on Candlemas night in a mask, as he hath shewed himself a lusty reveller all this Christmas'. But if this mask ever took place, nothing is known of it.
Hymenaei. 5 Jan. 1606
1606. Hymenaei: or The Solemnities of Masque, and Barriers, Magnificently performed on the eleventh, and twelfth Nights, from Christmas; At Court: To the auspicious celebrating of the Marriage-vnion, betweene Robert, Earle of Essex, and the Lady Frances, second Daughter to the most noble Earle of Suffolke. By Ben: Ionson. Valentine Sims for Thomas Thorp.
1616. Hymenaei, or The solemnities of Masque and Barriers at a Marriage. [Part of F_{1}.]
This was a double mask of eight men and eight women. The men, in carnation cloth of silver, with variously coloured mantles and watchet cloth of silver bases, were Humours and Affections; the women, in white cloth of silver, with carnation and blue undergarments, the Powers of Juno; the presenters Hymen, with a bride, bridegroom, and bridal train, Reason, and Order; the musicians the Hours.
The locality was probably the Elizabethan banqueting-house, which seems to have been repaired in 1604 (Reyher, 340). 'The scene being drawn' discovered first an altar for Hymen and 'a microcosm or globe', which turned and disclosed the men maskers in a 'mine' or 'grot'. On either side of the globe stood great statues of Hercules and Atlas. They bore up the 'upper part of the scene', representing clouds, which opened to disclose the upper regions, whence the women descended on nimbi.
Each set of maskers had a dance at entry. They then danced together a measure with strains 'all notably different, some of them formed into letters very signifying to the name of the bridegroom'. This done, they 'dissolved' and took forth others for measures, galliards, and corantoes. After these 'intermixed dances' came 'their last dances', and they departed in a bridal procession with an epithalamion.
The mask was in honour of the wedding of the Earl of Essex and Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, and was probably given by their friends. The only Household expenses appear to have been for the making ready of the room (Reyher, 520), but Lady Rutland's share seems to have cost the Earl over £100 (Hist. MSS. Rutland Accounts, iv. 457). The dancers were the Countesses of Montgomery, Bedford, and Rutland, the Ladies Knollys, Berkeley, Dorothy Hastings, and Blanch Somerset, and Mrs. A. Sackville, with the Earls of Montgomery and Arundel, Lords Willoughby and Howard de Walden, Sir James Hay, Sir Thomas Howard, Sir Thomas Somerset, and Sir John Ashley. The 'design and act' and the device of the costumes were by Inigo Jones, the songs by Alphonso Ferrabosco, and the dances by Thomas Giles.
On the next day followed a Barriers, in which, after a dialogue by
