“Somerset House?” interrupted Betty. “That’s still standing anyway! The front of it is in the Strand, and the back looks over the river, doesn’t it? Why, King’s College is part of Somerset House, and people I know, go there for examinations!”
“Yes. Somerset House still stands, and is a fine place, but it has all been rebuilt in quite a different style from the house we’ve just passed.” There was a moment’s silence before Godmother said: “Here is the royal landing-place for Whitehall! The Queen and her train of attendants have gone up the steps into the palace, which, by the way, you mustn’t think of as one big house, but rather as a number of separate buildings, scattered over the ground where now stand all the big Government offices like the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Colonial Office, where, in our day, the business of governing our country is done. Elizabeth’s father, Henry the Eighth, has not long ago added to, and rebuilt much of the palace which he took from his famous minister, Cardinal Wolsey. Whitehall belonged to Wolsey before he fell into disgrace, and King Henry was only too glad to get such a splendid palace. You can see from here, the line of a great hall he added to it. It’s there that some of the masques of which his daughter Elizabeth is so fond, are often acted.”
“Masques? What are they?” Betty inquired. “Aren’t we going to see the palace?” she went on in the same breath.
“I think we’ll leave the palace till the next of our magic visits to London, when we shall see it at the height of its glory. We can land here though, and sit in this part of the royal garden while I tell you something about the Court Masques.”
Betty followed her godmother up some steps from the landing-stage, and sat down beside her on a marble bench behind which ran a yew hedge, shutting off the view of the palace beyond.
“Let me see if I can guess where we are now, if we were back in our own time, I mean,” she began. “I suppose this shady walk would be the part of the Victoria Embankment near Westminster Bridge?”
“That’s about right,” agreed Godmother approvingly. “Right and left of us we should see bridges crossing the river where now we see none at all. For London Bridge is out of sight, and that’s the only one that yet exists.
“But now let me tell you a little about the Court Masques.... You saw how very roughly and simply the splendid plays of Shakespeare and the other play-writers, are performed in the newly-built theatres on Bankside? Well, there’s nothing rough or simple about the performances called masques which take place sometimes in the palace yonder, sometimes in one or other of the beautiful halls of the great houses scattered about the city. These masques are not true plays. They are generally little scenes written for special occasions—the Queen’s birthday perhaps, or the anniversary of the day she came to the throne, for instance. They are usually written in the form of an allegory, in which such figures as Justice, Mercy, or Love appear. But they are presented with the utmost magnificence in the way of dresses and scenery, and beautiful surroundings, and it has become the fashion for the great noblemen as well as the Queen to keep companies of well-trained actors ready to perform whenever a masque or a play is to be given at Court. The Queen has groups of children trained to act in these masques, some of which are written by true poets, like Ben Jonson, and the scenery and costumes are designed by true artists. Inigo Jones is one of them. But the best of the masques written by Ben Jonson and ‘produced,’ as we say, in our century, by Inigo Jones, will be given in a few years’ time, when James the First is king. I want you to remember, however, that the sixteenth century is the great time for plays of all sorts. We saw how the theatres on Bankside were crowded. Everywhere, not only in the theatres, but in private houses, and public halls, acting is going on, and plays are being written to meet the taste for it. This is the great age of the drama and London is full of geniuses who are play-writers and poets.”
“Oh! I think it’s even more interesting than the last time we saw it—in the Middle Ages,” Betty declared, as they stepped again into the boat whose waterman seemed to have been waiting for them. “I should love to stay in Queen Elizabeth’s London for weeks.”
“We’ve only had a glimpse of it,” said Godmother, “but even this glimpse is enough, I hope, to show you that London is full of life and energy in the sixteenth century. Full of great men who love and are proud of England, and have already made her a famous country. If we had stayed longer just now at the Globe theatre where King Richard the Second was being played, we should have heard what Shakespeare wrote this very year about England. He put his own thoughts about our country into the mouth of the dying John of Gaunt, who calls England ‘this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea,’ and, later in his speech,