Melanthe. 10 March 1615
1615, March 27. Melanthe Fabula pastoralis acta cum Jacobus, Magnae Brit. Franc. & Hiberniae Rex, Cantabrigiam suam nuper inviseret, ibidemque Musarum atque eius animi gratia dies quinque commoraretur. Egerunt Alumni Coll. San. et Individuae Trinitatis. Cantabrigiae. Cantrellus Legge.
The ascription to Brooke is due to the Dering MS. (Gent. Mag. 1756, p. 223). Chamberlain (Birch, i. 304) says that the play was ‘excellently well written, and as well acted’.
WILLIAM BROWNE (1591–1643?).
Browne was born at Tavistock, educated at the Grammar School there and at Exeter College, Oxford, and entered the Inner Temple from Clifford’s Inn in Nov. 1611. He is known as a poet, especially by Britannia’s Pastorals (1613, 1616), but beyond his mask has no connexion with the stage. In later life he was of the household of the Herberts at Wilton.
Ulysses and Circe. 13 Jan. 1615
[MSS.] (a) Emmanuel College, Cambridge, with title, ‘The Inner Temple Masque. Presented by the gentlemen there. Jan. 13, 1614.’ [Epistle to Inner Temple, signed ‘W. Browne’.]
(b) Collection of H. Chandos Pole-Gell, Hopton Hall, Wirksworth (in 1894).
Editions with Browne’s Works by T. Davies (1772), W. C. Hazlitt (1868), and G. Goodwin (1894).
The maskers, in green and white, were Knights; the first antimaskers, with an ‘antic measure’, two Actaeons, two Midases, two Lycaons, two Baboons, and Grillus; the second antimaskers, ‘to a softer tune’, four Maids of Circe and three Nereids; the musicians Sirens, Echoes, a Woodman, and others; the presenters Triton, Circe, and Ulysses.