And Personated by the Queenes most Excellent Majestie, attended by Eleuen Ladies of Honour. Edward Allde.
1604. The Vision of the 12. Goddesses, presented in a Maske the 8 of Ianuary, at Hampton Court: By the Queenes most Excellent Maiestie, and her Ladies. T. C. for Simon Waterson. [A preface to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, is signed by Daniel, who states that the publication was motived by 'the unmannerly presumption of an indiscreet Printer, who without warrant hath divulged the late shewe . . . and the same very disorderly set forth'. Lady Bedford had 'preferred' Daniel to the Queen 'in this imployment'.]
See Collections.
Editions by Nichols, James, i. 305 (1828), E. Law (1880), and H. A. Evans (1897, English Masques).
The maskers, in various colours and with appropriate emblems, were twelve Goddesses, and were attended by torchbearers (cf. Carleton, infra); the presenters, 'for the introducing this show', Night, Sleep, Iris, Sibylla, and the Graces; the cornets, Satyrs.
The locality was the Hall at Hampton Court. At the lower end was a mountain, from which the maskers descended, and in which the cornets played; at the upper end the cave of Sleep and, on the left (Carleton), a temple of Peace, in the cupola of which was 'the consort music', while viols and lutes were 'on one side of the hall'.
The maskers presented their emblems, which Sibylla laid upon the altar of the temple. They danced 'their own measures', then took out the lords for 'certain measures, galliards, and corantoes', and after a 'short departing dance' reascended the mountain.
This was a Queen's mask, danced, according to manuscript notes in a copy of the Allde edition (B.M. 161, a. 41) thought by Mr. Law to be 'in a hand very like Lord Worcester's' (vide infra), and possibly identical with the 'original MS. of this mask' from which the same names are given in Collier, i. 347, by the Queen (Pallas), the Countesses of Suffolk (Juno), Hertford (Diana), Bedford (Vesta), Derby (Proserpine), and Nottingham (Concordia), and the Ladies Rich (Venus), Hatton (Macaria), Walsingham (Astraea), Susan Vere (Flora), Dorothy Hastings (Ceres), and Elizabeth Howard (Tethys).
Anticipations of masks at Court during the winter of 1603-4 are to be found in letters to Lord Shrewsbury from Arabella Stuart on 18 Dec. (Bradley, ii. 193), 'The Queene intendeth to make a Mask this Christmas, to which end my Lady of Suffolk and my Lady Walsingham hath warrants to take of the late Queenes best apparell out of the Tower at theyr discretion. Certain Noblemen (whom I may not yet name to you, because some of them have made me of theyr counsell) intend another. Certain gentlemen of good sort another'; from Cecil on 23 Dec. (Lodge, iii. 81), 'masks and much more'; and from Sir Thomas Edmondes on 23 Dec. (Lodge, iii. 83):
'Both the King's and Queen's Majesty have a humour to have some
masks this Christmas time, and therefore, for that purpose, both the young
lords and chief gentlemen of one part, and the Queen and her ladies of the
other part, do severally undertake the accomplishment and furnishing
