The maskers were twelve Disenchanted Knights; the first antimaskers four Enchanters and Enchantresses, four Winds, four Elements, and four Parts of the Earth; the second antimaskers twelve Skippers in red and white; the presenters four Squires and three Destinies; the musicians Eternity, Harmony, and a chorus of nine.
The locality was the banqueting room at Whitehall, of which the upper part, ‘where the state is placed’, and the sides were ‘theatred’ with pillars and scaffolds. At the lower end was a triumphal arch, ‘which enclosed the whole works’ and behind it the scene, from which a curtain was drawn. Above was a clouded sky; beneath a sea bounded by two promontories bearing pillars of gold, and in front ‘a pair of stairs made exceeding curiously in form of a scallop shell’, between two gardens with seats for the maskers. After the first antimask, danced ‘in a strange kind of confusion’, the Destinies brought the Queen a golden tree, whence she plucked a bough to disenchant the Knights, who then appeared, six from a cloud, six from the golden pillars. The scene changed, and ‘London with the Thames is very artificially presented’. The maskers gave the first and second dance, and then danced with the ladies, ‘wherein spending as much time as they held fitting, they returned to the seats provided for them’. Barges then brought the second antimask. After the maskers’ last dance, the Squires complimented the royalties and bridal pair.
This was a wedding mask, by lords and gentlemen. The maskers were the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Pembroke, Dorset, Salisbury, and Montgomery, the Lords Walden, Scroope, North, and Hay, Sir Thomas, Sir Henry, and Sir Charles Howard. The ‘workmanship’ was undertaken by ‘M. Constantine’ [Servi], ‘but he being too much of himself, and no way to be drawn to impart his intentions, failed so far in the assurance he gave that the main invention, even at the last cast, was of force drawn into a far narrower compass than was from the beginning intended’. One song was by Nicholas Lanier; three were by [Giovanni] Coprario and were sung by John Allen and Lanier. G. F. Biondi informed Carleton on 24 Nov. (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxv. 25) of the ‘costly ballets’ preparing for Somerset’s wedding. On 25 Nov. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxv. 28; Birch, i. 278): ‘All the talk is now of masking and feasting at these towardly marriages, whereof the one is appointed on St. Stephen’s day, in Christmas, the other for Twelfthtide. The King bears the charge of the first, all saving the apparel, and no doubt the queen will do as much on her side, which must be a mask of maids, if they may be found.... The maskers, besides the lord chamberlain’s four sons, are named to be the Earls of Rutland, Pembroke, Montgomery, Dorset, Salisbury, the Lords Chandos, North, Compton, and Hay; Edward Sackville, that killed the Lord Bruce, was in the list, but was put out again; and I marvel he would offer himself, knowing how little gracious he is, and that he hath been assaulted once or twice since his return.’ The Queen’s entertainment, which did not prove to be a mask, was Daniel’s Hymen’s Triumph. The actual list of performers in the mask of 26 Dec. was somewhat differently made up. On 18 Nov. Lord Suffolk had sent invitations through Sir Thomas Lake to the Earl of Rutland and Lord Willoughby d’Eresby (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxv. 15; Reyher, 505), but apparently neither accepted. He also wrote to Lake on 8 Dec. (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxv. 37) hoping that Sackville might be allowed to take part, not in the mask, but in the tilt (as in fact he did), at his cousin’s wedding. On 30 Dec. Chamberlain sent Alice Carleton an accurate list of the actual maskers (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxv. 53; Birch, i. 285), with the comment, ‘I hear little or no commendation of the mask made by the lords that night, either for device or dancing, only it was rich and costly’. The ‘great bravery’ and masks at the wedding are briefly recorded by Gawdy, 175, and a list of the festivities is given by Howes in Stowe, Annales (1615), 928. He records five in all: ‘A gallant maske of Lords’ [Campion’s] on 26 Dec., the wedding night, ‘a maske of the princes gentlemen’ on 29 Dec. and 3 Jan. [Jonson’s Irish Mask], ‘2 seuerall pleasant maskes’ at Merchant Taylors on 4 Jan. [including Middleton’s lost Mask of Cupid], and a Gray’s Inn mask on 6 Jan. [Flowers].
The ambassadorial complications of the year are described by Finett, 12 (cf. Sullivan, 84). Spain had been in the background at the royal wedding of the previous year, and as there was a new Spanish ambassador (Sarmiento) this was made an excuse for asking him with the archiducal ambassador on 26 Dec. and the French and Venetian ambassadors on 6 Jan. By way of compensation these were also asked to the Roxburghe-Drummond wedding on 2 Feb. They received purely formal invitations to the Somerset wedding, and returned excuses for staying away. The agents of Florence and Savoy were asked, and when they raised the question of precedence were told that they were not ambassadors and might scramble for places.
I am not quite clear whether the costs of this mask, as well as of Jonson’s Irish Mask, fell on the Exchequer. Chamberlain’s notice of 25 Nov. (vide supra) is not conclusive. Reyher, 523, assigns most of the financial documents to the Irish Mask, but an account of the Works for an arch and pilasters to the Lords’ mask; and the payment to Meredith Morgan in Sept. 1614 (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxvii. 92), which he does not cite, appears from the Calendar to be for more than one mask. The Irish Mask needed no costly scenery.
J[ohn] B[ruce], (Camden Misc. v), describes a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century forgery, of unknown origin, purporting to describe one of the masks at the Somerset wedding and other events. The details used belong partly to 1613–14 and partly to 1614–15.
ELIZABETH, LADY CARY (1586–1639).
Mariam. 1602 < > 5.
I have omitted a notice of this closet play, printed in 1613, by a slip, and can only add to the edition (M. S. C.) of 1914 that Lady Cary was married in 1602 (Chamberlain, 199), not 1600. She wrote an earlier play on a Syracusan theme.
SIR ROBERT CECIL, EARL OF SALISBURY (1563–1612).