The maskers, in various habits, eight designs for which are in Sh. England, ii. 311, were Bel-Anna and eleven other Queens, who were attended by torchbearers; the antimaskers eleven Hags and their dame Ate; the presenters Perseus or Heroic Virtue and Fame.