Part 18 (1/2)

”Whose liberal board doth flow With all that hospitality doth know!

Where comes no guest but is allow'd to eat, Without his fear, and of thy Lord's own meat Where the same beer and bread, and self-same wine, That is His Lords.h.i.+p's, shall be also mine.”[57]

A reviewer of ”The Sidneys of Penshurst,” by Philip Sidney, says there is a tradition that the Black Prince and his Fair Maid of Kent once spent their Christmastide at Penshurst, whose banqueting hall, one of the finest in England, dates back to that age of chivalry. At Penshurst Spenser wrote part of his ”Shepherd's Calendar,” and Ben Jonson drank and rhymed and revelled in this stateliest of English manor houses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRISTMAS IN THE HALL.

”A man might then behold, At Christmas, in each hall, Good fires to curb the cold, And meat for great and small.”]

Queen Elizabeth died on March 23, 1603, after nominating James VI. of Scotland as her successor, and

THE ACCESSION OF KING JAMES,

as James I. of England, united the crowns of England and Scotland, which had been the aim of Mary Queen of Scots before her death.

[49] Ca.s.sell's ”History of England.”

[50] ”Domestic Memoirs of the Royal Family.”

[51] ”History of the English People.”

[52] ”Progresses.”

[53] ”English Plays.”

[54] Sir William Dugdale's ”Origines Juridiciales.”

[55] ”Progresses.”

[56] ”History of Music,” vol iii. p. 15.

[57] Gifford's ”Ben Jonson,” vol. viii. p. 254.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_CHAPTER VIII._

CHRISTMAS UNDER JAMES I.

(1603-1625.)

COURT MASQUES.

The Court entertainments of Christmastide in the reign of James the First consisted chiefly of the magnificent masques of Ben Jonson and others, who, by their training in the preceding reign, had acquired a mastery of the dramatic art. The company to which Shakespeare belonged (that of Lord Chamberlain's players) became the King's players on the accession of James, and several of Shakespeare's plays were produced at Court. But very early in this reign plays gave place to the more costly and elaborate entertainments called masques, but which were very different from the dumb-show masques of Elizabeth's reign, the masquerades of Henry the Eighth, and the low-buffoonery masques of earlier times. At the Court of James thousands of pounds were sometimes expended on the production of a single masque. To the aid of poetry, composed by poets of the first rank, came the most skilful musicians and the most ingenious machinists. Inigo Jones, who became architect to the Court in 1606, shared honours with Ben Jonson in the production of the Court masques, as did also Henry Lawes, the eminent musician. In some of the masques the devices of attire were the work of ”Master Jones,” as well as the invention and the architecture of the whole of the scenery. D'Israeli[58] says:--”That the moveable scenery of these masques formed as perfect a scenical illusion as any that our own age, with all its perfection and decoration, has attained to, will not be denied by those who have read the few masques that have been printed. They usually contrived a double division of the scene; one part was for some time concealed from the spectator, which produced surprise and variety. Thus in the Lord's Masque, at the marriage of the Palatine, the scene was divided into two parts from the roof to the floor; the lower part being first discovered, there appeared a wood in perspective, the innermost part being of ”releeve or whole round,” the rest painted. On the left a cave, and on the right a thicket from which issued Orpheus. At the back of the scene, at the sudden fall of a curtain, the upper part broke on the spectators, a heaven of clouds of all hues; the stars suddenly vanished, the clouds dispersed; an element of artificial fire played about the house of Prometheus--a bright and transparent cloud reaching from the heavens to the earth, whence the eight maskers descended with the music of a full song; and at the end of their descent the cloud broke in twain, and one part of it, as with a wind, was blown athwart the scene. While this cloud was vanis.h.i.+ng, the wood, being the under part of the scene, was insensibly changing: a perspective view opened, with porticoes on each side, and female statues of silver, accompanied with ornaments of architecture, filled the end of the house of Prometheus, and seemed all of goldsmith's work. The women of Prometheus descended from their niches till the anger of Jupiter turned them again into statues. It is evident, too, that the size of the procenium accorded with the magnificence of the scene; for I find choruses described, 'and changeable conveyances of the song,' in manner of an echo, performed by more than forty different voices and instruments in various parts of the scene.”

The masque, as Lord Bacon says, was composed for princes, and by princes it was played. The King and Queen, Prince Henry, and Prince Charles (afterwards Charles the First) all appeared in Court masques, as did also the n.o.bility and gentry of the Court, foreign amba.s.sadors, and other eminent personages.

In his notes to ”The Masque of Queens,” Ben Jonson refers several times to ”the King's Majesty's book (our sovereign) of Demonology.”