The maskers were the ten Ornaments of Court—Honour, Courtesy, Valour, Urbanity, Confidence, Alacrity, Promptness, Industry, Hability, Reality; the presenters Masquerado, Plutus, Robin Goodfellow, and Cupid, who entered in a chariot attended by the maskers. There were three dances. Jonson’s description is exceptionally meagre.
The dialogue finds its humour in the details of mask-presentation themselves. Masquerado, in his vizard, apologizes for the absence of musicians and the hoarseness of ‘the rogue play-boy, that acts Cupid’. Plutus criticizes the expense and the corruption of manners involved in masks. Robin Goodfellow narrates his difficulties in obtaining access. He has tried in vain to get through the Woodyard on to the Terrace, but the Guard pushed him off a ladder into the Verge. The Carpenters’ way also failed him. He has offered, or thought of offering, himself as an ‘enginer’ belonging to the ‘motions’, but they were ‘ceased’; as an old tire-woman; as a musician; as a feather-maker of Blackfriars; as a ‘bombard man’, carrying ‘bouge’ to country ladies who had fasted for the fine sight since seven in the morning; as a citizen’s wife, exposed to the liberties of the ‘black-guard’; as a wireman or a chandler; and finally in his own shape as ‘part of the Device’.
There are several financial documents relating to a mask at Christmas 1611, for which funds were issued to one Meredith Morgan (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxvii, Dec.; lxviii, Jan.; Reyher, 521). The Revels Account (Cunningham, 211) records a ‘princes Mask performed by Gentelmen of his High [ ]’ on 6 Jan. 1612. According to Chamberlain, the Queen was at Greenwich ‘practising for a new mask’ on 20 Nov., but this was put off in December as ‘unseasonable’ so soon after the death of the Queen of Spain (Birch, i. 148, 152). Jonson does not date Love Restored, but Dr. Brotanek has successfully assigned it to 1611–12 on the ground of its reference to ‘the Christmas cut-purse’, of whom Chamberlain wrote to Carleton on 31 Dec. 1611 that ‘a cut-purse, taken in the Chapel Royal, will be executed’ (Brotanek, 347; cf. S. P. D. Jac. I, lxvii. 117, and Bartholomew Fair (1614), III. v. 132). This was one John Selman, executed on 7 Jan. 1612 for picking the pocket of Leonard Barry, servant to Lord Harington, on Christmas Day (Rye, 269). I may add that Robin Goodfellow, when pretending to be concerned with the motions, was asked if he were ‘the fighting bear of last year’, and that the chariot of Oberon on 1 Jan. 1611 was drawn by white bears. There is, of course, nothing inconsistent in a Prince’s mask being performed by King’s servants, and the ‘High[ness]’ of the Revels Account may mean James, just as well as Henry. Simpson (E. M. 1. xxxiv) puts Love Restored in 1613–14, as connected with the tilt (cf. p. 393), but there is no room for it (cf. p. 246).
The Irish Mask. 29 Dec. 1613
1616. The Irish Masque at Court, by Gentlemen the Kings Servants. W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen. [Part of F1.]
The maskers were twelve Irish Gentlemen, first in mantles, then without; the antimaskers their twelve Footmen; the presenters a Citizen and a Gentleman; one of the musicians an Irish bard. The Footmen dance ‘to the bag-pipe and other rude music’, after which the Gentlemen ‘dance forth’ twice.
The antimaskers say that their lords have come to the bridal of ‘ty man Robyne’ to the daughter of ‘Toumaish o’ Shuffolke’, who has knocked them on the pate with his ‘phoyt stick’, as they came by. There are also compliments to ‘King Yamish’, ‘my Mistresh tere’, ‘my little Maishter’, and ‘te vfrow, ty daughter, tat is in Tuchland’. It is therefore easy to supply the date which Jonson omits, as the mask clearly belongs to the series presented in honour of the wedding of Robert Earl of Somerset with the Earl of Suffolk’s daughter during the Christmas of 1613–14. The list in Stowe, Annales, 928 (cf. s.v. Campion), includes one on 29 Dec. by ‘the Prince’s Gentlemen, which pleased the King so well that hee caused them to performe it againe uppon the Monday following’. This was 3 Jan.; the 10 Jan. in Nichols, ii. 718, is a misreading of the evidence in Chamberlain’s letters, which identify the mask as Jonson’s by a notice of the Irish element. On 30 Dec. Chamberlain wrote to Alice Carleton (Birch, i. 285), ‘yesternight there was a medley mask of five English and five Scots, which are called the high dancers, amongst whom Sergeant Boyd, one Abercrombie, and Auchternouty, that was at Padua and Venice, are esteemed the most principal and lofty, but how it succeeded I know not’. Later in the letter he added, probably in reference to this and not Campion’s mask, ‘Sir William Bowyer hath lost his eldest son, Sir Henry. He was a fine dancer, and should have been of the masque, but overheating himself with practising, he fell into the smallpox and died.’ On 5 Jan. he wrote to Dudley Carleton (Birch, i. 287), ‘The—— maskers were so well liked at court the last week that they were appointed to perform again on Monday: yet their device, which was a mimical imitation of the Irish, was not pleasing to many, who think it no time, as the case stands, to exasperate that nation, by making it ridiculous’. On the finance cf. s.v. Campion.
Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists. 6 Jan. 1615
1616. Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court by Gentlemen the Kings Seruants. W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen. [Part of F1.]
The maskers were twelve Sons of Nature; the first antimaskers Alchemists, the second Imperfect Creatures, in helms of limbecs; the presenters Vulcan, Cyclops, Mercury, Nature, and Prometheus, with a chorus of musicians.