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68 VI James I. visited Hampton Court very early in his reign. Thither, in July 1603, he summoned those who were liable to be called on to be knighted, and his first Christmas was spent there with great pomp. The series of letters from Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, happily to be found in the Record Office, which are as characteristic a record of the seventeenth-century court and political gossip, if not as charming, as Horace Walpole's are of the eighteenth century, give many details of gay doings at the Palace. "Male and female masques" were prepared for Christmas, and the great hall was turned into a theatre. Shakespeare, it seems certain, himself played before the King at this festival; and it is thought that Henry VIII. was acted in that King's own hall. Six interludes or plays were acted by Hemynge's company, four before the King and two before the young Prince Henry. The climax to the whole was the performance of the masque of the twelve goddesses on January 8, in which the Queen herself played Pallas.

This was but a beginning. Hampton Court under James I. for the rest of the reign, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, "delighted in masques and revels sometimes altogether."

If it was dramatic, the Palace was also theological. Elizabeth had been content to go to church in pomp,