Graham Parry

SOURCE: "The Politics of the Jacobean Masque," in Theatre and Government Under the Early Stuarts, edited by J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 87-117.

[In the following essay, Parry describes the political purpose and theatrical techniques of Jacobean masques, focusing on the works of Samuel Daniel and Ben Jonson.]

Of all the Stuart theatrical forms, the masque had the greatest potential for political comment, for it was the supreme kind of court entertainment, performed on festival occasions before the monarch, with leading members of the court circle taking on symbolic roles in mythological fantasies whose principal themes were royal creativity and power. Given the exceptional advantages enjoyed by the writers of masques to address an audience composed of the most influential members of the kingdom, it becomes a matter of some interest to know what use these writers made of their privileged condition. Did they contrive the most magnificent occasions of royal panegyric yet devised and compose fictions that were uncritically supportive of the monarch, or did they temper their praise with hints that Whitehall was not a court of unblemished perfections, that King James's wisdom was not entirely Solomonic? In pursuing these questions, we shall find that the early masques were indeed adulatory in their celebration of the new king and the benefits that his reign appeared to have brought, and yet, when the young Prince of Wales began to establish himself as an independent factor in state affairs, the masque writers associated with him were encouraged to strike an oppositional note when the emergence of an alternative centre of authority seemed to be a possibility. The experience of Prince Henry's incipient divergence from King James's policies produced a new tension and complexity in the masque as writers like Jonson and Daniel, whose primary loyalty was to the king and queen, devised entertainments which tried to satisfy both the rising prince and the ruling parents. These tensions continued through the entertainments for the Palatine marriage, and thereafter the critical strain remained a feature of the genre, though often relegated to the anti-masque. In the last decade of King James's reign, Ben Jonson, who enjoyed a monopoly on the court masque during this time, was circumspect in the construction of his devices for his royal patron, desiring to consolidate the authority of a king whose conduct of affairs became less assured and less admirable as the reign wore on, rather than to undermine it by covert criticism. The court might suffer from disordered humours that could be reviewed in an anti-masque, but the king and his policies were exalted by all the powers of art.

To sense the character of the early masques, we might look first at a song composed by Thomas Campion as part of a celebration of an Anglo-Scottish marriage at court in 1607:

We find here an anthology of themes that informed the first Jacobean festivals, occasioned by an event that was in itself symbolic of the new political strength that James's accession had brought to Britain. Lord Hay, the Scottish favourite of King James at the time, was marrying Honora Denny, the daughter of an English country gentleman. James was present at the wedding ceremonies, and the masque was addressed as much to the king and his concerns as it was to the couple. The happiness of the united realms, the blessings of peace, the security from foreign designs and the assurance of a plentiful succession of Stuarts are all alluded to in this song. Campion's dominant intention in Lord Hay's Masque was to praise the king as the architect of the union between Scotland and England, a union imitated by the partners of the marriage, who may in consequence expect to know both 'joy and peace'. James certainly believed that the union of the crowns in his person assured peace to his kingdoms, which he now insisted be known as Great Britain, for he took much pride in having restored the ancient unity of the islands. He regarded his double kingship as a metaphysical triumph brought about by divine providence, as he explained to parliament with some insistence in the important early speeches of his reign. During these first years, one of his cherished designs was to bring about the political union of England and Scotland to complement the union of crowns, but he was unable to persuade MPs at Westminster that the parliaments, laws and religion of the two countries should be made uniform, an alteration that was essential if true political union was to be achieved. Throughout the sessions of 1605 and 1606, James exhorted parliament to approve of political union, and his arguments were imaginatively supplemented by the Twelfth Night masques of 1606 and 1607, both of which took the opportunity provided by weddings at court to proclaim the virtues of union as a social, political and metaphysical condition. Ben Jonson's masque for 1606, Hymenaei, for the marriage of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, to Lady Frances Howard, had revealed by a combination of music, dance, ritual and symbolic tableaux the sublime mystery of union as the sustaining power of the universe, and it was in the introduction to this masque that he made his well-known statement, concerning the construction of masques, that 'though their voice be taught to sound to present occasions, their sense, or doth, or should, lay hold on more removed mysteries'. Campion too pulled out all the stops in the interests of royal policy, for, after all, many members of the court audience watching his masque sat in parliament, but he did not pursue the theme of union quite as relentlessly as Jonson had done. Nevertheless, it was an entertainment with a strong political drift.

Campion's fable or 'invention' as he called it was fairly typical of the early masques, involving a highly contrived mythological scenario that was symbolically apt to the occasion and complimentary to the king. Flora and Zephyrus, figures suggestive of spring and fertility, are preparing a bower for the young couple, when Night enters to announce that Diana is enraged that one of her nymphs has defected in favour of marriage. In revenge, she has transformed the beautiful young men of the place, the Knights of Phoebus, into trees. We know we are in the world of marriage comedy, where arbitrary powers enforce impediments to the natural aspirations of the young. However, we rapidly hear that Phoebus Apollo has interceded with Diana, and all is well: the nymph can be married, the knights made men again. Apollo and Diana are the opposed principles of nature, male and female, sun and moon, heat and coldness, that must be reconciled by love if nature is to be genial and creative. But Phoebus is also the sun god of 'this happie western Isle,' King James, 'Brittaines glorious eye,' who, like Apollo, is an oracle of truth, a source of wisdom. His presence ensures that peace and happiness prevail, and that the union of opposed principles takes place. The chief spectacle of the masque is the discovery of the masquers as gilded trees, followed by their transformation into green men, their ritual homage to Diana's Tree of Chastity, and then their glorious appearance in extravagant masquing costume as the Knights of Phoebus as they process to the Bower of Flora. At each stage they dance, and finally they participate in the court wedding festivities as they join with the ladies of the audience for the long-continuing revels.

Clearly, pleasure and festivity predominated in this entertainment, but in its published form Campion took pains to draw attention to the political dimension of the masque. The dedication to 'James King of Great Britain' praises his peaceful union of Scotland and England: 'who can wonder then / If he that marries kingdoms, marries men?' An epigram exploits a familiar motif of early Jacobean iconography by hailing James as the fulfilment of the old prophecy that Arthur would return to 'wield great Britain's state / More powerful tenfold and more fortunate'; then a Latin poem meditates on the mystical marriage of King James to his kingdom. Next follows a poem addressed to Lord Howard de Walden, one of the masquers, which solicits patronage from the Howards, who were politically ascendant at the time. To conclude, Campion turns to the couple in whose honour the 'golden dreame' of the masque was evoked, reminding them that the offspring of their marriage will be authentically British, among the first of a revived race.

The British motif ran through most of the early court entertainments presented before James, and in many ways Lord Hay's Masque is characteristic of the state spectacles of the first decade of the century. A recognisable complex of themes recurs: the glory of the union, the imperial condition of James in his new empire of the north, the incomparable peace of Britain with its attendant blessings of prosperity and the flourishing of the arts that make these the Fortunate Isles, hitherto known only in legend. The god-like attributes of the king who professed to rule by divine right are extolled: his wisdom, justice and mercy. Although several of the early masques were commissioned by Queen Anne—Daniel's Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604), Jonson's Masque of Blackness (1605), Masque of Beauty (1608), Masque of Queens (1609)—as occasions for dancing, disguise and display, they were presented to the king as gifts of state. Right from the beginning the masque writers recognised the potential that these festivals possessed for affirmative political statement. Before the assembled court and with the foreign ambassadors present, the felicity of Britain under Stuart rule could be proclaimed, and the mysterious powers that constituted the virtue of Stuart kingship could be revealed in scenes of wonder as they exerted an operative influence over the action of the masque.

It was particularly in these early masques, when the genre was new and audiences were somewhat bewildered by the complexity of sensation and idea that a masque transmitted, that the writers took pains to explain their intentions in prefaces and instructive commentary in the printed accounts. Samuel Daniel, who wrote the first masque for the new reign, immediately saw the possibilities for an art form that could be politically coloured. 'These ornaments and delights of peace are in their season as fit to entertain the world and deserve to be made memorable as well as graver actions, both of them concurring to the decking and furnishing of glory and majesty as the necessary complements requisite for state and greatness' ['The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses,' in A Book of Masques, 1967]. He explained that he had designed the queen's entertainment with the intention to present 'the figure of those blessings, with the wish of their increase and continuance, which this mighty kingdom now enjoys by the benefit of his most gracious majesty, by whom we have this glory of peace, with the accession of so great state and power'. So, the twelve goddesses with their emblems formed a composite of the qualities of good government; Daniel described his tableau of divinities as 'the hieroglyphic of empire and dominion, as the ground and matter whereon this glory of state is built'.

Daniel's Vision was predominantly pageant-like in character, with processions of masquers up and down the hall, ritual offerings at a temple, dispersed settings for the action, and little scenery. He viewed his invention as a kind of Platonic figuring, in that he had 'given mortal shapes to the gifts and effects of an eternal power, for that those beautiful characters of sense were easier to read than their mystical Ideas dispersed in that wide and incomprehensible volume of Nature'. In the music of the masque he intended to symbolise the harmony of James's rule in Britain, which has now become 'the land of civil music and of rest'. The dances involved numerical patterns, and were 'framed into motions circular, square, triangular, with other proportions exceeding rare', suggestive of order with moral firmness. Overall, Daniel desired his masque to work as a form of sympathetic magic on the court, 'as ever more to grace this glorious monarchy with the real effects of these blessings represented'. Daniel's preface to the masque, framed as a letter to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, uncovers his somewhat cautious and prosaic approach to art: he certainly does not want to take the imagination of his audience by storm, and declares himself reluctant to communicate mysteries or act as a medium for the ineffable. Extravagant beauty and inexplicable effects of wonder he disdains, and though his entertainment was entitled a Vision, there was little of the supernatural about it.

Whereas Daniel declared that he had designed the incidents of his masque 'without observing …their mystical interpretations', and professed himself sceptical of masques as vehicles for profound learning, Ben Jonson had emphatically different views. Working with Inigo Jones's new perspective stage and with the rapidly evolving technology of lights and motions, he saw the chance to make these state spectacles occasions of wonder and magnificence, secular acts of monarchic worship in an aura of learned mystery. Whatever the spectators thought of these early masques (and many were critical or uncomprehending) and however jerkily the gods went about their celestial business in their chariots or clouds, Jonson was determined that the printed record should render the most glorious account of the event. Through the use of a noble and chromatic prose style, he succeeded in describing the ideal performance to the consummate understanding spectator, evoking the atmosphere of enchantment in which the rituals of action took place, and preserving every detail of the scenery, costume and architecture so that its symbolic significance could be finely appreciated. The effects of light and music were delicately recreated, and the patterns of dance made perfect in retrospect. The erudition that Jonson believed should give firmness to these fictions was emphasised in the prose commentaries that he supplied, for it was an article of faith with Jonson that the masques should have a philosophical and intellectual structure—the 'soul' of the masque as he termed it—which would outlive the transitory vehicle of its display. For both Jonson and Jones the learning should be from Greece and Rome, for that is where poetry and architecture had their origin, where the universe of the mind had been most fully mapped. So the complexity of the masque increased on every level, but its objective remained the magnification of the king, and praise of his virtues and of the wisdom of his rule.

In Jonson and Jones's masques of the first decade, the king possesses the attributes of divinity, and exerts a defining influence over the action. He is the primal source of beauty in the masques of Blackness and Beauty, the cause of concord in Beauty, of union in Hymenaei, where he is also praised for his divine judgement, wisdom and 'designing power'. In The Masque of Queens he is the field of honour and the pinnacle of fame. As the masques became more elaborate, they discovered still more miraculous powers in the king, but the ground of their acclaim remained the familiar nexus of motifs that made up the political heraldry of James's reign: peace, wisdom, union and empire, and divine favour for the Fortunate Isles of Britain.

The celebration of the known attributes of kingship that characterised the masques of the first decade was, however, no longer vital in the masques honouring Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, who moved to centre stage in 1610 when he was created Prince of Wales. The festivities for that year were mostly under the control of the prince himself, who used them to project his own political identity as it was then forming. The character of Henry's small court was markedly different from his father's: it was chivalric, disciplined and high-principled. Henry revered the memory of Sir Philip Sidney as a Christian knight, and inclined towards a policy of militant Protestantism modelled on Sidney's example. Observers of the prince spoke of his desire to join Henri IV in a campaign against the Habsburg forces and the papacy, of his dream to crusade against the Turks. He supported the efforts of the Virginia Company to make plantations in America that would establish the Protestant faith there and counteract the growth of Spanish Catholicism in the new world. He was known to favour the marriage of his sister Elizabeth to a German prince in order to forge a northern Protestant alliance. In so many ways he was the antithesis of his father, who followed cautious policies of peace, feared entanglement in European military campaigns, and hoped to resolve the religious differences of Europe by theological debate and by marriage alliances which would bind nations in amity. Although the approving could see in James's policies a prudent, statesmanlike concern for slow international reconciliation, the critical might describe them as a cover for inertia. Against Henry's promise of vigorous activism, James looked like a hapless temporiser. It is easy to imagine how Henry carried with him the hopes of young and zealous Englishmen, and equally easy to recognise that King James was wary of his son's enthusiastic stance, and greatly jealous of his popularity.

When Prince Henry planned the festivities for the climax of the Christmas season in 1609-10, to mark his first formal bearing of arms, and in preparation for his creation as Prince of Wales later that year, he used his father's established team of Jonson and Jones to design the masque which would give expression to his aspirations. Henry wanted his festival to have a military character, ending not with the protracted dancing of the revels, but in a passage at arms. Such a conclusion was definitely not to the taste of King James, who was notoriously averse to the sight of cold steel. Nonetheless, it was Henry's show. Henry caused a challenge to be issued at the Christmas feast to all worthy knights to contend for their honour at a combat at court, a challenge issued in the name of Moeliades, Lord of the Isles, Henry's chosen nom de guerre based on the anagram Miles a Deo, a Soldier for God, indicative of his militant zeal in the Protestant cause. On 6 January 1610, Prince Henry's Barriers took place, preceded by a masque set in the world of Arthurian romance. (Jonson usually scorned this subject area as outdated and exhausted, so we may assume that Prince Henry had imposed it on him.) The Barriers masque is in effect the prince's manifesto, and the text is unusually detailed and informative, full of statements about the prince's place in British history. The theme is the revival of chivalry under Prince Henry, coupled with an advocacy of the classical style in architecture which is presented as the proper accompaniment to this renewal of ancient virtue.

Presiding over the scene is King Arthur, 'discovered as a starre above', who approves Meliadus (the prince's pseudonym is variously spelt) and tactfully draws attention back to King James by hailing him as his greater successor. Arthur urges the prince on to acts of renown:

Let him be famous, as was Tristram, Tor,
Launc'lot, and all our list of knighthood, or
Who were before or have been since. His name
Strike upon heaven, and there stick his fame!
Beyond the paths and searches of the sun
Let him tempt fate…
(lines 87-92)

but he adds a note of caution: these deeds must be done for the glory of Britain and for the honour of King James, 'and when a world is won, / Submit it duly to this state, and throne' (lines 92-3). Arthur furnishes him with a shield of destiny, bearing histories and moral precepts relevant to his future career: 'It is a piece, was by the Fates devis'd / To arme his maiden valour; and to show / Defensive arms th'offensive should fore-goe' (lines 98-100). In that last line one can almost hear Ben Jonson recommending caution to the prince, prudently toning down the zeal for action to something more acceptable to the king, blunting the prince's intentions with politic advice. The management of arms should be for defence, not attack. Now Meliadus and his knights are discovered in their Portico of St George, and Merlin, the prophet of Ancient Britain, appears to foretell the prince's fate and interpret the figures on his shield.

His arts must be to govern, and give laws
To peace no less than arms. His fate here draws
An empire with it, and describes each state
Preceding there, that he should imitate.
(lines 169-72)

So, the lesson begins with a list of kings who were active in war yet mindful of their country's well-being, illustrating Merlin's sober advice

That civil arts the martial must precede,
That laws and trade bring honours in and gain
And arms defensive a safe peace maintain.
(lines 206-8)

Merlin sounds here much like an apologist for James. The rest of Merlin's very long speech is, however, of a quite different character, recounting 'the conquests got, the spoils, the trophies reared' by fierce medieval kings, followed by a bloodthirsty account of the victory over the Armada, all to incite the prince to valorous emulation. But then Merlin's speech veers round again to compliment King James, whose peaceful works of union and empire overshadow all previous royal achievements. Jonson's twists and turns in this speech witness the strains he was under when writing for Prince Henry. His primary allegiance was to the king, who was the main spectator at the masque; his commission from Prince Henry was to rouse the military spirit of young England, unpleasing to the king. The consequence is a series of contradictory signals. The prince's charge prevails: 'let your drum give note you keep the field'. The dormant figure of Chivalry awakens to greet the prince, and the Barriers (the combat at arms) take place: 'Every challenger fought with eight several defendants two several combats at two several weapons, viz. at push of pike and with single sword, to the great joy and admiration of all the beholders. But decorum also prevails, for at the end of the fighting, Merlin reappears to insist again that all this energy must be dedicated to the throne. Henry and also Prince Charles, who is now drawn in, may 'shake a sword / And lance against the foes of God and you' (King James) (lines 419-20), but the conclusion shows Jonson still reluctant to endorse the emerging militaristic mood.

Did this show of bellicosity have any relevance to contemporary affairs? In this book Henry Prince of Wales, Roy Strong proposes that the background to the Barriers was the diplomatic crisis in Europe over the succession to the Duchy of Cleves. This state occupied strategic territory along the Rhine where the interests of France, Austria, Spain and the Protestant German states all met. The dispute over the succession, an incident now almost forgotten, involved Protestant and Catholic claimants who threatened to draw in the major powers to a general religious conflict, as would eventually happen over the Bohemian succession in 1619. Henri IV was orchestrating the anti-Habsburg forces at the end of 1609, and pressure was being applied on James to join the loose Protestant alliance that was then forming. For once, James was inclined to get involved, at least to the extent of sending a force of English and Scots soldiers already serving in the Netherlands under the command of Sir Edward Cecil. It was rumoured that Prince Henry might join this expedition as his debut on the military scene. If such was the case, it would give a particular sharpness to the Barrier scenes, which include many references to English military exploits on the continent; it would also help to explain the wavering view of James that Jonson gives, now all for peace and domestic ease, now half willing to permit the use of 'sword and lance against the foes of God' as long as the event strengthens his throne. It was an uncertain time, shot through with heightened expectations centred on Prince Henry, and the masque reflects all this.

Henry's creation as Prince of Wales took place in June 1610. The masque for the occasion was Tethys' Festival, offered by Queen Anne and written by her household poet, Samuel Daniel. Daniel was not an inspiriting masque-maker, for his inventions rarely advanced beyond the pageant-procession model; nor were the dancing ladies who were the queen's companions the best foil for Henry's political coming of age, and beneath the festive honouring of Henry as Great Britain's prince there is more than a hint that a policy of restraint and limitation was being conducted, reflecting the king's and queen's anxieties about their over-active son. The theme was the homage paid to the Prince of Wales by Tethys (Thetis), consort of Neptune, and her nymphs of the rivers of Britain. The motif of the river nymphs was derived from Poly-Olbion, which Daniel's friend Drayton was then writing, and behind Poly-Olbion lay Camden's Britannia, so the subliminal theme of the masque is the celebration of the glory of Britain, with Henry as the inheritor of that glory. The Neptune-Thetis line provided an opportunity for ambitious thoughts about the nation's power by sea. Thetis, personated by the queen, presents Henry, who is once again cast as Meliades, with a sword and scarf, the first symbolic of the justice in whose cause he will wield his arms, the latter a counsel of restraint on the sphere of his actions. On the ritual scarf 'he may survey / Infigured all the spacious empery / That he is born unto another day' (lines 143-5). That is to say, it bears an embroidered outline of the British Isles, 'Which, tell him, will be world enough to yield / All works of glory ever can be wrought. / Let him not pass the circle of that field…' (lines 146-8). The advice coming from the queen is to stay within the limits of Great Britain: here is world enough for all your heroic strength. The scarf is more like a bridle. Worse is to come. For his maintenance and income, the prince is told to turn to fish. Daniel gilds the herring in fine verses, but cannot disguise the ignominy of the suggestion:

For there will be within the large extent
Of these my waves and wat'ry government,
More treasure and more certain riches got
Than all the Indies to Iberus brought:
For Nereus will by industry unfold
A chemic secret, and turn fish to gold.
(lines 150-5)

The decoration on the proscenium arch of 'Nereus holding out a golden fish in a net, with this word "Industria",' now disclosed its significance: the prince was to fish in home waters. Forget the plantation of Virginia, the assaults on the Spanish plate fleet or the farranging schemes of intervention and war, and encourage the fishing industry instead. A more lowering scheme could hardly have been devised for this ambitious prince.

The other figure on the proscenium arch besides Nereus with his fish was Neptune 'holding a trident with an anchor' and the words '"his artibus", that is "regendo et retinendo", alluding to this verse in Virgil "Hae tibi erunt artes etc.'" Neptune was the persona of King James, the trident the symbol of his power by sea, the anchor the sign of the stability of his rule. The lines from Virgil were the king's motto, a declaration of government upholding peace and law. It was to Neptune-James that the rest of Tethys ' Festival was directed after the Prince had been presented with his sword and scarf. After the revelation of the masquers (Tethys and her nymphs), in a glorious marine grotto decorated with much Italianate detail by Inigo Jones and running with fountains and cascades, they 'descended out of their caverns one after another, and so marched up with winding meanders like a river, till they came to the Tree of Victory', where they offered flowers in golden urns, accompanied by a chorus praising James. The Tree of Victory is not an emblem of Prince Henry's future conquests, but of James's achievements. The action of the succeeding dances leads to more honouring of James. One of the dances is followed by the beautiful reflective lyric 'Are they shadows that we see?' which concludes

Glory is most bright and gay
In a flash and so away
…..

When your eyes have done their part,
Thought must length it in the heart.
(lines 300-6)

The thoughtful spectator who lengthened out the brief splendour of Tethys' Festival in his heart would feel that there was a conspiracy to deny Prince Henry, the glory of his day: Daniel and Queen Anne had turned the masque into a tribute to King James, and the prince's aspirations had been slighted. Did Queen Anne share her husband's wariness of the rising sun of the court? Arthur Wilson, the historian of the reign, observed 'how far the King's fears (like thicke clouds) might afterwards blind the eye of his Reason, when he saw [Prince Henry] (as he thought) too high mounted in the people's love, and of an alluring spirit'. These fears, Wilson believed, caused him 'to decline his paternal affection to him' [The History of Great Britain, 1653]. The masque appears to have been influenced by these royal fears, and written in some measure to help the king strengthen his authority against the prince.

The next occasion when the delusive lights of the masque played around Prince Henry was New Year 1611, when he presented his masque Oberon, The Fairy Prince, at court. The masque is an act of homage to King James, but in Jonson's hands it almost becomes an act of submission as well. Jonson was after all the king's man, and was not interested in losing favour nor in making a transition to the prince's service. As a poet, he was committed to the rhetoric of peace and golden age Augustanism that saturated the Jacobean court; this commitment made it difficult for him to sympathise with the military tendencies of the prince. Oberon derives from the Spenserian genealogy in The Faerie Queene Book II that traces the British-Welsh descent of Elizabeth and the House of Tudor. As such it was appropriate to the Prince of Wales, whose right to the throne went back to the Tudors and who also affected a British origin. After an anti-masque of 'Silenus… with some dozen satyrs and fauns who had much to say about the coming of a great prince', Oberon and his knights were revealed in a translucent palace. Oberon himself, impersonated by the prince, was clad in antique costume and rode in a chariot. 'To loud triumphant music he began to move forward', not to initiate some grand design, but to make a respectful bow before his father. The songs and speeches rapturously acclaim James and his virtues, ignoring Oberon. The thrust of the spectacle, that is, the display of heroic youth in Prince Henry and his attendant lords, is checked by the power of the words defending James. 'This is a night of greatness and of state… / A night of homage to the British court / And ceremony due to Arthur's chair.' The 'knights masquers', like the creatures of Prometheus, are represented by Jonson as owing their very existence to the king,

To whose sole power and magic they do give
The honour of their being, that they live
Sustained in form, fame and felicity,
From rage of fortune or the fear to die.
(lines 263-6)

Then follows the most exalted panegyric yet offered to James in a masque. Prince Henry may be apparelled as a Roman emperor, but he is in the presence of Jove. James's divinity is invoked and worshipped in words that make him the first cause in nature, the Platonic source of virtue, and the archetype of good government. The masquers engage in ritual dances in honour of this god, and the scene finally closes.

This 1611 masque, the prince's own, seems to mark a willingness on his part to restrain his desires to advertise his independence of mind and spirit by his dutiful role in Oberon. It may be that as a result of the murder of Henri IV and the defusing of the large European conflicts that followed, Prince Henry's impetus to embark on some idealistic project of godly war or colonisation diminished, and Oberon is the expression of a heroic youth temporarily becalmed.

For the New Year masque of 1612, Jonson wrote one of his least memorable pieces, Love Restored. The prince did not participate in it, though the masquers appear to have been gentlemen associated with his court. The anti-masque deals with Anti-Cupid, 'that imposter Plutus, the god of money, who has stolen love's ensigns; and in his belied figure, reigns in the world, making friendships, contracts, marriages and almost religion'. The main masque of Cupid drives out the imposter and installs his graces, embodied by the masquers, in the court. It is a lightweight affair that prefaced a year dominated by negotiations for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and also Prince Henry. Spain, Savoy and Tuscany were all unsuccessfully sounded out, and the question of dowries was an obsessive matter with James, financially hard pressed as he was after the failure in 1610 of the Great Contract that might have rescued his chaotic monetary situation. As Roy Strong has pointed out, the anti-masque to Love Restored had some barbed points to make about the sacrifice of love to pecuniary advantage, and this was perhaps the first occasion on which Jonson was willing to shoot a few critical darts in James's direction under the cover of an anti-masque. If Henry sponsored Love Restored (for it appears in the Revels Accounts as 'the Princes Mask'), then the central triumph of Love may well be a declaration of his intention to marry where it pleased him, not where pragmatism directed. We know that he was nursing the idea of going off to Germany to find a bride of his own choosing about this time.

Marriage then was in the air, and by the autumn of the year Princess Elizabeth was promised to Frederick the Elector Palatine, who arrived in England in October 1612. According to contemporary accounts, Prince Henry took charge of the festivities for the betrothal and the wedding. The marriage was the most significant international event to touch England since the signing of the peace treaty with Spain in 1604. It was the first serious commitment to the idea of a pan-Protestant alliance made by James, and it was a move entirely to the liking of Prince Henry. Elizabeth's marriage put England in line for a possible confrontation with the Habsburg powers which dominated Germany, always eager to reduce Protestant influence. The position excited strong-line Protestants, from the men who clustered around Prince Henry to the preachers who pounded their pulpits, urging the truth of the Protestant religion and confusion to papists. The festivities devised for the occasion, presumably with the approval of the prince, naturally had a strong political character, exploiting the event and sometimes becoming a vehicle for prophecy. It was in the course of these preparations that Prince Henry fell ill and died, amidst universal lament. His father decreed only a short period of mourning at court, so that the wedding might go ahead on St Valentine's day 1613.

The inventors of the masque for the wedding night were Thomas Campion and Inigo Jones. Ben Jonson had been in France as tutor to Sir Walter Raleigh's son during the spring of 1612, and so was off the scene during these eventful months, but, in any case, Henry may not have wanted Jonson to prepare a wedding masque, since Jonson habitually celebrated the king at the expense of those he was commissioned to honour. Campion, in professional life a medical doctor, was gifted with a delicate expressiveness in music and poetry, both of which arts drew him to the court, where he found patronage in the Howard circle. That he had formed some connections with Prince Henry is evident from the Songs of Mourning he composed on the prince's death, set to music by Coperario and filled with an intimate sense of Henry's presence. Campion's festival, known as The Lords ' Masque, was lengthy and complicated ('more like a play than a masque', complained one spectator); Inigo Jones devised a sequence of magical effects, of aerial movement and tranformation that exceeded in technical virtuosity all his previous displays. The theme was divine creativity in poetry and in marriage. It opens with Orpheus releasing Entheus, the embodiment of furor poeticus, from the Cave of Madness, where he has been mistakenly confined. This scene permits an anti-masque of fantastics and melancholiacs to cavort awhile until Orpheus calms their disorder before extricating Entheus, 'whose rage… is all divine / Full of celestial rapture'. His release has been ordered by Jove (James?), who commands him 'to create / Inventions rare, this night to celebrate'. Only the most high-reaching conceits will fit this occasion, so Entheus immediately proposes the feat of Prometheus when he enkindled the clayey forms with divine fire to make men, the very act of human creation. Entheus calls up Prometheus with his fires, which appeared as 'eight starres of extraordinarie bigness', flaring in the heavens amid coloured clouds tinged with silver and fire. The star-fires moved in mid-air 'in an exceeding strange and delightfull manner' to novel music before vanishing suddenly among the clouds, being replaced by the masquers, fire-made men, who blazed in the upper air in igneous attire, formed 'of massie cloth of silver, embossed with flames of embroidery: on their heads they had crownes, flames made all of gold-plate enamelled, and on the top a feather of silke, representing a cloud of smoake.' (lines 194-6). They appeared in 'an element of artificiall fires, with several circles of lights in continuall motion, representing the house of Prometheus'. After a celebratory divertimento danced by pages dressed as fiery spirits, the masquers descended to earth, where, after a scene change, they moved towards a most elegant architectural screen all in gold in which four female statues stood. The Promethean men brought the women to life through the desire of love, and repeated the miracle with four more women who replaced them, all then joining in a dance of courtship and love which first drew in the newly married pair, then opened out into the general revels. So it was an evening of delight and wonder and music which glorified the court and revealed in fable to Frederick and Elizabeth the mystery of the quickening power of love. Into this heightened atmosphere at the end of the revels, Campion and Jones projected one final tableau which reminded everyone of the political dimension of the marriage.

After Orpheus, Entheus and Prometheus, another figure appeared, whose powers were beyond a mortal's reach: Sybilla, presumably the Cumean Sybil, who gave to Aeneas (in book VI of the Aeneid) the vision of the political greatness of Rome. From this happy moment of conjunction between Frederick and Elizabeth, a new perspective opened, showing, as in Virgil, the possibility of future empire. Sybilla drew forward an obelisk whose peak touched the clouds, an emblem whose significance was the Glory of Princes and their immortality; on either side of the obelisk was a golden statue, the bridegroom and the bride. The Sybil then began to prophesy in her native Latin. In translation, her words to Elizabeth run thus:

The mother of kings, of emperors. Let the British strength be added to the German: can anything equal it? One mind, one faith, will join two peoples, and one religion and simple love. Both will have the same enemy, the same ally, the same prayer for those in danger, and the same strength. Peace will favour them, and the fortune of war will favour them; always God the helper will be at their side.

One understands why the Spanish ambassador declined to attend the wedding.

The next evening, 15 February, the court reassembled at Whitehall to watch the masque offered by the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn that George Chapman had devised. The masquers processed from Fleet Street along the Strand to Whitehall, riding in chariots, surrounded by musicians and torchbearers and a large entourage of magnificently dressed gentlemen of the Inns. Chapman had been amongst the most devoted of the artists patronised by Prince Henry. He had been working on his translation of Homer for the prince, who had also shown a favourable interest in his tragedies of modern French history. For his Memorable Masque Chapman proposed a fable of the New World, the masquers personating the princes of Virginia, who have voyaged on their floating island to Britain, the seat of Honour, so that they may 'do due homage to the sacred nuptials / Of Love and Beauty celebrated here'. The fable was simple yet dense, its outlines uncomplicated, though its implications were elaborate; as such it made a good subject for a masque, offering facile pleasure or moral commentary or political suggestion, according to the capacity of the spectator. Chapman astutely mixes congratulations to the married couple, praise to the king and honour to the country with a topical exotic theme of American adventure. The masque glorifies the court by asserting that this is where Honour has chosen to raise her temple and where Fortune, hitherto so mobile and unpredictable, has decided to bestow herself forever. (This motif would have had credibility in Prince Henry's lifetime, for it must have alluded to him, but his death made Fortune's fixture here painfully ironic.) So powerful is Honour's attractive force, that even Plutus, the god of riches, has been drawn to admire her, so wealth in Britain is now devoted to virtuous ends.

The Virginian princes are discovered in a mine of gold, their appropriate display-case, and as gold is their metal, so they worship the golden orb, the sun. As their priests the Phoebades make their devotions on this wedding night (in terms which make the sun's descent to bed a most erotic declension), Honour intervenes to correct their 'superstitious hymn'. In the climate of truth which prevails in Britain, the Virginians must see that the real sun god is King James,

this our Briton Phoebus, whose bright sky
(Enlightened with a Christian piety)
Is never subjected to black error's night.
(lines 599-601)

The king is portrayed in the manner of a god, as is customary in the Jacobean masques, and in harmony with James's own claims for the divinity of kings; at the same time his divinity is declared to be a means of mediating with the ineffable God of heaven. The Virginian princes undergo a conversion to the god of Britain, and so purified they begin their dances in honour of the bride and groom, whose perfections, when intermingled, will bring about a new golden age. Thus the masquers enact a fable which announces that they have moved from a land where gold is abundant but unserviceable, and where devotion is misdirected, to one where gold is in the service of honour, where true religion reigns, and where the age of gold is dawning again. Britain is where they truly belong.

The Virginian theme had a particular relevance in 1612-13. Prince Henry was an active supporter of the Virginia Company, and had designs to plant colonies there, for trade but also, as Chapman wrote elsewhere, [in 'De Guiana, Carmen Epicum'], to 'let thy sovereign Empire be increased / And with Iberian Neptune part the stake'. As well as contesting Spain's grasp on the New World, the spread of the Protestant religion and the conversion of the heathen were prime aims of the governors of the Company. Spain was irritated by these activities, and entertained plans for destroying the Company's settlements: the despatches from the English ambassador in Madrid, Sir John Digby, are full of references to Virginia during this period. Backing for the Virginian venture was strongest in Prince Henry's circle, whereas the king was wary of its policy of provoking Spain. Chapman, by linking the Palatine marriage with Virginia, was in effect trying to draw the Elector Frederick (and behind him the German princes of the Protestant Union) into an anti-Spanish grouping. This would be in line with Prince Henry's thinking, and a measure of how far Chapman's masque was working out the prince's design in festival form. In addition, as D. J. Gordon has pointed out, in his picture of the Indian princes, Chapman seemed to have Guiana in mind more than Virginia. English descriptions of Virginia had stressed the simplicity and agricultural nature of the people. The preoccupation with gold, the worship of the sun, the feather decorations of the princes seem to derive from some confused account of the Aztecs or the Incas. In terms of English experience, they point back to Guiana, the land reputed to be full of hidden gold, and that in turn evoked the name of Raleigh, who had led an expedition there, and who had also made the first settlement in Virginia. Although in prison in the Tower of London on charges of high treason, Raleigh had been befriended by Prince Henry, and had been making strenuous pleas in 1611 and 1612 to James and Cecil to be released so that he could return to Guiana to search for the gold mine he believed in so steadily. Prince Henry supported his requests, but James denied them, not wishing to have the fervently anti-Spanish Raleigh stirring up trouble in the New World. The Memorable Masque, written, one assumes, under the supervision of Prince Henry, must have evoked the captive figure of Raleigh for many of the spectators, and the whole subject of Virginia and Guiana cannot have been very pleasing to the king: it was very much the Prince's masque.

Overstressed by masques and incessant entertainment, King James dismissed the masquers of the third successive wedding fête when they arrived at Whitehall on the night of the 16 February 1613. To their intense chagrin, the men of Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple had to return home after a brilliant and expensive river crossing that had revealed their costumes and devices to the world; they were ordered to present themselves another day. Their masque had been written by the playwright Francis Beaumont, with some assistance from Sir Francis Bacon. Its subject was unremarkable, the marriage of the Thames and the Rhine, attended by the gods. In honour of the nuptials, Jove had decreed that the Olympian Games should be renewed after a long lapse. The masquers were the Olympian knights, discovered in their pavilions surrounded by their military furnishings; their dress was starry armour counterfeited in satin and silk, and they were attended by priests in white robes who played lutes. One might have expected the knights to engage in martial combat after the dances, and had Prince Henry lived they might have done so, but they appear to have performed mimic games in dance instead, in honour of Frederick and Elizabeth. By all accounts it was a lavish masque, but slight in invention. But was this the masque that the two Inns had originally intended to put on? Reports survive of a far more startling and provocative masque that seems to have been designed for the wedding, a propagandistic religious piece, that could well have been Prince Henry's trump card, a clear declaration of what this marriage was about in the context of religious history.

The unperformed masque, which has been called 'The Masque of Truth' by David Norbrook in his account of it [in The Seventeenth Century, Vol. I, No. 2, 1986], depicted Atlas relinquishing the support of the world to Aletheia or Truth, who now dwells in Britain. Truth was represented as a large statue with radiant head, holding a globe and reading a great Bible. The Muses act as the presenters of the masque: they bring Atlas to England and then summon the nations of the world to pay homage to Truth, to Frederick and Elizabeth and then to King James, who is the patron of all. Europe, Asia and Africa send forth their princes and princesses to dance their tribute. The Muses call upon all nations to cease their ancient quarrels in religion and recognise the light of Truth as it shines in England under the protection of King James. Then the great globe itself dissolves to be replaced by a paradise guarded by an angel with a flaming sword. Truth is now seen surrounded by stars and angels. Celestial music plays as Truth invites the princes of the nations, moved by repentance, faith and love of Christ, to enter into paradise. The masque concludes with their entry, and paradise closes around them.

The argument of the masque as explained in the account printed in Heidelberg in 1613 proposes that the old Virgilian trope about Britain being a world divided from the world is now invalid, for the world must join itself to Britain because true faith resides there, protected by the wisdom of the king. Only in the Palatinate is true religion elsewhere known, and now that the Elector has been drawn to Britain in marriage, an invincible power for good has been forged that will compel all nations to enter into the right way of salvation that leads to paradise. The scenario is frankly apocalyptic. It represents a strinking shift in the conventions of masque, away from the mythologised fable designed for the glorification of the monarch to an explicitly religious parable that aims to stir religious zeal. As Norbrook comments, 'The Masque presents the real meaning of the marriage as a decisive advance towards religious reformation rather than just a dynastic union.'

It is easy to imagine that this 'Masque of Truth' might have been sponsored by Prince Henry, for it expresses views current in his circle. A concession made to the king's more peaceful ideas is that the nations will be persuaded to recognise true religion by example rather than by force. The feeling in the masque as we have it is of triumphant Protestantism of a kind associated with the court of Prince Henry, and its cancellation must have been due to his death, which suddenly raised great doubts about the ways of God towards England. The anodyne masque of the Olympian Games was presumably rapidly designed as its replacement.

Eventually, after many delays, Frederick and Elizabeth sailed off to Holland and made their way to Heidelberg where more celebrations had been prepared for them. Then they settled down to princely life on one of the fault lines of European politics. Frederick's acceptance of the elective crown of Bohemia in 1619 would precipitate the long-anticipated conflict between Catholic and Protestant powers that would convulse the continent for thirty years.

The Palatine marriage was not only the high point of festivity in the history of the Jacobean court, it was also the most positive international move that James made in his reign after his initial agreement of peace with Spain in 1604. For the remainder of his reign he would be entangled in the toils of Spanish diplomacy as he tried to promote a marriage for Prince Charles that Spain did not want; the eventual rebuff of Charles's courtship would lead to war in 1624. James's indecisiveness over the Bohemian crisis and its aftermath would be a source of continual tribulation to him. Only with Elizabeth's wedding did he carry off a design which had the approval of most Englishmen, and which placed him tactically at the head of the Protestant states, a position he lost through inertia and muddle.

After 1614, Ben Jonson became the regular masque writer and gave up writing for the playhouse after Bartholomew Fair. From now on his livelihood depended on the court. Early in 1616 he was granted an annual pension of £66 by the king, and, while no duties were specified, it was evident that masque-making was expected. Masques had to be affirmative of royal power, whatever the national circumstances, and under Jonson the supportive nature of these festivals was assured. As part of the court, he had no desire to spoil his chances by displeasing James in any way. But Jonson could also be used by other courtiers to please the king: for example, the Twelfth Night masque of 1615, The Golden Age Restor'd, seems to have been used by the Pembroke faction (to which Jonson was indebted) as an opportunity to launch the court career of George Villiers as a counter-attraction to the current favourite, Somerset. Jonson's fiction on this occasion was that Jove had decreed that the time had come at last for the restoration of the Golden Age. The quarrelling martial characters of the Iron Age anti-masque are routed by Pallas, who prepares the way for the descent of Astraea (Justice) together with the personification of the Golden Age. They choose to dwell in the happy isle of Britain. They are welcomed by the spirits of old English poets, for the arts will flourish in this new era. The race of blessed spirits that once occupied the earth 'that for their living good, now semi-gods are made' return to serve as the defenders of Justice. These were the masquers, discovered in their Elysian bower, chief among them George Villiers, who danced his way into royal favour from this moment. The fable certainly held good for him, for he became the Jacobean semigod and lived on the milk and honey of the court. In other respects, the proclamation of the Golden Age revived under James proved ill-timed as the sordid events of the Overbury case emerged later that year, bringing the whole court into disrepute. However, Jonson's view as official masque-maker would no doubt have been that the Overbury affair was the stuff of anti-masque, corrupt humours that would be banished by chords of regal music. Jonson steadily enlarged the god-like and beneficent powers of King James over the final decade of the reign, and The Golden Age Restor'd marks the beginning of a series of masques that concentrates on presenting James as a just god presiding over Britain's destiny. Queen Anne was no longer personally involved in the masques, Prince Henry was dead, Prince Charles was still of unformed character. James was completely at the centre of Jonson's attention in the fables. In the dancing, Villiers, now Buckingham, was the chief performer, soon accompanied by Prince Charles.

The curious title of the 1616 masque, Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court, covers another fable of royal perfection. The alchemists of the title appear to relate obliquely to those courtiers who sought to make 'new men' out of base material to populate the court. Mercury, the spirit of transformation, refuses his assistance, whereupon the alchemists under the guidance of Vulcan produce only a race of 'imperfect creatures, with helms of lymbecks on their heads', who dance an anti-masque. Mercury exclaims that his creative powers are abused by the low designs of the court alchemists, and vows to be the servant of King James, who combines in his majesty 'the excellence of the Sunne and Nature'. The scene now changes to 'a glorious bower' where the twelve masquers stand illuminated, with Nature and Prometheus at their feet. These perfections of nature are the king's true creations, the members of his court whom he has made by the divine power of his majesty; he has even renewed Nature: 'How young and fresh am I tonight', she sings. This is another version of the Golden Age restored, with Vulcan's anti-masque a variant of the Iron Age that is succeeded by a new creation. Mercury Vindicated is a resounding affirmation of James's court after the embarrassing investigations into backstairs plotting, procuring and murder that would lead to the indictment of the Earl and Countess of Somerset a few days after the performance of the masque. As James gazed on the choicest members of his court, with young Villiers presumably prominent among them, he must have welcomed Jonson's theatrical act of confidence. It was in fact a time of renewal at court: just before Christmas, James had appointed a new Lord Chamberlain, William, Earl of Pembroke, to supervise the court, the Duke of Lennox had been made Lord Steward, the competent Sir Thomas Lake had just been made principal Secretary to carry the burden of state affairs, Pembroke's protégé Villiers was on his way up, having been made Master of the Horse a few days before Mercury Vindicated was performed, and the Somerset clique was on the way out. James no doubt looked at his new creation and found it good.

At the close of the Christmas season 1617, James created Villiers Earl of Buckingham. The next evening Jonson and Jones's masque The Vision of Delight was danced, with Buckingham as the cynosure. After Fantasy had brought out her anti-masque of oddities and whimsical emanations, Wonder took over to induce the miracle of spring in the midst of winter. The Bower of Zephyrus opened to reveal the masquers as the Glories of the Spring. The god who had commanded this miracle looked on approvingly from beneath the canopy of state; Fantasy recognised his true creative power which outshone her own imperfect inspirations: 'Behold a King / Whose presence maketh this perpetual Spring.' The Vision was a gay and happy masque, without shadows, one which by its total concentration on the miracle of royal power and on those unblemished perfections it could create was beginning to sound chords of absolutist adoration.

The next new year brought an even stronger sense of springtime renewal at court, as Prince Charles made his debut in the masques. Although he had been created Prince of Wales in November 1616, his general physical weakness seems to have kept him out of court festivities until now. Jonson was entrusted with the making of a masque to bring him out, and contrived Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, in which, either on his own initiative or at the prince's urging (probably the former, given Charles's self-effacing tendencies at this stage) Jonson made an attempt to impose his notions upon the court. The fable of the anti-masque shows Hercules, the conventional exemplar of heroic virtue, fresh from the defeat of Antaeus, now subduing the drunken gourmand Comus, then scattering the pygmies who represent anger, spite and detraction, all these enemies of Hercules being undesirable aspects of Jacobean court life. After his victory, Hercules is invited to rest from his exertions. Mercury announces that the time has come when it is decreed that virtue shall no longer fight against self-indulgent pleasures but shall be reconciled with them: the pledge of this reconciliation is the modest Prince Charles, who embodies this desirable equilibrium of court manners, to know pleasure yet to live with virtue. For once, the masquers have no specific denomination. Charles and his companions have been bred on the hill of knowledge, and have come to express their youthful maturity through the medium of dance. These masquers were the younger generation of courtiers who seemed to promise reformation in court morals. The masque was not much appreciated: more hostile comments about it survive than for any other. Was it thought too moralistic, too improving in tone, a covert criticism of the well-established indulgence of the court? At any rate, when it was repeated for the benefit of the queen, who had been indisposed for the first showing, Jonson replaced the contentious anti-masque and the self-righteous introduction of the masque with an amusing parody of Welsh pride and loyalism which was much more happily received.

Masques could serve as a prism for refracting the white light of authority, making it visible at times of state celebrations in colourful displays that drew attention to the components of power, imaginatively understood. However, to use the masque as a critical apparatus for raising the question of the court's deficiencies was not acceptable, for the court was the precinct of majesty, and its character was contingent on the king, so after Jonson was rebuffed over Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, he turned back to unqualified admiration of the monarch in his next entertainment. News from the New World Discovered in the Moon (1620) wittily brought forth the masquers as a race of lunar beings, 'a race of your own, formed, animated, lightened and heightened by you, who, rapt above the moon far in speculation of your virtues, have remained there entranced certain hours with wonder of the piety, wisdom, majesty reflected by you on them from the divine light, to which only you are less'. Chief of this bright race is Prince Charles disguised as Truth, an emanation of the divinity of the king, who leads his fellow spirits in a dance of adoration, so 'that all their motions be formed to the music of your peace and have their ends in your favour'. There was a kind of preposterous glory about this fiction, which ends with the chorus pronouncing the name of James, the name 'of all perfection'.

Exceptionally, in 1620, a masque was staged in midsummer to celebrate James's birthday, a tribute from Charles and his companions, it would seem. Jonson composed with Jones Pan's Anniversary, the most adulatory of all the Jacobean masques. James is typed as Pan the god of nature; the setting is completely pastoral, a genre that permits the presentation of absolute power in its most benevolent aspect, for Pan is essentially creative and life-sustaining. The mode of the masque is worship. The masquers are attired as the priests of Pan, and they are discovered seated about the Fountain of Light, a neo-Platonic image expressive of the source of creativity in the universe, from which all life flows. Pan is also the creator of Arcadian society—the court in all its perfection: he has taught 'the rites of true society / And his loud music all your manners wrought, / And makes your commonwealth a harmony'. The songs of the Arcadians are described as hymns, and their praise reaches its height in the words that echo the familiar prayers to God the Father: 'Pan is our All, by him we breathe, we live, / We move, we are.'

The next shift in Jonson's strategy for elevating the court and amplifying royal authority was to turn to the full dignity of a Roman scene. Not since Hymenaei of 1606 had Jonson and Jones presented an entirely Roman masque: now the opportunity was given by the reconstruction of the Banqueting House by Inigo Jones after the fire of 1619. Jones had based his design for this key building of Stuart ceremony on the scheme for a Roman basilica out of Vitruvius, modified by Palladio, a design which carried imperial, judicial and religious associations. Given the thoroughgoing classicism of the Banqueting House, Jonson's choice of theme for his Twelfth Night masque in 1622 had a most appropriate decorum. In ancient Rome, the College of Augurs used to officiate at the opening ceremonies of great buildings to ensure good fortune for these works; so, The Masque of Augurs was devised by Jonson to inaugurate the new Banqueting House. Inigo Jones provided architectural scenes of great formal gravity and costumes of classical correctness, as Romans from the court of the British Augustus filled the Whitehall stage. The masquers are 'A college here / Of tuneful Augurs, whose divining skill' is particularly in request on this important occasion. They first recognise the sublimity of the king's wisdom and the felicity of his rule; then after their dances they proceed to read the omens of state, foreseeing in all the signs an auspicious future for the Stuart dynasty. James's wise government is praised, as are the security and peace which his wisdom gives to his realm. In fact, the mood in parliament during 1621 had not been so appreciative of the king's lofty self-possession: MPs had been clamouring for military intervention on the continent to save the Protestant cause from extinction after the defeat of Frederick and Elizabeth in Bohemia, and at the end of the session, the House of Commons had made a protestation affirming their rights and privileges to debate all matters relating to church and state in England, leaving nothing to the sole discretion of the king. Just before The Masque of Augurs was performed, James had torn this protestation from the journals of the House, and ordered the dissolution of parliament. Jonson, as the king's servant, ignored the critical mood, which had been building up while the masque was in rehearsal, and continued in his role as the justifier of royal policy. The ritual decorum of the masque, consolidated as it was by firm images of Roman authority, excluded all sounds of dissent as it ratified James's policy of non-intervention and peace, going so far as to suggest that European states could desire no higher fortune than to be subjected to James's placid rule: 'Thy neighbours at thy fortune long have gazed, / But at thy wisdom stand amazed, / And wish to be / O'ercome, or governed by thee' (lines 381-4).

The 1623 masque, Time Vindicated actually used a view of the Banqueting House as a backdrop, and the masquers, 'The Glories of the Time', were revealed in a noble classical structure of commanding authority. These imposing settings, with their glamorised inhabitants, were in themselves a vindication of the time, an assurance offered by art that all was well in the state. The final acts of confidence in the king's Tightness in his conduct of affairs were the two related masques to welcome back Prince Charles after his unsuccessful venture into Spain to court the Infanta. Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion, planned for Twelfth Night 1624, was not acted, in response to complaints from the Spanish ambassador. Its reworked version, The Fortunate Isles and the Union was presented a year later. The first reconstructed Charles's diplomatic discomfiture as a triumph of British enterprise, the latter proposed a reassuring fantasy: the time has come when that island of classical renown, the Island of the Blest, has been ordered by Jove to attach itself to the Fortunate Isles of Great Britain, to form a commonwealth where peace and the arts may flourish in perpetuity under a Stuart king. The final tableau showed the fleet, ready to enforce the isolation of these islands from all the strife and complexities of the continent. That outside world was always a source of trouble for King James, who would have liked nothing better than to live in a fortunate isle enjoying his own blessings of union and peace and watching the arts flourish—as long as there was time to hunt. The frequent formulas of Jonson's masques ('The time has come', 'It is decreed that…') suggest how much both poet and king wished that some providential force would superimpose an ideal order over the vigorous confusion of national and international politics. The conventions of masque as they developed under Jonson and Jones encouraged the most extravagant demonstration of royal power in their glorious devices, where the king's poet and the king's surveyor contrived to make everything move smoothly to project the king's effortless authority. These demonstrations, however, were made only to the élite of the court, who had an interest in the status quo; to be present in an overstuffed Banqueting House on a winter's night was a good way of escaping from the unpleasantness of the season outside.

It is worth pausing to reflect on how much of a masque's political message got across to an audience. No contemporary reactions to masques make reference to political content: they are always concerned with spectacle, noting the success or failure of mechanical effects, appreciative of the dancing above all, making comments on other members of the audience. The general impression of the performing conditions of a court masque that one gets from the Jacobean letterwriters and diplomats is something like this: the hall was always vastly overcrowded, with people packed so tight that it was difficult to make a passage for the king's entry and to clear the dancing space in front of the stage. Members of the audience dressed as lavishly as they could: opulence was the order of the evening. The air was stiflingly hot and heavily perfumed by the spectators. It was very dim inside the hall ('the twilight of dusk' is how one spectator reported it) because Inigo Jones's lighting effects needed to work against a surrounding darkness. There must have been an immense amount of chatter. Music played when the king entered and continued thereafter with breaks only for the speeches, and the music was often loud in order to impose itself on the audience, and to cover the creakings of the scene changes. In contrast, the songs were hard to hear, and lute accompaniments virtually inaudible. Several masque descriptions note that singers went up close to the chair of state so that the king could hear the words. All eyes were on the masquers when they appeared, for they were the well-known lords and ladies of the court in the most amazing costumes, showing themselves before a highly fashion-conscious audience. Many reports mention with approval the comic antics of the anti-masque, which were evidently much appreciated, a fact which explains why anti-masques became longer and more varied as the years went by. What gave most delight and appealed to the connoisseurship of the audience was the dancing: after all, the high point of a masque was the revelation of the masquers followed by the new dances they had rehearsed for weeks or months. Dancing must have occupied three-quarters of the time of a masque. The general revels that followed, involving the most prominent members of the audience (it is hard to believe there was enough room for everyone to join in), went on for two or three hours or longer. Finally there was the stampede for refreshments, which often resulted in the buffet tables being overthrown. In all these reports, the actors and their words received little attention and few commentators said anything about the main fable. Who cared who Entheus was? 'Where are the masquers? Let's have a dance!' seems to have been the general mood. In fact, it must have been very hard to follow the intricacies of poetry and understand the significance of mythological figures in the distracting atmosphere of a festival at court. Moreover, the acoustics of the hall at Whitehall were probably very poor. Today, in the empty Banqueting House, it is hard to project a speech more than ten paces without blurring. It was for this reason that the poets printed the texts of their masques, and that Inigo Jones provided detailed descriptions of his architecture, his special effects and his costumes. What the audience could not hear or see properly could be recovered in print, when their minds were clearer. Jonson's pained assertion that his fables and learning and symbols were the soul of the masque that endured when Jones's magic had evaporated, or Daniel's resigned acceptance that his words were insignificant as far as the audience was concerned in contrast to the magnificence of Jones's staging, both indicate that the spectators did not pay much attention to the words of a masque. Certainly the festive atmosphere of the Banqueting House on one of these social occasions was the last place to contemplate the learned and philosophical inventions of the poets. Political nuances might well have gone unheeded too.

Yet, the masques were occasions of state. The presence of foreign ambassadors emphasised the sense of the court being on international display, and the ambassadors' dispatches often included reports on the latest masque. Courtiers were politicians too, and a court audience was factionalised into various interest groups. But a masque had to entertain the whole court and to associate everyone with the glory of the occasion and with the celebration of the monarch, so the political innuendoes, which could be divisive, had to be unobtrusive. Magnificence was the prime requirement of a masque, for that quality expressed the splendour of the court in the most undeniable way. Almost all Renaissance festivals turned on some mythological construct, which was in one way or another a statement about power and authority. Many of the educated men and women of courtly rank could be expected to decipher these mythologies with some ease, for the language of mythology was widely current, and courtiers would be aware that a masque had a political subtext, even though it might be well set back in the overall spectacle. Both James and Charles felt the masque to be indispensable to their concept of state, for they continued to fund these shows well beyond their means. They must have calculated that their value as advertisement outweighed their cost to the exchequer, for they knew that 'to induce a courtly miracle' was to vindicate the mysterious power of majesty that still held men in awe. In the final count, a masque was a display of political magic, and would last as long as the divinity of kings was credible.