But some of these magnificent masques appear to have been conducted with but little attention to decorum. The Countess of Dorset mentions in her Memoirs that there was “much talk of a mask which the Queen held at Winchester, and how all the ladies about the Court had gotten such ill names, that it was grown a scandalous place; and the Queen herself was much fallen from her former greatness and reputation she had in the world.” Peyton’s censure is even stronger. “The masks,” he says, “and plays at Whitehall were used only as incentives for lust; therefore the courtiers invited the citizens’ wives to those shows on purpose to defile them. There is not a chamber nor lobby, if it could speak, but would verify this.”
In the following reign the masque became a highly beautiful and exquisite entertainment, encouraged by the fine taste of Charles I., and aided by such cultured men as Buckingham, Jonson, Lawes the musician, and Inigo Jones. The masque at this period was produced at an enormous outlay, and one presented at Whitehall by the Inns of Court in the year 1633 cost the prodigious sum of £21,000. In the masque of “The Night and the Hours,” the first scene represented a double valley, one side with dark clouds hanging before it, on the other a green vale, with trees, nine of which were covered with gold, and were fifteen feet high. From this grove towards the “state,” or seat of the King, extended a dancing-place, with the bower of Flora on the right, and the house of Night on the left. The bower of Flora was decorated with flowers and leafy branches, whilst Night appears in her house, “her long black hair spangled with gold, amidst her hours, their faces black, and each bearing a lighted black torch.”
On another occasion the Lords’ masque was performed, which was also divided into two parts, the lower being first discovered, in which there was seen a wood in perspective; and on the sudden fall of a curtain there appeared a heaven of clouds of all hues, whilst from a bright and transparent cloud eight maskers descended with the music of a full song. On reaching the ground the cloud broke in twain, and, after the manner of a transformation scene, a series of changes took place. With these gorgeous entertainments was usually presented the anti-masque, a humorous parody of the more solemn show. And to the popularity of this species of exhibition we owe Milton’s “Comus and Arcades.”[74]
During the reign of Charles II. masquerading was the rage, and it is recorded how the King and Queen and all the courtiers went about masked, and so completely disguised that no one, unless in the secret, could distinguish them. They were carried about in hackney-chairs, entered houses where merry-makings were going on, and danced about with the wildest frolic. On one occasion the Queen got separated from her party, and her chairmen, not knowing her, went away. Much frightened, she returned to Whitehall in a hackney-coach, or, according to some authorities, in a cart. The Earl of Manchester—the Lord Chamberlain—well aware that she was surrounded by spies who were ready to make the most of the slightest indiscretion on her part, did not hesitate to tell her that “it was neither decent nor safe for her to go about as she had done of late.” The Duke of Buckingham seriously proposed to Charles that in some nocturnal frolic they should carry the Queen off, and send her to the plantations, to which, according to Burnet, the King would have had no objection had she retired voluntarily into a convent.
A harmless feature of the frolic and fun of the exiled Court at St. Germains were the balls and receptions given by Mary Beatrice. A lively description, too, has been given of the Shrove Tuesday masquerade at St. Germains, to which the whole town was admitted, the barriers being thrown open by her Majesty’s command, in order that all classes, high and low, young and old, English and French, might join in the carnival. Etiquette, however, forbade the Prince and Princess from wearing masks, or assuming any particular characters on these occasions; yet they are represented as dancing merrily in the midst of the motley crowd.
On one occasion some indignation was caused when it was discovered that, at a masked ball, the son of the Court apothecary, Bondin, had found admittance, at which the Duchess of Burgundy was present. The apothecary’s son, concealed under his mask, had the audacity to pass for a marquis, and was bold enough to dance with a princess who was not very remote from the throne. At these balls not only James and his Queen, but the young Prince of Wales, were often present. At one of these riotous gatherings the crowd was so great that the little Duke de Berri, son of the Dauphin, nearly lost his life in the pressure by suffocation. Happily he was rescued, but not without some difficulty. It may be noted that the “pretended Prince of Wales,” as the son of James is invariably called by the English papers of the period, is described as being present at these masked balls, “masked,” to save him from being “tied to ceremonials.”
And it is recorded that whilst this kind of merriment was going on, the ears of James were deafened by solicitations from his starving disbanded soldiers, whose distress was appalling. Indeed, their condition became so desperate that Louis was petitioned to enrol one hundred of them in the French army; and, when this request was refused, an honest captain of gendarmes, expressing himself too freely, was punished with the loss of his personal freedom, and was flung into the Bastille. It is said that James would have had sympathy with the bold speaker thus cruelly punished, but that his attention was, through the force of circumstances, attracted in different directions.[75]
Masquerading was general in Scotland as far back as the days of James I. At the celebration of the marriage of James IV. and the Lady Margaret, a company of English comedians, under the management of John English, enlivened the festivities of the Court with a dramatic representation. “After dinnar a moralite was played by the said Master Englishe and his companions, in the presence of the Kyng and Qwene, and then daunces were daunced.”
During the regency of Mary of Guise, and the reign of Mary Queen of Scots, “when masques became more and more splendid and extravagant, and when the Queen pirouetted in newly introduced French dances which were anything but models of decorum, no wonder the more sober-minded were disgusted, and all amusement of the kind was brought into disrepute.”[76] But it would appear that, however much such frivolities grated on the feelings of the sober-minded Scotsman, royalty was not disposed on that account to dispense with a mode of diversion which had never been so severely censured elsewhere.
In the year 1681 there were gay doings at Edinburgh, when the Duke and Duchess of York and the Lady Anne—afterwards Queen of England—were present. Balls, plays, and masquerades were introduced; but the last were soon laid aside, “the taste of the times being opposed to such ungodly innovations,” and there were substituted poetic and dramatic masques and pastorals, in which the Princess Anne, with other young ladies of quality, personated some of the mythological characters. These entertainments included the “Comus” of Milton, and similar pieces by Ben Jonson, Shirley, Davenant, and other dramatic poets of the last century, and they were interspersed with music, and were set off with splendid dresses and decorations.