Pan’s Anniversary, or The Shepherd’s Holiday (1621)

Edited by Martin Butler

INTRODUCTION

Pan’s Anniversary is dated 1625 in the 1640–1 folio, but this cannot be correct for the masque for that Christmas was The Fortunate Isles. Fortunately a transcript has survived of a bill (the original of which is now lost) detailing the expenditure on the antimasque costumes (see Masque Archive, Pan’s Ann., 8). This is dated ‘Xmas 1620’, which presumably means ‘the Christmas season 1620–1’, making Pan’s Anniversary the masque danced on Twelfth Night 1621, and repeated on Shrove Sunday (11 February). The identification is confirmed by the one concrete detail about the 1621 masque that we have, a report mentioned by the letter-writer John Chamberlain that some spectators were offended because ‘there was a puritan brought in to be flouted and abused’ (Chamberlain, Letters, ed. McClure, 1939, 2.333). This must have been the ‘prophet’ or fanatical tailor who, with his clock-keeper, mousetrap-maker, and clerk, disrupted the orderly rituals performed by the Arcadian shepherds. An older critical tradition, initiated by F. G. Fleay (1891), 2.14, and developed by Rudolph Brotanek (1902), 357, held that Pan’s Anniversary was an entertainment for King James’s birthday (19 June). However, this is no more than a guess, and there is no evidence to support it. No tradition existed of summer masques at court, and the masque uses the word ‘Anniversary’ not to mean a birthday but in its religious sense, appropriate for Christmas festivities, of ‘annual commemoration’. Only a misplaced feeling that the masque’s springtide motifs should have matched the winter season has prevented its true date from being recognized (see Butler, 1992a). Several other masques – such as Mercury Vindicated, The Vision of Delight, and Campion’s Lord Hay’s Masque (1607) – use Christmas festivities to anticipate springtide renewal, and sometimes claim that the monarch’s presence confers warmth even though the season is winter.

The celebration was held in the hall at Whitehall (the first Jacobean Banqueting House had burned down in 1619 and its successor was still in the process of rebuilding). The performance was politically sensitive because at this moment James was under pressure on two diplomatic fronts. The long-term issue was the future of his son-in-law, the Palatine Prince Frederick. In 1618 Frederick had accepted the crown of Bohemia, offered to him by the Bohemian Protestants, who were in revolt against their elected king, the future Habsburg emperor Ferdinand. The Habsburgs took swift revenge, ousting Frederick by force from his new kingdom and then from his own hereditary lands in Germany. In January 1621 James was about to meet his first parliament for seven years, and many people hoped he would use the opportunity to finance practical military support to restore his son-in-law to his territories; in the London streets, a significant popular political consciousness had started to develop (Butler, 1992a, 380–1). At the same time, James was newly welcoming a French ambassador extraordinary, the Marquis du Cadenet. Cadenet brought offers of French support for England in Germany, but the price was that England should refrain from criticizing Louis ⅩⅢ for the action he was about to take against his Protestant subjects, the Huguenots. In the event, James rejected the French requests, for he valued solidarity with co-religionists, and he was reluctant to be rushed into a German war. Cadenet was guest of honour at the Twelfth Night performance, and the masque’s pastoral theme, its satire on fanaticism, and its praise of strong government must have indicated that the English monarch was still firmly committed to peace. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the guest of honour at the second, Shrovetide performance was the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar.

The masque’s central device, a musical contest, derives in a general way from the Greek and Latin bucolic poets, in whom singing (though not dancing) competitions were a common motif (see 59–60n.). Jonson could have taken some hints for rural rituals in honour of Pan from Michael Drayton’s The Man in the Moon (1606) and from passages of Silius Italicus including The Fountain of Ancient Fiction, translated from Cartari by Richard Linche (1599), sig. I3, but most of the pastoral furniture is his own invention. To create his Arcadia, he drew widely on classical sources and on native pastoral traditions reaching back into the Elizabethan period by way of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney. He extended the pastoral form by linking James not with the puckish Pan of Homeric myth but with the more formidable Pan of the Orphic hymns, whose presence mysteriously pervades the Arcadian landscape. Pan’s Anniversary was the most elaborate court pastoral staged thus far at Stuart Whitehall, prefiguring a form that eventually came into fuller vogue under Charles I. Many Caroline pastorals would praise the serenity of the nation, but in Jonson’s masque England’s strength seems to issue directly from the imperious but pacific deity who presides over the occasion. Peace is guaranteed by a masterful kingly power who loves his people but demands their obedience.

The only text of Pan’s Anniversary appears in F2. Four closely similar landscape sketches by Inigo Jones may be survivals from the scene designs prepared for its performance (see Illustration 80; and 0 n.). No music for the masque has been identified, though the staging must have involved a sharp aural contrast between the Boeotians’ unrefined dancing, led by a noisy drum (see 75–8), and the harmonious strains accompanying the masquers. A ‘Shepherds Dance’ in British Library Add. MS 10444 has been sometimes been linked with Pan’s Anniversary, though with little certainty (Walls, 1996, 125). Material from this masque was later adapted by Jonson as ‘A New Year’s Gift Sung to King Charles, 1635’ (Und. 79), and at least part of this was set to music by Nicholas Lanier. An elaborate revival of Pan’s Anniversary, with music by Vaughan Williams and Holst, was mounted by the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon in 1905; a further revival took place at Avery Hill College, Eltham, in 1928; and parts of the masque were set to music in Sir Arthur Bliss’s choral work, Pastoral: ‘Lie Strewn the White Flocks’, 1929 (see Performance Archive).

[Illustration 80: Inigo Jones, design for a proscenium and landscape scene for Pan’s Anniversary.

PAN'S ANNIVERSARY,
OR THE SHEPHERDS' HOLIDAY
The Scene, Arcadia

As it was presented at court before King James, 1621 The Inventors

Inigo Jones Ben Jonson

The first presentation is of three NYMPHS

strewing several sorts of flowers

followed by an

old SHEPHERD with a

censer and perfumes

FIRST NYMPH

Thus,thus, begin the yearly rites

Are due to Pan on these bright nights;

His moon now riseth and invites 5

To sports, to dances and delights;

All envious and profane, away!

This is the shepherds’ holiday.

SECOND NYMPH

Strew, strew the glad and smiling ground

With every flower, yet not confound 10

The primrose drop, the spring’s own spouse,

Bright daisies and the lips of cows,

The garden-star, the queen of May,

The rose to crown the holiday.

THIRD NYMPH

Drop, drop, you violets! Change your hues, 15

Now red, now pale, as lovers use,

And in your death go out as well

As when you lived, unto the smell,

That from your odour all may say

This is the shepherds’ holiday. 20

SHEPHERD

Well done, my pretty ones! Rain roses still,

Until the last be dropped; then hence, and fill

Your fragrant prickles for a second shower.

Bring corn-flag, tulips, and Adonis’ flower,

Fair ox-eye, goldilocks, and columbine, 25

Pinks, goulands, king-cups, and sweet sops-in-wine,

Blue harebells, paigles, pansies, calaminth,

Flower-gentle, and the fair-haired hyacinth;

Bring rich carnations, flower-de-luces, lilies,

The checked and purple-ringèd daffodillies, 30

Bright crown-imperial, king’s spear, hollyhocks,

Sweet Venus’ navel, and soft lady-smocks;

Bring too some branches forth of Daphne’s hair,

And gladdest myrtle for these posts to wear

With spikenard weaved, and marjoram between, 35

And starred with yellow-golds and meadow’s queen,

That when the altar, as it ought, is dressed,

More odour come not from the phoenix’ nest;

The breath thereof Panchaia may envy,

The colours China, and the light the sky. 40

Loud music. The scene opens, and in it are the MASQUERS discovered sitting about the

fountain of

light, the MUSICIANS attired like the priests of Pan standing in the work

beneath them, when

entereth to the old Shepherd a FENCER

flourishing.

FENCER

Room for an old trophy of time, a son of the sword, a servant of Mars,

the minion of the muses, and a master of fence! One that hath shown his 45

quarters and played his prizes at all the games of Greece in his time, as

fencing, wrestling, leaping, dancing, what not; and hath now ushered hither

by the light of my long-sword certain bold boys of Boeotia, who are come

to challenge the Arcadians at their own sports, call them forth on their own

holiday, and dance them down on their own greensward. 50

SHEPHERD

’Tis boldly attempted, and must be a Boeotian enterprise by the

face of it, from all the parts of Greece else, especially at this time when the

best and bravest spirits of Arcadia, called together by the excellent Arcas, are

yonder sitting about the fountain of light, in consultation of what honours

they may do the great Pan by increase of anniversary rites fitted to the music 55

of his peace.

FENCER

Peace to thy Pan, and mum to thy music, swain. There is a tinker of

Thebes a-coming, called Epam, with his kettle will make all Arcadia ring of

him. What are your sports for the purpose? Say; if singing, you shall be sung

down, if dancing, danced down. There is no more to be done with you but 60

know what, which it is; and you are in smoke, gone, vapoured, vanished,

blown, and, as a man would say in a word of two syllables, nothing.

SHEPHERD

This is short, though not so sweet. Surely the better part of the

solemnity here will be dancing.

FENCER

Enough; they shall be met with instantly in their own sphere, the 65

sphere of their own activity, a dance. But by whom, expect: no Cynaethian,

nor satyrs, but, as I said, boys of Boeotia, things of Thebes – the town is ours,

shepherd – mad merry Greeks, lads of life that have no gall in us, but all air

and sweetness. A tooth-drawer is our foreman, that if there be but a bitter

tooth in the company, it may be called out at a twitch. He doth command 70

any man’s teeth out of his head upon the point of his poniard, or tickles

them forth with his riding rod; he draws teeth a-horseback in full speed, yet

he will dance a-foot, he hath given his word. He is yeoman of the mouth to

the whole brotherhood, and is charged to see their gums be clean and their

breath sweet at a minute’s warning. Then comes my learned Theban, the 75

tinker I told you of, with his kettledrum before and after, a master of music

and a man of mettle; he beats the march to the tune of Ticklefoot, pam, pam,

pam, brave Epam with a nondas. That’s the strain.

SHEPHERD

A high one!

FENCER

Which is followed by the trace and tract of an excellent juggler, that 80

can juggle with every joint about him from head to heel. He can do tricks

with his toes, wind silk and thread pearl with them, as nimble a fine fellow

of his feet as his hands; for there is a noble corn-cutter his companion, hath

so pared and finified them –. Indeed, he hath taken it into his care to reform

the feet of all, and fit all their footing to a form; only one splay-foot in the 85

company, and he is a bellows-mender, allowed, who hath the looking to of

all their lungs by patent, and by his place is to set that leg afore still, and with

his puffs keeps them in breath during pleasure; a tinderbox-man to strike

new fire into them at every turn, and where he spies any brave spark that is

in danger to go out, ply him with a match presently. 90

SHEPHERD

A most politic provision!

FENCER

Nay, we have made our provisions beyond example, I hope. For to

these there is annexed a clock-keeper, a grave person as Time himself, who is

to see that they all keep time to a nick, and move every elbow in order, every

knee in compass. He is to wind them up, and draw them down, as he sees 95

cause. Then is there a subtle shrewd-bearded sir, that hath been a politician

but is now a maker of mousetraps, a great engineer yet, and he is to catch the

ladies’ favours in the dance with certain cringes he is to make, and to bait their

benevolence. Nor can we doubt of the success, for we have a prophet amongst

us of that peremptory pate, a tailor or master fashioner, that hath found 100

it out in a painted cloth, or some old hanging – for those are his library –

that we must conquer in such a time and such a half time, therefore bids us

go on cross-legged, or however thread the needles of our own happiness, go

through-stitch withal, unwind the clew of our cares; he hath taken measure

of our minds, and will fit our fortune to our footing. And to better assure 105

us, at his own charge brings his philosopher with him, a great clerk, who

(they say) can write, and it is shrewdly suspected but he can read too; and he

is to take the whole dances from the foot by brachygraphy, and so make a

memorial, if not a map of the business. – [Calling] Come forth, lads, and do

your own turns. 110

The antimasque is

danced, after which,

FENCER

How like you this, shepherd? Was not this gear gotten on a holiday?

SHEPHERD

Faith, your folly may deserve pardon because it hath delighted;

but beware of presuming, or how you offer comparison with persons so near

deities. Behold where they are that have now forgiven you, whom should you 115

provoke again with the like, they will justly punish that with anger which

they now dismiss with contempt. Away!

[The antimasquers withdraw.]

And come you prime Arcadians forth, that taught

By Pan the rites of true society, 120

From his loud music all your manners wrought,

And made your commonwealth a harmony,

Commending so to all posterity

Your innocence from that fair fount of light,

As still you sit without the injury 125

Of any rudeness folly can, or spite;

Dance from the top of the Lycaean mountain

Down to this valley, and with nearer eye

Enjoy what long in that illumined fountain

You did far off, but yet with wonder, spy. 130

First Hymn

FIRST PRIEST

Of Pan we sing, the best of singers, Pan,

That taught us swains how first to tune our lays,

And on the pipe more airs than Phoebus can.

CHORUS

Hear, O you groves, and hills resound his praise. 135

SECOND PRIEST

Of Pan we sing, the best of leaders, Pan,

That leads the naiads and the dryads forth,

And to their dances more than Hermes can.

CHORUS

Hear, O you groves, and hills resound his worth.

THIRD PRIEST

Of Pan we sing, the best of hunters, Pan, 140

That drives the hart to seek unusèd ways,

And in the chase more than Silvanus can.

CHORUS

Hear, O you groves, and hills resound his praise.

FOURTH PRIEST

Of Pan we sing, the best of shepherds, Pan,

That keeps our flocks and us, and both leads forth 145

To better pastures than great Pales can.

CHORUS

Hear, O you groves, and hills resound his worth.

And while his powers and praises thus we sing,

The valleys let rebound, and all the rivers ring.

The masquers descend, and dance their entry.

150

Second Hymn

PRIESTS

Pan is our All; by him we breathe, we live,

We move, we are. ’Tis he our lambs doth rear,

Our flocks doth bless, and from the store doth give

The warm and finer fleeces that we wear. 155

He keeps away all heats and colds,

Drives all diseases from our folds,

Makes everywhere the spring to dwell,

The ewes to feed, their udders swell;

But if he frown, the sheep, alas, 160

The shepherds wither, and the grass.

Strive, strive, to please him then by still increasing thus

The rites are due to him, who doth all right for us.

The main dance.

Third Hymn

165

PRIESTS

If yet, if yet

Pan’s orgies you will further fit,

See where the silver-footed fays do sit,

The nymphs of wood and water,

Each tree’s and fountain’s daughter. 170

Go take them forth; it will be good

To see some wave it like a wood,

And others wind it like a flood,

In springs

And rings, 175

Till the applause it brings

Wakes Echo from her seat,

The closes to repeat.

ECHO

The closes to repeat.

PRIESTS

Echo, the truest oracle on ground, 180

Though nothing but a sound,

ECHO

Though nothing but a sound,

PRIESTS

Beloved of Pan, the valley’s queen,

ECHO

The valley’s queen,

PRIESTS

And often heard, though never seen. 185

ECHO

Though never seen.

Revels.

FENCER

Room, room there! Where are you, shepherd? I am come again with

my second part of my bold bloods, the brave gamesters, who assure you by

me that they perceive no such wonder in all is done here but that they dare 190

adventure another trial. They look for some sheepish devices here in Arcadia,

not these, and therefore ‘A hall, a hall!’ they demand.

SHEPHERD

Nay, then, they are past pity; let them come, and not expect the anger

of a deity to pursue them, but meet them. They have their punishment with

their fact. They shall be sheep. 195

FENCER

Oh, spare me, by the law of nations! I am but their ambassador.

SHEPHERD

You speak in time, sir.

Second antimasque

[of Boeotians with sheeps’ heads].

SHEPHERD

Now let them return with their solid heads, and carry their

stupidity into Boeotia whence they brought it, with an emblem of themselves and 200

their country. This is too pure an air for so gross brains.

End you the rites, and so be eased

Of these, and then great Pan is pleased.

[The antimasquers withdraw.]

Fourth Hymn

205

PRIESTS

Great Pan, the father of our peace and pleasure,

Who giv’st us all this leisure,

Hear what thy hallowed troop of herdsmen pray

For this their holiday,

And how their vows to thee they in Lycaeum pay. 210

So may our ewes receive the mounting rams,

And we bring thee the earliest of our lambs;

So may the first of all our fells be thine,

And both the beestning of our goats and kine;

As thou our folds dost still secure, 215

And keep’st our fountains sweet and pure,

Driv’st hence the wolf, the tod, the brock,

Or other vermin from the flock;

That we preserved by thee, and thou observed by us,

May both live safe in shade of thy loved Maenalus. 220

SHEPHERD

Now each return unto his charge,

And though today you have lived at large,

And well your flocks have fed their fill,

Yet do not trust your hirelings still.

See, yond’ they go, and timely do 225

The office you have put them to,

But if you often give this leave,

Your sheep and you they will deceive.

THE END

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

Pan’s Anniversary, or The Shepherd’s Holiday (1621)

Edited by Martin Butler

INTRODUCTION

PAN'S ANNIVERSARY, OR THE SHEPHERDS' HOLIDAY The Scene, Arcadia

PAN'S ANNIVERSARY,
OR THE SHEPHERDS' HOLIDAY
The Scene, Arcadia