S. R. 1609, Feb. 22 (Segar). 'A booke called, The maske of Queenes Celebrated, done by Beniamin Johnson.' Richard Bonion and Henry Walley (Arber, iii. 402).
1609. The Masque of Queenes Celebrated From the House of Fame: By the most absolute in all State, And Titles. Anne, Queene of Great Britaine, &c. With her Honourable Ladies. At White Hall, Febr. 2. 1609. Written by Ben: Ionson. N. Okes for R. Bonian and H. Wally. [Epistle to Prince Henry.]
1616. [Part of F_{1}.]
Edition in J. P. Collier, Five Court Masques (1848, Sh. Soc. from Royal MS.).
Jonson prefaces that 'because Her Majesty (best knowing that a principal part of life in these spectacles lay in their variety) had commanded me to think on some dance, or shew, that might precede hers, and have the place of a foil, or false masque: I was careful to decline, not only from others, but mine own steps in that kind, since the last year, I had an antimasque of boys; and therefore now devised that twelve women, in the habit of hags or witches, sustaining the persons of Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, &c., the opposites to good Fame, should fill that part, not as a masque, but as a spectacle of strangeness' [it is called a 'maske' in the programme] 'producing multiplicity of gesture, and not unaptly sorting with the current and whole fall of the device'.
The maskers, in various habits, eight designs for which are in Sh. England, ii. 311, were Bel-Anna and eleven other Queens, who were attended by torchbearers; the antimaskers eleven Hags and their dame Ate; the presenters Perseus or Heroic Virtue and Fame.
The locality was the new banqueting-house at Whitehall (T. of C. Acct., quoted by Sullivan, 54). The scene at first represented a Hell, whence the antimask issued. In the middle of a 'magical dance' it vanished at a blast of music, 'and the whole face of the scene altered', becoming the House of Fame, a machina versatilis, which showed first Perseus and the maskers and then Fame. Descending, the maskers made their entry in three chariots, to which the Hags were bound. They danced their first and second dances; then 'took out the men, and danced the measures' for nearly an hour. After an interval for a song, came their third dance, 'graphically disposed into letters, and honouring the name of the most sweet and ingenious Prince, Charles Duke of York'. Galliards and corantoes followed, and after their 'last dance' they returned in their chariots to the House of Fame.
This was a Queen's mask, danced by the Queen, the Countesses of Arundel, Derby, Huntingdon, Bedford, Essex, and Montgomery, the Viscountess Cranborne, and the Ladies Elizabeth Guildford, Anne Winter, Windsor, and Anne Clifford. Inigo Jones was responsible for the attire of the Hags, and 'the invention and architecture of the whole scene and machine'; Alphonso Ferrabosco for the airs of the songs; Thomas Giles for the third dance, and Hierome Herne for the dance of Hags. John Allen, 'her Majesty's servant', sang a ditty between the measures and the third dance.
