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him then my Lord of Mountgomery had, his plate 'being valued at 3000 & his jewels, mony and other 'guifts at 1000li more. But to returne to the Maske. 'Both Inigo, Ben and the actors men and weomen did their partes with great commendation. The conceipt or soule of the mask was Hymen bringing in a bride and Juno pronubas priest a bridegroome, proclaiming that those two should be sacrificed to Nuptial Union and here the poet made an apostrophe to the union of kingdomes. But before the 'sacrifice could be performed, Ben Jonson burned 'the globe of the erth standing behind the altar, and within the concave sate the 8 men-maskers repre6 senting the 4 humors and the fower affections, who leaped forth to disturb the sacrifice to union; but amidst their fury, Reason that sate above them all, 'crowned with *** and silence them *. These 8, together with Reason their moderatresse mounted ' above their heades, sate somewhat like the Ladies in 'the scallop shell last year. Above the globe of erth hovered a middle region of cloudes, in the centre 'whereof stood a grand consort of musicians, and

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upon the Cantons, or hornes, sate the ladies, 4 at one

corner and 4 at another, who descended upon the stage, not after the stale, downright, perpendicular fashion, like a bucket into a well, but came gently

sloping down. These eight, after the sacrifice was

ended, represented the 8 nuptial powers of Juno

* The MS. has here been worn away, from the binding not being long enough for the letter.

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pronubas, who came downe to confirm the union. • The men were clad in crimson, the weomen in 'white. They had every one a white plume of the rechest herons fethers, and were so rich in jewels upon 'their heades as was most glorious. I think they ⚫ hired and borrowed all the principall jewels and ropes ⚫ of perle both in court and citty. The Spanish Ambas'sador seemed but poore to the meanest of them. They daunced all variety of daunces both severally ' and promiscuè, and then the weomen tooke in men,

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as namely the prince (who danced with as great

perfection, and as settled a majesty as could be de'vised), the Spanish Ambassador, the Duke, &c.

And the men gleaned out the Queen, the bride, and the greatest of the ladies. The second night the 'Barriers were as well performed, 15 against 15, the 'Duke of Lenox being chieftain on the one side, and 'my Lord of Sussex on the other.'

On Twelfth-night, 1606-7, a marriage was celebrated at Whitehall, between Lord Hayes, and the daughter of Lord Denny; and Thomas Campion, who calls himself Doctor of Physic,' and who was also a poet, a critic, and a musical composer of some eminence, prepared a Mask for the occasion*, The

* Dr. Campion, as is stated at the close where the music is appended, composed two airs himself: two more were by Lupo, one of King James's Lutanists, and a fifth by Thomas Giles, who was probably related to Nathaniel Giles, the Master of the Children of the Chapel. The whole invention of the Mask was the work of Campion, who, in 1602, had published Observations in the Art of English Poesie. As

Description' of which, (without a name) with the music, and with a plate of one of the maskers in the gorgeous dress he wore, was published very soon afterwards with the date of 1607. It is long, but with considerable variety, and evidently must have been got up at great cost *.

The King of Denmark arrived in England in July, A. D. 1606; and Drummond of Hawthornden is 1606. very particular in his account of the proceedings of the court on this occasion: with reference to

his Mask is of rarity, it may be worth while to quote the address To the Reader,' with which it terminates.

According to the entries in the Stationers' Books, as quoted by Chalmers (Supp. Apol. p. 201), Shakespeare's King Lear was one of the plays acted by the King's Servants before James I. at Christmas, 1606-7. The Tragedy of Alexander the VI. ' as it was played before his Majesty,' was perhaps another of the performances on the same occasion, although no date is given beyond the year when it was printed.

the subject before us he remarks:- There is nothing 'to be heard at court, but sounding of trumpets, hautboys, music, revelling and comedies;' and Malone was of opinion* that Shakespeare's Macbeth was produced at this date, and perhaps exhibited before the King: Gifford, on the other hand, thought this conjecture groundless †, and that Drummond only meant court entertainments by the word comedies: had he not spoken of revelling' also, there might have been more ground for this position; and 'comedies,' in the generic sense of plays, may possibly have included Macbeth. Ben Jonson wrote a sort of pageant, exhibited at Theobalds before the Kings of England and Denmark on the 24th of July, 1606, but in the amusements of the Christmas following he had no concern.

In the mean time the performances by the public companies of players seem not only to have met with no obstruction, but to have received every encouragement; and the example of the King would, almost of course, be followed by the nobility. The Puritans, who had renewed their attack upon dramatic performances a few years before the demise of Elizabeth, were silenced, and the passing of the 3d Jac. I. c. 21, entitled An Act to restraine the abuses of Players,' deprived them of one of their strongest arguments. It was passed for the preventing and avoiding the great

*Shakespeare, by Boswell, ii. 418.

Ben Jonson's Works, vii. 115.

VOL. I.

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• abuse of the holy name of God in stage-plays, inter'ludes, may-games, shewes and such like;' and it inflicted a penalty of 107. on every person who should 'jestingly and profanely' use the holy name of God,

or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghost, or of the Trinity,' in any stage-play, interlude, shew, maygame, or pageant.

Shakespeare, who was one of the leaders of the Lord Chamberlain's company when they received the royal patent of 19th May, 1603, retired, in all probability, soon afterwards from the stage as an actor : the principal piece of evidence upon this point is the omission of his name, as one of the players in Ben Jonson's Volpone, which was acted in 1605, although it is found among those who performed the same dramatist's Sejanus in 1603; yet on the later occasion his assistance might have been the more required, because, in the interval between 1603 and 1605, Augustine Phillipes, who had also taken a part in Sejanus, had died. Shakespeare, however, continued to write for the Globe and Blackfriars theatres; and if it were true, that on the production of his Macbeth, James, with his own hand, wrote a letter to its author, in return for the compliment paid to him in that tragedy*,

*Malone was disposed to believe this anecdote; and Mr. Boswell, in his continuation of the Life of Shakespeare, thus speaks of it :—' We ' have been told, on authority which there is no reason to doubt, that he (King James) wrote a letter to Shakespeare with his own hand: the story is told in the advertisement to Lintot's edition of Shakespeare's 'Poems, no date, but printed in 1710. The letter is there said to have

been lost, but formerly to have been in the possession of Sir William