of Lennox, she was watched with jealousy alike by Tudor and by Stuart sovereigns. To prevent her marriage, was the policy of Scotch and English Courts. Yet she held a dazzling place, so near the throne, in both; and love makes pastime for himself with courtiers' hearts. Her intimacy with a cousin, Esmé Stuart, was forbidden. The suit of a Percy was frosted in the bud. The King of France thought of her for a moment, but rejected her 'on better judgment making,' as too distant from the crown of England. Then, it seems, her feelings were engaged for William Seymour, grandson of the Earl of Hertford. State interference She in this matter compromised her woman's fame. was imprisoned at Lambeth; he was committed to the Tower. They both escaped, and took their flight to Flanders. But the Lady Arabella was captured at Calais, and brought back to London. She had played her part at Whitehall in the Masque of Beauty,' in 1608. She died in the Tower, a raving lunatic, in 1615. Turn to Prince Henry's Barriers,' and the Masque of Oberon. In these, the heir apparent shone before his people and the Court in 1610. He was a youth heroic, beautiful, and brave, a nation's darling. From her lethargy of age he roused the Dame of Chivalry, brought Merlin from his grave, and unsphered Arthur from the skies. The poet hailed him as a second Harry, fit for Agincourt in form and feature. Scholars dubbed him Moliades, Lord of the Isles, and out of this mysterious name made anagrams-A Deo Miles. None then could know that he was the Marcellus of a kingdom. But round him, as he danced among his fairies, floated shades of Death and Hades. TRAGIC IRONY OF WHITEHALL MASQUES. 357 Egregium forma juvenem et fulgentibus armis, Scatter lilies and roses! Henry will have died before three years are over, and the poets will be shedding tears for Mæliades in Hawthornden and London. And the little Duke Charles, who danced so bravely with the fairies in his brother's festival; the Prince Charles, who, when he came from Spain, led forth the revels of 'Time Vindicated;' what shall be said of him? The Prince's Masque of 1623 was followed by a very different pageant at Whitehall in 1649. And what had passed between those dates-what death-throes of a dynasty, divisions of a nation! He nothing common did or mean But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try ; Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite, But bowed his comely head Down as upon a bed. Pass, once again, to the Masque of Hymen. Through those epithalamial hymns which sounded in the ears of Essex and his bride in 1616, who does. not hear the mutterings of destiny and dire disgrace? The Lady Frances Howard was in her fourteenth year. The heir of Elizabeth's and the nation's darling, the young Earl of Essex, was hardly fifteen. Jonson, in his marriage chorus for these children, sang : And wildest Cupid waking hovers With adoration 'twixt the lovers. The girl-wife lived to seek a dishonourable divorce, and to wed the Earl of Somerset, that Carr who made his fortunate debut in James's favour on the morning of 'Prince Henry's Barriers.' Tried and condemned for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, the lives of this guilty couple were spared by the King's terror of detection. They ended their days in separation, the objects of universal horror. The boy-husband of Jonson's hymeneal pageant was destined to lead the armies of the Parliament against his sovereign, and to sink at last before the power and popularity of Cromwell. With the advance of years, the tragic irony of these Masques at Court deepens. The last great entertainment of this kind, of which we have any detailed information, was a Masque presented by Charles and Henrietta Maria at Shrovetide 1640. The usual sum of 1,400/. had been granted for the mounting of the piece; and an additional sum of 120%. was expended on the King's costume. What the subject was, or who wrote the libretto, is not known. But we may believe that Whitehall presented to the outer eye on this, as on so many previous occasions, a pageant of undimmed magnificence, a scene of undisturbed security. The Monarchy of England, indeed, was tottering already to its fall; the foundations of society were crumbling. Yet, as usual, the hall was crowded with noble men and noble women, exchanging compliments beneath the torches, dancing brawls or galliards, as though there were no Pym and Hampden in existence. Those brilliant and bejewelled cavaliers, innocent as yet of civil strife, unstained with fratricidal slaughter, were soon to part, with anger in their breasts and everlasting farewell on their lips, for adverse camps. Gazing in THE MASQUE AND THE DRAMA. 359 fancy on the women at their side, that voice which De Quincey heard in vision thrills our ears: 'These are English ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are the wives and daughters of those who met in peace, and sat at the same tables, and were allied by marriage or by blood; and yet, after a certain day in August 1642, never smiled upon each other again, nor met but on the field of battle; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and washed away in blood the memory of ancient friendship.' XIV. It remains to note the effects of Masques at Court upon the Drama. Like everything which formed a prominent part of the national life, the Masque was adopted and incorporated into the popular art of the theatres. Shakspere in 'The Tempest' has left us an example of its most judicious introduction, as a brief interlude, in the conduct of a serious play. A similarly successful instance might be cited from Fletcher's 'False One,' where the Masque of Nilus forms a splendid and agreeable episode. The Bridal Masque in his Maid's Tragedy' is not less beautiful and rightly placed. Cupid's Masque in A Wife for a Month' presents the mere silhouette or sketch in outline of a courtly pageant. On the public stage, it was of course necessary that the Masque, exhibited within a play, should be simple in its theme and capable of quick despatch. Webster used a Masque of Madmen with terrible effect at the climax of his Duchess' tragedy. Marston, Tourneur, and other playwrights of the melodrama, as they abused Ghosts for purposes of stage-effect, so did they stretch this motive of the Masque within the Drama beyond just limits. It became the customary device in their hands for disposing of a tyrant. From the dramatists themselves we learn how City folk and petty gentry crowded to Whitehall on masquing nights.' Men forgave their debts, and women sold their honour, to obtain a seat. To have a friend at Court among the Ushers or the Porters was the heart's wish of those aspiring citizens who panted to gaze on royalty and aristocracy performing actors' parts upon the stage of a palace. The ante-rooms and galleries of Whitehall became on those occasions a scene of indescribable debauchery and riot. and riot. The masques and plays at Whitehall,' writes Sir Edward Peyton in his Divine Catastrophe of the Stuarts,'' were used only for incentives to lust; therefore the courtiers invited the citizens' wives to those shows on purpose to defile them in such sort. There is not a lobby nor chamber (if it could speak) but would verify it.' The passages cited from Fletcher and Jonson in a note appended by Dyce to this paragraph, fully corroborate the Puritan's assertion. Jonson told Drummond at Hawthornden, that 'next himself, only Fletcher and Chapman could make a Masque.' Jonson did not live to welcome Milton's Muse, or he might have added that a fourth Masque 1 See, in particular, the Induction to Fletcher's Four Plays in One, the opening of his Humorous Lieutenant, the Maid's Tragedy (act i. sc. 2), A Wife for a Month (act ii. sc. 4), and the introduction to Jonson's Love Restored. |
