1653. Poems ... for William Hope. [A reissue.]
1660. Poems. The golden remains of those so much admired dramatick poets, Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher, Gent. [&c.] for William Hope. [A reissue.]
1679. [Part of F2.]
The texts of 1647–79 give a shorter description than the original Qq, and omit the epistle.
Edition in Nichols, James (1828), ii. 591.
For general notices of the wedding masks, see ch. xxiv and the account of Campion’s Lords’ Mask; but it may be noted that the narrative in the Mercure François gives a very inaccurate description of Beaumont’s work as left to us, introducing an Atlas and an Aletheia who find no places in the text.
The maskers, in carnation, were fifteen knights of Olympia; the musicians twelve priests of Jove; the presenters Mercury and Iris. There were two antimasks, Mercury’s of four Naiads, five Hyades, four Cupids, and four Statues, ‘not of one kinde or liverie (because that had been so much in use heretofore)’, and Iris’s of a ‘rurall company’ consisting of a Pedant, a May Lord and Lady, a Servingman and Chambermaid, a Country Clown or Shepherd and Country Wench, a Host and Hostess, a He Baboon and She Baboon, and a He Fool and She Fool ‘ushering them in’.
The locality was the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The Hall was originally appointed, and on Shrove-Tuesday, 16 Feb., the mask came by water from Winchester House in the royal barge, attended by many gentlemen of the Inns in other barges. They landed at the Privy Stairs, watched by the King and princes from the Privy Gallery, and were conducted to the Vestry. But the actual mask was put off until 20 Feb., in view of the press in the Hall, and then given in Banqueting House. Beaumont’s description passes lightly over this contretemps, but cf. infra.
The ‘fabricke’ was a mountain, with separate ‘traverses’ discovering its lower and its higher slopes. From the former issued the presenters and antimasks, whose ‘measures’ were both encored by the King, but unluckily ‘one of the Statuaes by that time was undressed’. The latter bore the ‘maine masque’ in two pavilions before the altar of Jupiter. The maskers descended, danced two measures, then took their ladies to dance galliards, durets, corantoes, &c., then danced ‘their parting measure’ and ascended.
Phineas Pett, Master of the Shipwrights’ Company in 1613, relates (Archaeologia, xii. 266) that he was