as executants, were Thomas Ford (Chapman's Mask), John Cooper (Lords; Squires), the lutenists Robert Johnson (Oberon; Love Freed; Lords; Chapman's Mask), John and Robert Dowland (Chapman's Mask), and Philip Rossiter (Chapman's Mask), and the violinists Thomas Lupo the elder (Hay Mask; Oberon; Love Freed; Lords), Rowland Rubidge (Oberon), and Alexander Chisan (Oberon).[1] As dancing-masters we hear of Thomas Cardell under Elizabeth in 1582;[2] and under James of Jerome Heron (Haddington Mask; Queens; Oberon; Lords), Confess (Oberon; Love Freed), Bochan (Love Freed; Lords), and Thomas Giles (Hymenaei; Beauty; Haddington Mask; Queens; Oberon; Lords), who was musician and teacher of the dance to Henry, and may be identical with the Thomas Giles who became Master of the Paul's boys in 1584.[3]
The court masks ordinarily took place in what was called the banqueting-house, but might with more appropriateness have been called the masking-house, at Whitehall.[4] The occasional exceptions readily explain themselves. Whitehall was under the ban of plague in the winter of 1604, and the masks were in the great hall of Hampton Court. During the winter of 1606, when the Elizabethan banqueting-house had been pulled down and the Jacobean one was not yet ready, the great hall of Whitehall itself was used. Here also was given Chapman's Mask, on the second night of the Princess Elizabeth's wedding, doubtless because the banqueting-house was still encumbered with the scenery belonging to the Lords' Mask of the previous night. The hall had also been assigned to Beaumont's Mask on the third night, but when this was put off for a few days, the greater dignity of the banqueting-house was granted as a compensation for the disappointment of the dancers. The aspect of the room and its arrangements are well described in 1618, only a year before the first Jacobean banqueting-house was burnt down, by Orazio Busino, almoner to the Venetian ambassador, Piero Contarini.[5] This may be supplemented by Campion's descrip-
- ↑ Reyher, 79.
- ↑ Feuillerat, Eliz. 356.
- ↑ Reyher, 78.
- ↑ Blackness certainly and Hymenaei probably were in the Elizabethan room. The Jacobean room was first used for Beauty (10 Jan. 1608). It was also used for Queens, Oberon, Lords, Beaumont's, Squires, and Flowers, and probably for all others from 1608 to 1616 except Chapman's.
- ↑ Busino, Anglopotrida (V. P. xv. 110), describing Jonson's Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue on 6 Jan. 1618, 'A large hall is fitted up like a theatre, with well secured boxes all round. The stage is at one end and his Majesty's chair in front under an ample canopy. Near him are stools for the foreign ambassadors. . . . Whilst waiting for the king we amused ourselves admiring the decorations and beauty of the house with its two orders of columns,
