Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/406

 pocket of Leonard Barry, servant to Lord Harington, on Christmas Day (Rye, 269). I may add that Robin Goodfellow, when pretending to be concerned with the motions, was asked if he were 'the fighting bear of last year', and that the chariot of Oberon on 1 Jan. 1611 was drawn by white bears. There is, of course, nothing inconsistent in a Prince's mask being performed by King's servants, and the 'High[ness]' of the Revels Account may mean James, just as well as Henry. Simpson (E. M. 1. xxxiv) puts Love Restored in 1613-14, as connected with the tilt (cf. p. 393), but there is no room for it (cf. p. 246). ''The Irish Mask. 29 Dec. 1613''

1616. The Irish Masque at Court, by Gentlemen the Kings Servants. W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen. [Part of F_{1}.]

The maskers were twelve Irish Gentlemen, first in mantles, then without; the antimaskers their twelve Footmen; the presenters a Citizen and a Gentleman; one of the musicians an Irish bard. The Footmen dance 'to the bag-pipe and other rude music', after which the Gentlemen 'dance forth' twice.

The antimaskers say that their lords have come to the bridal of 'ty man Robyne' to the daughter of 'Toumaish o' Shuffolke', who has knocked them on the pate with his 'phoyt stick', as they came by. There are also compliments to 'King Yamish', 'my Mistresh tere', 'my little Maishter', and 'te vfrow, ty daughter, tat is in Tuchland'. It is therefore easy to supply the date which Jonson omits, as the mask clearly belongs to the series presented in honour of the wedding of Robert Earl of Somerset with the Earl of Suffolk's daughter during the Christmas of 1613-14. The list in Stowe, Annales, 928 (cf. s.v. Campion), includes one on 29 Dec. by 'the Prince's Gentlemen, which pleased the King so well that hee caused them to performe it againe uppon the Monday following'. This was 3 Jan.; the 10 Jan. in Nichols, ii. 718, is a misreading of the evidence in Chamberlain's letters, which identify the mask as Jonson's by a notice of the Irish element. On 30 Dec. Chamberlain wrote to Alice Carleton (Birch, i. 285), 'yesternight there was a medley mask of five English and five Scots, which are called the high dancers, amongst whom Sergeant Boyd, one Abercrombie, and Auchternouty, that was at Padua and Venice, are esteemed the most principal and lofty, but how it succeeded I know not'. Later in the letter he added, probably in reference to this and not Campion's mask, 'Sir William Bowyer hath lost his eldest son, Sir Henry. He was a fine dancer, and should have been of the masque, but overheating himself with practising, he fell into the smallpox and died.' On 5 Jan. he wrote to Dudley Carleton (Birch, i. 287), 'The maskers were so well liked at court the last week that they were appointed to perform again on Monday: yet their device, which was a mimical imitation of the Irish, was not pleasing to many, who think it no time, as the case stands, to exasperate that nation, by making it ridiculous'. On the finance cf. s.v. Campion.