Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/405

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£118 7s. by the Wardrobe, and even then no items are included for the dresses of the main maskers, which were probably paid for by the wearers. The rewards include £2 each to five boys who played the Graces, Sphinx, and Cupid, and £1 each to the twelve Fools. This enables us to identify Jonson's undated mask with that of 1611. Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones had £40 each; Alphonso [Ferrabosco] £20 for the songs; [Robert] Johnson and Thomas Lupo £5 each for setting the songs to lutes and setting the dances to violins, and Confess and Bochan £50 and £20 for teaching the dances.

Love Restored. 6 Jan. 1612

1616. Love Restored, In a Masque at Court, by Gentlemen the Kings Seruants. W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen. [Part of F_{1}.]

The maskers were the ten Ornaments of Court—Honour, Courtesy, Valour, Urbanity, Confidence, Alacrity, Promptness, Industry, Hability, Reality; the presenters Masquerado, Plutus, Robin Goodfellow, and Cupid, who entered in a chariot attended by the maskers. There were three dances. Jonson's description is exceptionally meagre.

The dialogue finds its humour in the details of mask-presentation themselves. Masquerado, in his vizard, apologizes for the absence of musicians and the hoarseness of 'the rogue play-boy, that acts Cupid'. Plutus criticizes the expense and the corruption of manners involved in masks. Robin Goodfellow narrates his difficulties in obtaining access. He has tried in vain to get through the Woodyard on to the Terrace, but the Guard pushed him off a ladder into the Verge. The Carpenters' way also failed him. He has offered, or thought of offering, himself as an 'enginer' belonging to the 'motions', but they were 'ceased'; as an old tire-woman; as a musician; as a feather-maker of Blackfriars; as a 'bombard man', carrying 'bouge' to country ladies who had fasted for the fine sight since seven in the morning; as a citizen's wife, exposed to the liberties of the 'black-guard'; as a wireman or a chandler; and finally in his own shape as 'part of the Device'.

There are several financial documents relating to a mask at Christmas 1611, for which funds were issued to one Meredith Morgan (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxvii, Dec.; lxviii, Jan.; Reyher, 521). The Revels Account (Cunningham, 211) records a 'princes Mask performed by Gentelmen of his High []' on 6 Jan. 1612. According to Chamberlain, the Queen was at Greenwich 'practising for a new mask' on 20 Nov., but this was put off in December as 'unseasonable' so soon after the death of the Queen of Spain (Birch, i. 148, 152). Jonson does not date Love Restored, but Dr. Brotanek has successfully assigned it to 1611-12 on the ground of its reference to 'the Christmas cut-purse', of whom Chamberlain wrote to Carleton on 31 Dec. 1611 that 'a cut-purse, taken in the Chapel Royal, will be executed' (Brotanek, 347; cf. S. P. D. Jac. I, lxvii. 117, and Bartholomew Fair (1614), III. v. 132). This was one John Selman, executed on 7 Jan. 1612 for picking the