At Court in bygone years, on occasions of festivity, it was customary for the whole company to appear in borrowed characters, a practice which may be traced back as early as the reign of Edward III. Pageants of this kind were exhibited with great splendour, and at a costly outlay. The magnificent disguisings which took place in the reign of Henry VIII. have long been proverbial. The chief aim seems to have been to surprise the spectators “by the ridiculous and exaggerated oddity of the visors, and by the singularity and splendour of the dresses, everything being out of nature and propriety. Frequently the masque was attended with an exhibition of gorgeous machinery, resembling the wonders of a modern pantomime,”[70] the preparation of which occupied a considerable time.
It was at the Christmas festivities in the year 1509 that Henry VIII. appeared in the disguise of a strange knight, astonishing the Court circle with the grace and vigour of his tilting. Henry was specially fond of disguisings and masquings, and on another occasion he presented himself with his cousin, the Earl of Essex, and other nobles,{153} in the disguise of Robin Hood and his men, “Whereat,” writes Holinshed, “the Queen and her ladies were greatly amazed, as well for the strange sight as for their sudden appearance.”
At Shrovetide soon afterwards, in a grand banquet given at Westminster, Henry, with the Earls of Essex, Wiltshire, and Fitzwalter, appeared in Russian costume, “with furred hats of grey, each of them having a hatchet in hand, and wearing boots with peaks turned up.” The King’s sister, the Princess Mary, danced a masquing ballet, hiding her face under a black gauze mask, as “she had assumed the character of an Ethiop queen.”
In the early part of the year 1510 a royal masque was given to celebrate the birth of Prince Henry, on which occasion Sir Charles Brandon, afterwards Duke of Suffolk, introduced himself before Queen Catherine in the garb of a “hermit poor,” craving permission to tilt in her honour. In the evening, when her Majesty sat in state at Westminster, a nobleman entered to inform her “how that in a garden of pleasure was an arbour of gold, full of ladies, who were very desirous of showing pastime for the Queen’s diversion.”
Catherine graciously replied, “I and my ladies will be happy to behold them and their pastime.”
Then a curtain was drawn aside, and the pageant moved forwards. It was an arbour, covered with gold, above which were twined branches of hawthorn, roses, and eglantines, all made of silk and satin to resemble the natural colours of the flowers. In the arbour were six ladies, dressed in gowns of{154} white and green satin, covered with gold letters of H and K. Near the bower stood the King himself and five lords, dressed in purple satin, likewise covered with the same monograms in solid bullion, and every one had his name in letters of bullion. Then the King and his company danced before Catherine’s throne.
In honour of the marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales, with Catherine of Aragon, three pageants were exhibited in Westminster Hall. The first was a castle with ladies; the second, a ship in full sail, that cast anchor near the castle; and the third, a mountain with several armed knights upon it, who stormed the castle and obliged the ladies to surrender. The pageant terminated with a dance.
But these Court spectacles were, perhaps, at no period more cultivated in this country than by Henry VIII. and his favourite, Wolsey, in whose strangely contrived shows a moving mountain would sometimes “enter the great hall, adorned with trees, flowers, and herbage, and studded with wild beasts and savage men, which, opening suddenly, would send forth a gay throng of knights and ladies, or allegorical personages, who, having sung and danced before the guests, retired again to their place of concealment.”[71] Such performances, as may be imagined, by their novelty and grotesqueness, rarely failed to create as much fun and amusement among the royal circle as among the privileged persons invited to see them.
When an inventory was taken after the death{155} of Henry VIII. of all the tapestry, pictures, plate, jewels, and other goods of which he died possessed, it was found that he had no less than ninety-nine vizors, or “masks of sondry sorts,” besides many sets of “maskings heads” at Greenwich, which he and his courtiers were in the habit of wearing.
In her youthful days Queen Mary made her appearance at a pantomimic ballet, when she wore a black crape mask as an Ethiopian princess. In the year 1527 she exhibited herself before the French ambassadors at Greenwich Palace, with five of her ladies, dressed in Icelandic costume; and with six lords, in the costume of the same country, the party “daunced lustily about the hall.”
At another masque, before the same ambassadors, in May of that year, the Princess Mary issued out of a cave with her seven ladies, dressed after the Roman fashion in rich cloth of gold and crimson tinsel, and they danced a ballet with eight lords. It is said that the young Princess soon became emboldened and at her ease when engaged in such royal pageantry; although, as it has been remarked, it seems strange to us nowadays that one so young should have been allowed or encouraged, so attired, to challenge the gaze and criticism of strangers. The only instance, says Payne Collier, in which Queen Mary called on the Master of the Revels to provide for entertainments at Court during her reign was in 1557. On St. Mark’s Day she commanded, for her “regal disport, recreation, and comfort,” a{156} “notorious maske of Almaynes, Pilgrymes, and Irishemen.”
A continual series of pageantry and masquing welcomed Queen Elizabeth’s reception at Kenilworth; and on Shrove Tuesday, 1594, the members of Gray’s Inn got up a burlesque masque for her amusement, with which she was so much pleased that the courtiers, fired with emulation, as soon as the masque was over began to dance a measure, which caused her Majesty to utter this reproof: “What, shall we have bread and cheese after a banquet?”
The Earl of Essex, who took good care to propitiate his royal mistress by all sorts of flattery, on the 17th of November 1596—the anniversary of her accession to the throne—caused a sort of masque to be represented which was thus described by an eye-witness: “My lord of Essex’s device is much commended in these late triumphs. Some pretty while before he came in himself to the tilt, he sent his page with some speech to the Queen, who returned with her Majesty’s glove; and when he came himself, he was met by an old hermit, a secretary of state, a brave soldier, and an esquire. The first presented him with a book of meditations, the second with political discourses, the third with orations of brave-fought battles, the fourth was but his own follower, to whom the other three imparted much of their purpose before their coming in. Another devised with him, persuading him to this and that course of life, according to their own inclinations. Then{157} comes into the tilt-yard, unthought upon, the ordinary post-boy of London, a ragged villain, all bemired, upon a poor lean jade, galloping and blowing for life, and delivered the secretary a packet of letters, which he presently offered to my lord of Essex; and with this dumb show our eyes were fed for that time.”
In the after-supper before the Queen, “they first delivered a well-penned speech to move this worthy knight to leave his vain following of love, and to betake him to heavenly meditation, the secretaries all tending to have him follow matters of state, the soldiers persuading him to war;” but the esquire answered them all in plain English: “That this knight would never forsake his mistress’s love, whose virtue made all his thoughts divine, whose wisdom taught him all true policy, whose beauty and worth were at all times able to make him fit to command armies. He showed all the defects and imperfections of the times, and therefore thought his course of life the best in serving his mistress.” The Queen said, “If she had thought there had been so much said of her, she would not have been there that night.”
A Court masque was the accompaniment of Darnley’s murder, probably arranged, it has been suggested, as one of the episodes of that cruel tragedy. Much has been written on the beauty and romance of the Elizabethan masques, which it was required should be something more than a ballet, or a fancy ball. According to Mr. Thornbury, in his “Shakspere’s England” (vol. ii. p. 371),{158} “the poetry was such as Jonson could write—tender as Anacreon, vigorous as ?schylus; though occasionally tedious, laboured, dull, and rugged, mythology, history, and romance were ransacked to furnish new materials for these plays; the poetry and costume were all but perfect, and the scenery was left to fancy, so well able to realise it. The amusement that delighted such minds as Bacon’s and Jonson’s is not to be sneered at in the nineteenth century.” The sympathy and support, too, which Elizabeth gave to this class of diversion had a more or less lasting effect; but there was an inclination as time went on to introduce many innovations which were not always in good taste.
One of the chief amusements of James I. and his Court were masques and emblematic pageants, and it appears by what is entitled “A Briefe Collection of the Extraordinarie Payments” of the Court of James I., from 1603 to the end of 1609, that the “charges for masks” amounted to ￡4215.[72] An imposing instance occurred in the year 1610, to commemorate the Queen’s eldest son, Henry, being created Prince of Wales. On this occasion the “whole Court of England, the Queen, the Princess-Royal, and all the aristocratic beauties of the day were busy devising robes, arranging jewels, and practising steps and movements for this beautiful poem of action, in which music, painting, dancing, and decoration, guided by the taste of Inigo Jones, were all called into employment to make the palace of Whitehall a{159} scene of enchantment. In this masque the Court ladies personated the nymphs of the principal rivers, the Queen represented the Empress of Streams, and the little Prince Charles, in the character of Zephyr, attended by twelve little ladies, was to deliver the Queen’s presents to his elder brother, the newly created Prince of Wales, the presentation being the ostensible business of the masque. One of the chief attractions of this entertainment was a ballet, which was so arranged that Prince Charles always danced encircled by his little ladies, all of whom had been so carefully trained that they were rapturously applauded by the whole Court. This festive scene was perhaps one of the brightest and happiest in the Queen’s life, for when in after days some one accidentally recalled it to her memory after the death of Prince Henry, she gave way to the most acute grief.[73]
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{160} 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............