special interest, because it is Elizabethan and antedates by some four years the first of the long series of Jonson's Jacobean masks. It occupies, in the quarto version, the greater part of the last seven scenes of the play. In iv. 5 Arete, a principal lady at court, desires revels for Cynthia, and Amorphus proposes a 'masque'. Arete undertakes to send for Criticus, and get his advice.[1] In iv. 6 Criticus hesitates to write for such revellers as Amorphus and his crew. Arete encourages him. The presence will restrain them when they are masked, and Cynthia needs the opportunity to reform them. Criticus then invokes Apollo and Mercury. In v. 1 Cynthia, awaiting the mask, holds flattering discourse with Arete on its author. In v. 2 enters 'the first masque'. Cupid 'disguised like Anteros', presents four virgins from the palace of Perfection, Storge, Aglaia, Euphantaste, and Apheleia. He interprets their devices, and presents on their behalf a crystal, in which Cynthia sees her own image. In v. 3 Cynthia discusses the mask with Criticus and Arete. In v. 4 enters 'the second masque'. Mercury presents and interprets the four sons of Eutaxia, who are Eucosmos, Eupathes, Eutolmos, and Eucolos. In iv. 5 'the masques joyne'. They dance the first, second, and third 'straine', while Cupid and Mercury converse, outside the cadre of the mask. The dancers do not proceed to 'take out' spectators, but that is presumably because they are interrupted by Cynthia, who bids them unmask and administers her reproof.
The masks inserted in plays are rarely described with anything like the fullness of Cynthia's Revels, although there is a fair amount of detail in The Maid's Tragedy and a somewhat less amount in Your Five Gallants and in No Wit, no Help, like a Woman's. It must be borne in mind that the main action of a mask was mute, and that the stage directions of the printed texts are not intended to be descriptive. Moreover, the structural place of the mask in a plot often leads, as in Cynthia's Revels, to its abrupt termination. The disguises cover an intrigue of murder (2 Antonio and Mellida, Revenger's Tragedy) or of robbery (A Mad World, my Masters), or of elopement (A Woman is a Weathercock). Or a quarrel breaks out (Dutch Courtesan), or a masker is discovered to be dead (Satiromastix). As a rule, too, the presenters' speeches
- [Footnote: (M. L. A. xv. 114); The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere,
130, 148.]
- ↑ I think Criticus must here be taken to be Jonson's self-portrait. He told Drummond in 1619 that 'by Criticus is understood Done' (Conversations, 6); but the reference there appears to be to the lost 'preface of his Arte of Poesie'. In the folio text of the play Criticus becomes Crites.
