(excerpted from "Drama, Entertainment, Music" in REED: Inns of Court, by Alan H. Nelson)
The standard definition of ‘masque’ in the OEDO (n. 1.a.) nicely fits these Inns of Court entertainments: ‘A form of courtly dramatic entertainment, often richly symbolic, in which music and dancing played a substantial part, costumes and stage machinery tended to be elaborate, and the audience might be invited to contribute to the action or the dancing.’ The definition continues with an equally applicable historical narrative: ‘The masque became a clearly defined genre during the reigns of James I and Charles I; less sophisticated earlier spectacles are sometimes called entertainments to distinguish them from these Stuart masques....’ At least one contemporary took the word ‘masque’ more literally: John Chamberlain (see his letters in Appendix 4) objected that the Gray’s Inn entertainment of 19 February 1617/18 (The Masque of Mountebanks) was at best a ‘shew’: ‘for I cannot call yt a maske seeing they were not disguised nor had visards.’ Earlier, on 23 February 1612/13, Chamberlain had complained in a somewhat similar vein that a certain masque (not by the Inns of Court) ‘was long and tedious, and with many deuises more lyke a play then a maske’; he commended the joint masque of Lincoln’s Inn and the Middle Temple, presumably because it better fit his idea of what a masque should be.
Pre-Elizabethan entertainments at the Inns of Court, generally identified as disguisings, may have featured masque-like spectacle as well as plot. On 3 January 1489/90 an Inner Temple disguising ‘went to grays Inne’; a week later a Gray’s Inn disguising ‘cam in lyke wise to ye Inner temple.’ On the penultimate day of January the Inner Temple possibly played its disguising at home before the earls of Oxford, Derby, and Shrewsbury; Lord Hastings; the lord chamberlain (Sir William Stanley); sixteen or seventeen knights; and various squires and gentlemen. In 1503–4 Lincoln’s Inn paid 10s to the king’s minstrels ‘for the dysguysyng.’ A Lincoln’s Inn entry for 1529–30 concerns a disguising of that year. In 1533–4 the Inns of Court kept Christmas with ‘suche disguysinges and pastymes as hath not byn sene’ (Appendix 4, p 683).
Even Inns of Court plays tended to be long on spectacle. The Inner Temple tragedy Gorboduc (1561–2) featured elaborate dumb shows. The masque-like qualities of The Misfortunes of Arthur (1587/8) are announced on its title page: ‘Certaine deuises and shewes presented to her Maiestie by the gentlemen of Grayes-Inne at her Highnesse court in Greenewich.’ Though neither of these was a fully developed masque, both belonged to the entertainment tradition out of which the formal masque would develop.
The Gray’s Inn ‘Masque of Juno and Diana’ (1564/5) was characterized by elaborate scenic effects, with contributions by the office of the Revels (Appendix 5). The Gesta Grayorum of 1594/5 is described on the title page of its late first edition (1688) as having been performed with a masque. The masque in question was The Masque of Proteus (see Appendix 6.1). Stephen Orgel characterizes this masque, evidently by Francis Davison, as ‘the first English masque to conceive, in however small a way, of the masquing hall as a theater.’20 Francis Bacon alludes, in a letter of c 1595–6, to a failed ‘joynt maske from the fowr Innes of Cowrt.’
Eight post-Elizabethan Inns of Court masques are more or less richly documented in the Records and Appendixes 2, 4, 5, and 6.1 (under ‘Masques’): The Memorable Masque (by Chapman), Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, 15 February 1612/13; Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn (by Beaumont), 20 February 1612/13; Masque of Flowers (anonymous), Gray’s Inn, 6 January 1613/14; Ulysses and Circe (by William Browne of Tavistock), Inner Temple, 13 January 1614/15; Masque of Mountebanks (anonymous), Gray’s Inn, 2 and 19 February 1617/18; The Masque of Heroes (by Middleton), Inner Temple, between 6 January and 2 February 1618/19; Triumph of Peace (by Shirley), Four Inns, 3 and 13 February 1633/4; and Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour (by Davenant), Middle Temple, 23 or 24 February 1635/6. (Yet more masques noted in Appendix 8 might logically be added to this list.) The genre seems to have received its impetus from the 14 February 1612/13 wedding of Princess Elizabeth, notorious for her love of masques and plays. Most Inns of Court masque texts were commis- sioned from professional dramatists, and most were put into print and advertised for sale by publishers with shops in or near the legal district (see the title pages transcribed in Appendix 2).
Masques sometimes entailed a mix of amateur and professional players. In 1612–13 stockings were purchased by Lincoln’s Inn for ‘Heminges boy,’ probably William, son of John Heminges of the king’s men, probably in connection with the masque performed jointly with the Middle Temple. We have already noted that the Inner Temple Masque of 1618/19 was played by professionals as well as by ‘the Gentlemen of the House.’
While most Inns of Court masques, like plays and shows before them, were organized with royalty or nobility in mind, The Triumph of Peace of February 1633/4 was explicitly political. In 1633 the incautious William Prynne, of Lincoln’s Inn, published a book whose subject is effusively proclaimed in its title (STC : 20464):
Histrio-mastix The players scourge, or, actors tragædie, divided into two parts. Wherein it is largely evidenced ... That popular Stage-playes ... are sinfull, heathenish, lewde, ungodly Spectacles, and most pernicious Corruptions; condemned in all ages, as intolerable Mischiefes to Churches, to Republickes, to the manners, mindes, and soules of men. And that the Profession of Play-poets, of Stage-players; together with the penning, acting, and frequenting of Stage-playes, are unlawfull, infamous and misbeseeming Christians. All pretences to the contrary are here likewise fully answered; and the unlawfulnes of acting, of beholding Academicall Enterludes, briefly discussed; besides sundry other particulars concerning Dancing, Dicing, Health-drinking, &c. of which the Table will informe you.
Prynne dedicated his screed to the benchers of Lincoln’s Inn. Adding to their discomfort, in his Index Prynne referenced court masques, in which Queen Henrietta Maria and various noblewomen were frequent participants: ‘Women-Actors, notorious whores.’
All four Inns joined in a theatrical frenzy meant to reassure the king and queen of their institutional sympathy and loyalty. Committees were appointed, money was raised, and a playwright was hired. This was James Shirley, resident of the parish of St Andrew, Holborn, and thus a neighbour of Gray’s Inn, formally admitted as ‘one of the Valets of the Chamber of Queen Henrietta Maria.’21 Shirley himself describes his Triumph of Peace as ‘for the variety of the Shewes, and richnesse of the Habits, the most magnificent that hath beene brought to Court in our time’ (Appendix 2, p 612). Inigo Jones was hired as manager and designer, William Lawes and Simon Ives to compose the music. The enormous cost of the enterprise – said to have been in excess of £20,000 – burdened all four Inns for years to come.
The financial burden on the Middle Temple was compounded by its decision to mount yet another masque two years later. This was William Davenant’s Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour, performed on 23 or 24 February 1635/6. For the first time, rather than bringing the masque to the royal court, royalty came to the Inn, including the prince elector and his brother Prince Rupert. Though the king did not attend, Queen Henrietta Maria appeared with ladies of her court, all wearing hats to preserve the fiction of being ‘in disguise.’ Gervase Holles reports that the masque cost the Middle Temple ‘neare .20000. li. Sterling’ (Appendix 4, p 708).
To access select masque texts that were transcribed for the Inns of Court collection, see "Masque Texts."