an epithalamion. The mask was given by the maskers, seven Scottish and five English lords and gentlemen, the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery, Lords D'Aubigny, De Walden, Hay, and Sanquhar, the Master of Mar, Sir Robert Rich, Sir John Kennedy, and Mr. Erskine. (Quarto and Lodge, iii. 223.) The 'device and act of the scene' were supplied by Inigo Jones, the tunes by Alphonso Ferrabosco, and two dances each by Hierome Herne and Thomas Giles, who also beat time as Cyclopes.
Rowland White told Lord Shrewsbury on 26 Jan. that the mask was 'now the only thing thought upon at court', and would cost the maskers about £300 a man (Lodge, iii. 223). Jonson was busy with the verses on 29 Jan. (Lodge, App. 102).
Sussex and Haddington intended to ask the French ambassador both to the wedding dinner and to the mask and banquet, but the Lord Chamberlain, having Spanish sympathies, would not consent. In the end he was asked by James himself to the mask and banquet, at which Prince Henry would preside. He accepted, and suggested that Henri should present Haddington with a ring, but this was not done. He thought the mask 'assez maigre', but Anne was very gracious, and James regretted that etiquette did not allow him to sit at the banquet in person. La Boderie's wife and daughter, who danced with the Duke of York, were also present. Unfortunately he did not receive in time an instruction from Paris to keep away if the Flemish ambassador was asked, and did not protest against this invitation on his own responsibility, partly out of annoyance with the Venetian for attending the Queen's mask without him, and partly for fear of losing his own invitation. The Fleming had had far less consideration than himself (La Boderie, iii. 75-144). So both the French and the Flemish ambassador were present, with two princes of Saxony
(V. P. xi. 97). English criticisms were more kindly than La Boderie's. Sir Henry Saville described it to Sir Richard Beaumont on the same night as a 'singular brave mask', at which he had been until three in the morning (Beaumont Papers, 17), and Chamberlain wrote to Carleton on 11 Feb. (S. P. D. Jac. I, xxxi. 26; Birch, i. 72): 'I can send you no perfect relation of the marriage nor mask on Tuesday, only they say all, but especially the motions, were well performed; as Venus, with her chariot drawn by swans, coming in a cloud to seek her son; who with his companions, Lusus, Risus, and Janus [? Jocus], and four or five more wags, were dancing a matachina, and acted it very antiquely, before the twelve signs, who were the master maskers, descended from the zodiac, and played their parts more gravely, being very gracefully attired.'
Mask of Queens. 2 Feb. 1609
[MSS.] (a) B.M. Harl. MS. 6947, f. 143 (printed Reyher, 506). [Apparently a short descriptive analysis or programme, without the words of the dialogue and songs.]
(b) B.M. Royal MS. 18 A. xlv. [Holograph. Epistle to Prince Henry.]
