Masque of Queens | The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson

Edited by David Lindley

Introduction

The Masque of Queens was danced in the Banqueting House at Whitehall on 2 February 1609 (Candlemas night). It was extremely costly – its original budget of £1,000 finally rising to over £3,000 – with two-thirds of the total being spent on costumes. Planned for 6 January, the performance was postponed because of diplomatic wranglings. After his exclusion from The Masque of Beauty the French ambassador, Antoine le Fevre, Seigneur de la Boderie, was to be invited, but the arrival of a Spanish ambassador extraordinary, Don Fernandez de Girone, created problems of precedence, and it was not until the Spaniard left, on 1 February, that the masque proceeded, with La Boderie in attendance. The record he left is preoccupied with the honours done to him, and tells us very little of the performance (Masque Archive, Queens, 20).

Queens is an innovatory work in a number of ways. Scenically, Inigo Jones added to the machina versatilis (turning machine) he had used in earlier masques the scena ductilis, or system of sliding flats, which enabled the rapid change of scene as the antimasque of witches disappeared, to be replaced by the spectacle of the House of Fame. It was perhaps the novelty of these arrangements which meant that, as the Venetian ambassador recorded, the Queen ‘held daily rehearsals and trials of the machinery’ (Masque Archive, Queens, 23). Jones’s scenic novelty serves dramatically to underscore what critics have long seen as the work’s distinctive innovation: the development of the antimasque’s structural function, attributed to Queen Anne’s desire for a ‘foil or false masque’ (9) to precede her entry.

(9–11)As Jonson himself points out, however, the provision of another dance or dances as contrast to the main masque was not entirely new. In the previous year’s Haddington Masque, the ‘subtle capricious dance’ of twelve cupids had given ‘much occasion of mirth and delight to the spectators’ (Haddington, 133–5), fulfilling the need for variety which Jonson here specifies as an aesthetic desideratum (7–8). In Hymenaei (1605), Jonson had anticipated the antagonistic relationship of antimasque and masque when he organized the double masque of men and women, so that the first, of Humours and Affections, threatened the celebrations, until the men were united in dance with the second masque of women. In Queens Jonson builds on these precedents to fashion a more closely integrated antithetical structure, where the eleven witches and their Dame (played by male actors) are answered by Anne and her eleven heroic queens. The presentation of the witches, ‘all differently attired’ (21), is echoed in the unusual costuming of the masquers themselves in ‘habits . . . worthily varied’ (584), and this antithetical parallelism is continued in the description of the dances. The witches’ antimasque dance is not merely ridiculous, but characterized as ‘contrary to the custom of men’ (315) with its backwards motion and ‘preposterous change’ (314), and it is answered by the ‘subtle and excellent changes’ (608) of the queens’ masquing dances. At one level, the witches and their malign designs upon the celebrations and upon the King’s peace are simply blown away by the very appearance of the noble masquers ensconced in the House of Fame; the triumph of the queens is asserted, rather than argued. The witches, however, reappear, bound before the chariots of the masquers in an explicit imitation of the Roman military triumph. This visual emblem aptly endorses the heroic, martial virtues that the queens embody, but also furthers the sense of the two groups being interconnected as ‘faithful opposites’ (108).

The choice of witches as the antimasque figures also appealed to the masque’s chief spectator, King James, who had published his treatise on witchcraft, Demonology (1597, with a reissue in 1603), in order ‘to resolve the doubting hearts of many; both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised, and that the instruments thereof, merits most severely to be punished’ (A2v). He directly targeted the scepticism of Reginald Scot’s 1584 treatise, The Discovery of Witchcraft, which had argued powerfully against the claims of continental authorities for the existence of witches, ridiculing beliefs about their powers and practices, and condemning their persecution. Though the King is cited first among Jonson’s ‘general’ authorities in Jonson’s marginal note 4, and mentioned once more in note 9, his work was not a significant source, whereas the phrasing of lines 250–1 and note 37 indicate that Jonson had consulted and used the work of James’s target, Scot, though he tactfully fails to acknowledge this debt. This raises questions about the representation of the witches and Jonson’s stance towards the figures he creates. In the exploration of these questions the masque’s marginalia offer significant evidence.

In the epistle to Prince Henry, prefaced to the 1609 quarto but removed from the 1616 folio after the prince’s death, Jonson claims that it was the prince’s enthusiasm for learning which prompted him to undertake the work of annotation (26–32). One might doubt the veracity of the claim – Jonson, after all, had provided equally learned notes to his earlier published masques – but the marginalia give clues to Jonson’s attitudes to witchcraft, as well as to his compositional processes. Jonson claims that he had some difficulty in recovering sources for ‘those things which I writ out of fullness and memory of my former readings’ (28–9), and we may assume that he did indeed do a good deal of preparatory reading which he digested in the act of composition. As he set about compiling the notes, however, he was not merely recording his reading, he was offering instead a scholarly validation of the details he had chosen to include – and the marginal notes cite authorities derived from intermediary sources after the event, authorities he may never have consulted at first hand at the time of composition.

The marginalia refer both to major classical sources and to the principal sixteenth-century compendia of witchcraft lore. In note 18 Jonson explains that he is attempting to reconcile the classical with the contemporary. On occasion, however, he betrays significantly different attitudes to his varied source material. The ‘green cock’ (50), for example, is explained as deriving from ‘a tale when I went to school’ (note 10), while note 26 on ‘Sir Cranion’ says it ‘was meant ridiculous, to mock the keeping of their familiars’, comments which might imply some Scot-like scepticism on Jonson’s part. Throughout the marginalia the modern authorities are reported neutrally, whereas Jonson speaks of ‘the absolute Claudian’ (note 15), and the ‘admirable verses’ (note 24) of the ‘divine Lucan’ (note 25). It is the classical writers who animate Jonson’s verse, their ‘authority in poetry’ (note 15) that underpins the Dame’s key speeches. For all the effort Jonson expends in grounding the details of his witches’ practices in the testimonies of recent writers, it is as imaginative recreations of the classical poets that they matter to him.

What this might imply for the way the witches were represented in performance is difficult to determine. How far their ‘magical dance’ (313) was grotesque, even comic, in its execution is impossible to weigh. Whether or not the persistent failure of their charms is evidence that Jonson shared Scot’s belief that ‘if all the old women in the world were witches . . . we should not have a drop of rain nor a blast of wind the more or the less for them’ (1554, 3, cannot be easily assessed. It is, however, vital to recognize the symbolic space the witches are made to occupy in the masque. As Stuart Clark has argued, the meaning of witchcraft is ‘located not positively in the actions of witches but negatively and contrastively in relation to the meanings of other actions . . . Witchcraft was construed dialectically in terms of what it was not; what was significant about it was not its substance but the system of oppositions that it established and fulfilled’ (1997, 9).

The witches’ opposites are the heroic martial women represented by the masquers and presided over by the Queen. How to interpret this group of ladies has preoccupied recent critics. All the figures Jonson chooses are to be found in the listings of famous women in many treatises throughout the sixteenth century (though no single list includes them all). All, however, are deeply problematic in terms of the prevailing ideology of gender roles, contradicting the standard ideals of female subservience. This, paradoxically, is why they appear with such regularity in the defences of women, for, as Constance Jordan (1990) has shown, it was precisely in order to critique conventional contemporary ideologies that they were invoked. The fact that such heroic female virtue is to be found only in the historical past supports the argument that, as Agrippa puts it, ‘women being subdued as it were by force of arms, are constrained to give place to men, and to obey their subduers, not by no natural, nor divine necessity or reason, but by custom, education, fortune, and a certain tyrannical occasion’ (1542, G1v). Some critics, such as Lewalski (1993), Schwarz (1995), and Barroll (2001), have seen this choice of aggressive, commanding roles as the high-water mark of Queen Anne’s transgressive self-assertion of a role she could fashion in fiction, though it was largely denied her in political reality. Others, however, have noted that it is the male figure of Heroic Virtue who mediates between the antimasque and masque, and have pointed to the acknowledgement of Anne’s dependence upon her husband (385–98) to suggest that the space Jonson gives to the Queen is severely policed and ultimately contained. It is, however, unarguable that the relationship between transgressive witches and the powerful, martial queens is not simply one of diametrical opposition. Put crudely, they are good and bad versions of a transgressive femininity, and what focuses the distinction between them is the characterization of the witches, not primarily in the theological terms of the witchcraft treatises, but as embodiments of Ignorance, Falsehood, and the other ‘opposites / To Fame and Glory’ (108–9), the qualities for which the queens themselves are immortalized in the House of Fame.

The concept of Fame, however, is itself unstable. In the Virgilian passage Jonson explicitly cites at 409–10, she is actually called ‘Fame of all evils the most swift’ (Aeneid, 4.174); and in Chaucer’s House of Fame Fame arbitrarily selects from circulating rumours those who will be immortalized, a representation Jonson alludes to, but pointedly modifies at 351–3. In Poetaster Jonson translated the same Virgil passage directly as ‘Fame, a fleet evil, than which is swifter none’ (5.2.75), and Underwood 24 discusses ‘good or evil fame’ in relation to Ralegh’s History of the World. Just as the heroic queens are haunted by their demonic doubles, so the Fame that guarantees them their pre-eminence is troubled by the barely suppressed ghost of indifferent and malign Rumour. Stephen Orgel (1990) has argued that this doubleness is manifested in the image which provides the masque’s hinge – that of the Gorgon slain by Perseus, the figure of Heroic Virtue. From one perspective Medusa is the embodiment of a fearsome, feminine terror, but in Renaissance allegorizations the head of Medusa on the shield of Pallas/Minerva, the bellicose goddess of wisdom, becomes an emblem of martial courage and victory. The Gorgon is thus an image applicable both to the witches and to the warlike queens themselves.

What appears to be the confident dialectic of the masque’s structure is, then, much more complicated in its resonance than might at first be supposed; its rival discourses of witchcraft and heroic virtue are intextricably intertwined. But, as Orgel observes, ‘The Masque of Queens, whatever else it says and unsays, unconditionally asserts the power of poetry’ (1990, 131). From the promise in the epistle to Prince Henry that it is the ‘labours’ (22) of the poets that will preserve princely fame, through to the structure of the House of Fame itself, where poets are depicted as supporting classical heroes, the immortalizing power of the poet is foregrounded. For Orgel (1990, 1990) this celebration of the ‘sovereign word’ aligns Jonson with King James, rather than with his queen. Meskill (2005) goes further in representing the masque itself as a self-validating and self-defensive exercise on Jonson’s part. Whatever approach one takes, however, it emerges as a complex, multi-layered, and deeply ambivalent text.

Some of Jones’s costume designs for the queens’ costumes are extant (see Illustrations 28–39), together with a sketch of the House of Fame, but there are no depictions of the witches’ costumes. Only one of Alfonso Ferrabosco’s songs survives, ‘If all the ages’ (i.e. ‘When all the ages’, 615–20), published soon after the event in his Ayres (1609). Composed in his declamatory style, it is not one of the composer’s best efforts, its melody angular and its word-setting distinctly awkward. The music for two witches’ dances survives. It is impossible to be certain that these were actually used in Queens, though it would seem likely. The first alternates long notes with quicker movement; the second, in one surviving version, is marked by extraordinary alternations of metre in a way which seems to accord with the description of the ‘strange and sudden music’ of the ‘magical dance’ (313). The composer is not known, but conceivably could have been the choreographer Jerome Herne. (See the Music Edition.)

In BL MS Harley, 6947, fol. 143 there is a one-page summary of the argument of the masque, presumably submitted to the court, which has some interest in a few details that vary from the final text of the masque. In it, the Dame is called Ate (see 78n.); the first two of the queens’ chariots are drawn by panthers and eagles, which became eagles and griffins; and one queen is named as Atalanta. Jones produced a design for this figure, but she was changed, presumably at the last minute, for Hypsicratea (see Masque Archive, Queens, 1).

A heavily cut version of The Masque of Queens was presented at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, in 1906 as part of May Day celebrations which also included The Haddington Masque (see Maurer, 1989, 257–60 for discussion of, and photographs from, this performance). On 11 July 1972 what seems to have been a reasonably complete text was performed twice by the Dolmetsch Dancers as part of the Haslemere Festival, in the unpromising surroundings of Haslemere Hall. The queens were cut to eight, and the programme notes that the three chariots of the queens were omitted because of constraints on space. The dances were choreographed by Marie-Louise Carley, costumes were based on Jones’s designs, and a modest ensemble of lute, harpsichord, violin, cornet, viola da gamba, flute, and tabor provided the music. (See Electronic Edition, Stage History.)

The masque was printed in quarto in 1609, and one of the British Library copies is inscribed with a dedication to Queen Anne. The 1616 folio is a rather careless reprint from this text, and has no independent authority. Among the Royal MSS at the British Library (Royal 18 A.xlv; JnB 685), there survives a presentation manuscript, beautifully written in Jonson’s own hand, and presumably given to Prince Henry. Though the manuscript is of much interest in giving a guide to Jonson’s preferences in spelling and punctuation, the quarto text incorporates, at 566–71, a passage not in the MS, and substantive variants at 328 and 485 that seem to be later revisions. Though it is entirely possible that all of these were sophistications introduced after the performance itself, the quarto probably represents Jonson’s final thoughts, and is adopted as the copy-text.

To Her Sacred Majesty

Most excellent of queens,

The same zeal that studied to make this invention worthy of Your Majesty’s

name hath since been careful to give it life and authority, that what could then

be objected to sight but of a few might not be defrauded of the applause due to 5

it from all. And because princes, out of a religious respect to their modesty, may

wisely refuse to be the public patrons of their own actions, I chose him that is

next your sacred person, and might the worthiest of mankind give it proper and

natural defence; the rather since it was His Highness’ command to have me add

this second labour of annotation to my first of invention, and both to the honour 10

of Your Majesty.

Wherein a hearty desire to please deserves not to offend.

By the most loyal and zealous to Your

Majesty’s service, Ben Jonson

THE MASQUE OF QUEENS

To the glory of our own, and grief of other nations,

My Lord Henry, Prince of Great Britain, etc.

Sir,

When it hath been my happiness – as would it were more frequent – but to

see your face, and, as passing by, to consider you, I have, with as much joy as I 5

am now far from flattery in professing it, called to mind that doctrine of some

great inquisitors in nature who hold every royal and heroic form to partake and

draw much to it of the heavenly virtue. For whether it be that a divine soul, being

to come into a body, first chooseth a palace for itself; or, being come, doth make

it so; or that Nature be ambitious to have her work equal, I know not; but what 10

is lawful for me to understand and speak, that I dare: which is, that both your

virtue and your form did deserve your fortune. The one claimed that you should

be born a prince, the other makes that you do become it. And when Necessity,

excellent lord, the mother of the Fates, hath so provided that your form should

not more insinuate you to the eyes of men than your virtue to their minds, it 15

comes near a wonder to think how sweetly that habit flows in you, and with so

hourly testimonies, which to all posterity might hold the dignity of examples.

Amongst the rest, your favour to letters and these gentler studies that go under

the title of humanity is not the least honour of your wreath. For if once the worthy

professors of these learnings shall come, as heretofore they were, to be the care of 20

princes, the crowns their sovereigns wear will not more adorn their temples, nor

their stamps live longer in their medals, than in such subjects’ labours. Poetry,

my lord, is not born with every man, nor every day; and in her general right it is

now my minute to thank Your Highness, who not only do honour her with your

ear, but are curious to examine her with your eye, and inquire into her beauties 25

and strengths. Where, though it hath proved a work of some difficulty to me to

retrieve the particular authorities, according to your gracious command and a

desire born out of judgement, to those things which I writ out of fullness and

memory of my former readings, yet, now I have overcome it, the reward that meets

me is double to one act: which is, that thereby your excellent understanding will 30

not only justify me to your own knowledge, but decline the stiffness of others’

original ignorance, already armed to censure. For which singular bounty, if my

fate, most excellent prince and only delicacy of mankind, shall reserve me to the

age of your actions, whether in the camp or the council-chamber, that I may write

at nights the deeds of your days, I will then labour to bring forth some work as 35

worthy of your fame as my ambition therein is of your pardon.

By the most true admirer of Your Highness’ virtues,

and most hearty celebrator of them,

Ben Jonson

THE MASQUE OF QUEENS

It increasing now to the third time of my being used in these services to Her Majesty’s personal

presentations, with the ladies whom she pleaseth to honour , it was my first and special regard

to see that the nobility of the invention should be answerable to the dignity of their persons.

For which reason I chose the argument to be a celebration of honourable and true fame, bred

out of virtue: observing that rule of the best artist, ¹ to suffer no object of delight to pass without 5

his mixture of profit and example.

And because Her Majesty, best knowing that a principal part of life in these spectacles lay

in their variety, had commanded me to think on some dance or show that might precede hers,

and have the place of a foil or false masque , I was careful to decline , not only from others, but

mine own steps in that kind, since the last year ² I had an antimasque of boys; and therefore 10

now devised that twelve women in the habit of hags, or witches, sustaining the persons of

Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity etc., the opposites to Good Fame, should fill that part, not as

a masque, but a spectacle of strangeness, producing multiplicity of gesture, and not unaptly

sorting with the current, and whole fall of the device.

His Majesty then being set , and the whole company in full expectation, the part of the 15

scene which first presented itself was an ugly hell which, flaming beneath, smoked unto the

top of the roof. And in respect all evils are, morally, said to come from hell; as also from that

observation of Torrentius upon Horace his Canidia, quae tot instructa venenis, ex Orci

faucibus profecta videri possit , ³ these witches, with a kind of hollow and infernal music,

came forth from thence. First one, then two, and three, and more, till their number increased 20

to eleven, all differently attired : some with rats on their heads, some on their shoulders, others

with ointment pots at their girdles; all with spindles, timbrels, rattles, or other venefical

instruments, making a confused noise, with strange gestures. The device of their attire was

Master Jones his, with the invention and architecture of the whole scene and machine. Only

I prescribed them their properties of vipers, snakes, bones, herbs, roots, and other ensigns of 25

their magic, out of the authority of ancient and late writers; wherein the faults are mine, if

there be any found, and for that cause I confess them.

These eleven witches beginning to dance – which is an usual ceremony ⁴ at their convents,

or meetings, where sometimes also they are vizarded and masked – on the sudden one of them

missed their chief, and interrupted the rest with this speech: 30

ONE HAG

Sisters, stay, we want our Dame; ⁵

Call upon her by her name,

And the charm we use to say,

That she quickly anoint, ⁶ and come away.

First Charm

ALL HAGS

Dame, Dame, the watch is set:

Quickly come, we all are met.

From the lakes and from the fens, ⁷

From the rocks and from the dens,

From the woods and from the caves, 40

From the church-yards, from the graves,

From the dungeon, from the tree

That they die on, here are we.

ONE HAG

Comes she not yet?

Strike another heat. 45

Second Charm

ALL HAGS

The weather is fair, the wind is good,

Up Dame, o’your horse of wood; ⁸

Or else tuck up your grey frock,

And saddle your goat, ⁹ or your green cock, ¹⁰ 50

And make his bridle a bottom of thread,

To roll up how many miles you have rid.

Quickly come away;

For we all stay.

ONE HAG

Nor yet? Nay, then, 55

We’ll try her again.

Third Charm

ALL HAGS

The owl is abroad, the bat and the toad,

And so is the cat-a-mountain;

The ant and the mole sit both in a hole, 60

And frog peeps out o’the fountain;

The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play,

The spindle is now a-turning; ¹¹

The moon it is red, and the stars are fled,

But all the sky is a-burning: 65

The ditch ¹² is made, and our nails the spade,

With pictures full, of wax and of wool;

Their livers I stick with needles quick;

There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood.

Quickly, Dame, then, bring your part in, 70

Spur, spur upon little Martin, ¹³

Merrily, merrily, make him sail,

A worm in his mouth and a thorn in’s tail,

Fire above and fire below,

With a whip i’your hand to make him go. 75

FIRST HAG

Oh, now she’s come!

Let all be dumb.

At this, the Dame ¹⁴ entered to them, naked-armed, bare-footed, her frock tucked, her hair

knotted, and folded with vipers; in her hand a torch made of a dead man’s arm, lighted; girded

with a snake. To whom they all did reverence, and she spake, uttering, by way of question, the 80

end wherefore they came ; which if it had been done either before, or otherwise, had not been so

natural. For to have made themselves their own decipherers, and each one to have told upon

their entrance what they were and whether they would, had been a most piteous hearing, and

utterly unworthy any quality of a poem, wherein a writer should always trust somewhat to

the capacity of the spectator, especially at these spectacles, where men, beside inquiring eyes, 85

are understood to bring quick ears, and not those sluggish ones of porters and mechanics that

must be bored through at every act with narrations.

DAME

Well done, my hags. And come we, fraught with spite,

To overthrow the glory of this night?

Holds our great purpose?

ONE HAG

Yes.

DAME

But wants there none 90

Of our just number?

ONE HAG

Call us one by one,

And then our Dame shall see.

DAME

First, then, advance

My drowsy servant, stupid Ignorance, ¹⁵

Known by thy scaly vesture; and bring on

Thy fearful sister, wild Suspicion, 95

Whose eyes do never sleep; let her knit hands

With quick Credulity, that next her stands,

Who hath but one ear, and that always ope;

Two-facèd Falsehood follow in the rope,

And lead on Murmur, with the cheeks deep hung; 100

She Malice, whetting of her forkèd tongue;

And Malice, Impudence, whose forehead’s lost;

Let Impudence lead Slander on, to boast

Her oblique look; and to her subtle side

Thou, black-mouthed Execration, stand applied; 105

Draw to thee Bitterness, whose pores sweat gall;

She flame-eyed Rage, Rage Mischief.

ONE HAG

Here we are all.

DAME

Join now our hearts, ¹⁶ we faithful opposites

To Fame and Glory. Let not these bright nights

Of honour blaze thus to offend our eyes. 110

Show ourselves truly envious, and let rise

Our wonted rages. Do what may beseem

Such names and natures. Virtue else will deem

Our powers decreased, and think us banished earth,

No less than heaven. All her antique birth, 115

As Justice, Faith, she will restore, and bold

Upon our sloth,retrieve her Age of Gold.

We must not let our native manners thus

Corrupt with ease: ill lives not but in us.

I hate to see these fruits of a soft peace, 120

And curse the piety gives it such increase.

Let us disturb it then, and blast the light; ¹⁷

Mix hell with heaven, and make Nature fight

Within herself; loose the whole hinge of things,

And cause the ends run back into their springs. 125

ONE HAG

What our Dame bids us do

We are ready for.

DAME

Then fall to.

But first relate me what you have sought, ¹⁸

Where you have been, and what you have brought.

FIRST HAG

I have been all day looking after 130

A raven, feeding upon a quarter;

And soon as she turned her beak to the south

I snatched this morsel out of her mouth. ¹⁹

SECOND HAG

I have been gathering wolves’ hairs,

The mad dogs’ foam and the adders’ ears; 135

The spurging of a dead man’s eyes,

And all since the evening star did rise. ²⁰

THIRD HAG

I last night lay all alone

O’the ground, to hear the mandrake groan,

And plucked him up, though he grew full low, 140

And, as I had done, the cock did crow. ²¹

FOURTH HAG

And I ha’ been choosing out this skull

From charnel houses that were full,

From private grots and public pits,

And frighted a sexton out of his wits.²² 145

FIFTH HAG

Under a cradle I did creep

By day, and when the child was asleep

At night, I sucked the breath, and rose,

And plucked the nodding nurse by the nose.²³

SIXTH HAG

I had a dagger: what did I with that? 150

Killed an infant, to have his fat.²⁴

A piper it got at a church-ale,

I bade him again blow wind i’the tail.

SEVENTH HAG

A murderer yonder was hung in chains,

The sun and the wind had shrunk his veins; 155

I bit off a sinew, I clipped his hair,

I brought of his rags that danced i’the air.²⁵

EIGHTH HAG

The screech-owl’s eggs and the feathers black,

The blood of the frog and the bone in his back

I have been getting, and made of his skin 160

A purset to keep Sir Cranion in.²⁶

NINTH HAG

And I ha’ been plucking, plants among,

Hemlock, henbane, adder’s tongue,

Nightshade, moonwort, leopard’s bane;

And twice by the dogs was like to be ta’en.²⁷ 165

TENTH HAG

I, from the jaws of a gardener’s bitch,

Did snatch these bones, and then leaped the ditch;

Yet went I back to the house again,

Killed the black cat, and here’s the brain.²⁸

ELEVENTH HAG

I went to the toad breeds under the wall, 170

I charmed him out, and he came at my call;

I scratched out the eyes of the owl before,

I tore the bat’s wing; what would you have more?²⁹

DAME

Yes, I have brought, to help our vows,

Hornèd poppy, cypress boughs, 175

The fig-tree wild, that grows on tombs,

And juice that from the larch tree comes,

The basilisk’s blood and the viper’s skin;³⁰

And now our orgies let’s begin.

Here, the Dame put herself in the midst of them and began her following invocation, wherein 180

she took occasion to boast all the power attributed to witches by the ancients, of which every

poet (or the most) do give some: Homer to Circe, in the Odyssey; Theocritus to Simatha,

in Pharmaceutria; Virgil to Alphesiboeus, in his; Ovid to Dipsas, in Amores; to Medea

and Circe, in Metamorphoses; Tibullus to saga; Horace to Canidia, Sagana, Veia, Folia;

Seneca to Medea, and the Nurse in Hercules Oetaeus; Petronius Arbiter to his saga, in 185

Fragmenta; and Claudian to Megaera, liber 1, In Rufinum, who takes the habit of a witch,

as these do, and supplies that historical part in the poem, beside her moral person of a Fury,

confirming the same drift in ours.

DAME

You fiends and furies,³¹ if yet any be

Worse than ourselves; you, that have quaked to see 190

These knots untied,³² and shrunk when we have charmed;

You, that to arm us have yourselves disarmed,

And to our powers resigned your whips and brands

When we went forth, the scourge of men and lands;

You, that have seen me ride when Hecatè 195

Durst not take chariot, when the boist’rous sea,

Without a breath of wind, hath knocked the sky,

And that hath thundered, Jove not knowing why;

When we have set the elements at wars,

Made midnight see the sun and day the stars; 200

When the winged lightning in the course hath stayed,

And swiftest rivers have run back, afraid

To see the corn remove, the groves to range,

Whole places alter, and the seasons change;

When the pale moon, at the first voice, down fell 205

Poisoned, and durst not stay the second spell;

You, that have oft been conscious of these sights;

And thou three-formèd star³³ that on these nights

Art only powerful, to whose triple name

Thus we incline, once, twice, and thrice the same; 210

If now with rites profane and foul enough

We do invoke thee, darken all this roof

With present fogs; exhale earth’s rott’nest vapours,

And strike a blindness through these blazing tapers.

Come, let a murmuring charm resound, 215

The whilst we bury all i’the ground.³⁴

But first, see every foot be bare;³⁵

And every knee.

ONE HAG

Yes, Dame, they are.

Fourth Charm

ALL

Deep, O deep, we lay thee to sleep; ³⁶ 220

We leave thee drink by, if thou chance to be dry;

Both milk and blood, the dew and the flood.

We breathe in thy bed, at the foot and the head;

We cover thee warm, that thou take no harm;

And when thou dost wake, 225

Dame Earth shall quake,

And the houses shake,

And her belly shall ache

As her back were brake,

Such a birth to make, 230

As is the blue drake,

Whose form thou shalt take.

DAME

Never a star yet shot?

Where be the ashes?

ONE HAG

Here i’the pot.

DAME

Cast them up, and the flintstone³⁷ 235

Over the left shoulder bone

Into the west.

ONE HAG

It will be best.

Fifth Charm

ALL

The sticks are a-cross, there can be no loss,

The sage is rotten, the sulphur is gotten 240

Up to the sky, that was i’the ground.

Follow it then with our rattles, round,

Under the bramble, over the briar,

A little more heat will set it on fire;

Put it in mind to do it kind, 245

Flow water, and blow wind.

Rouncy is over, Robble is under,

A flash of light and a clap of thunder,

A storm of rain, another of hail.

We all must home i’the eggshell sail; 250

The mast is made of a great pin,

The tackle of cobweb, the sail as thin,

And if we go through and not fall in −

DAME

Stay!³⁸ All our charms do nothing win

Upon the night; our labour dies! 255

Our magic feature will not rise,

Nor yet the storm! We must repeat

More direful voices far, and beat

The ground with vipers till it sweat.

Sixth Charm

260

ALL

Bark dogs, wolves howl,

Seas roar, woods roll,

Clouds crack, all be black,

But the light our charms do make.

DAME

Not yet? My rage begins to swell; 265

Darkness, devils, night, and hell,

Do not thus delay my spell.

I call you once, and I call you twice,

I beat you again if you stay my thrice.

Thorough these crannies where I peep, 270

I’ll let in the light to see your sleep,³⁹

And all the secrets of your sway

Shall lie as open to the day

As unto me. Still are you deaf?

Reach me a bough that ne’er bare leaf⁴⁰ 275

To strike the air; and aconite⁴¹

To hurl upon this glaring light;

A rusty knife⁴² to wound mine arm,

And, as it drops, I’ll speak a charm

Shall cleave the ground as low as lies 280

Old shrunk-up Chaos, and let rise

Once more his dark and reeking head,

To strike the world and nature dead,

Until my magic birth be bred.

Seventh Charm

285

ALL

Black go in, and blacker come out;

At thy going down we give thee a shout:

Hoo!⁴³

At thy rising again thou shalt have two,

And if thou dost what we would have thee do, 290

Thou shalt have three, thou shalt have four,

Thou shalt have ten, thou shalt have a score:

Hoo! Har! Har! Hoo!

Eighth Charm

A cloud of pitch, a spur and a switch 295

To haste him away, and a whirlwind play,

Before and after, with thunder for laughter,

And storms for joy of the roaring boy;

His head of a drake, his tail of a snake.

Ninth Charm

300

About, about, and about,

Till the mist arise and the lights fly out

The images neither be seen nor felt;

The woollen burn and the waxen melt;

Sprinkle your liquors upon the ground, 305

And into the air; around, around.

Around, around,

Till a music sound,⁴⁴

And the pace be found, 310

To which we may dance,

And our charms advance.

At which, with a strange and sudden music they fell into a magical dance, ⁴⁵ full of

preposterous change and gesticulation, but most applying to their property: who at their

meetings, do all things contrary to the custom of men, dancing back to back and hip to hip, 315

their hands joined, and making their circles backward to the left hand, with strange fantastic

motions of their heads and bodies. All which were excellently imitated by the maker of the

dance, Master Jerome Herne, whose right it is here to be named.

In the heat of their dance, on the sudden, was heard a sound of loud music, as if many

instruments had made one blast; with which not only the hags themselves but the hell into 320

which they ran quite vanished, and the whole face of the scene altered , scarce suffering the

memory of such a thing. But in the place of it appeared a glorious and magnificent building,

figuring the House of Fame, in the top of which were discovered the twelve masquers, sitting

upon a throne triumphal, erected in form of a pyramid and circled with all store of light. From

whom a person, by this time descended, in the furniture of Perseus, and expressing heroic 325

and masculine virtue, began to speak.

HEROIC VIRTUE

So should, at Fame’s loud sound and Virtue’s sight,

All dark and envious witchcraft fly the light.

I did not borrow Hermes’ wings,⁴⁶ nor ask

His crooked sword, nor put on Pluto’s casque, 330

Nor on mine arm advanced wise Pallas’ shield –

By which, my face aversed, in open field

I slew the Gorgon – for an empty name:

When Virtue cut off Terror, he gat Fame.

And if when Fame was gotten Terror died, 335

What black Erinyes or more hellish pride

Durst arm these Hags, now she is grown and great,

To think they could her glories once defeat?

I was her parent, and I am her strength.

Heroic Virtue sinks not under length 340

Of years or ages, but is still the same,

While he preserves, as when he got, good Fame.

My daughter, then, whose glorious house you see

Built all of sounding brass, whose columns be

Men-making poets, and those well-made men 345

Whose strife it was to have the happiest pen

Renown them to an after-life, and not

With pride to scorn the muse, and die forgot;

She, that inquireth into all the world,

And hath about her vaulted palace hurled 350

All rumours and reports, or true or vain,

What utmost lands or deepest seas contain,

But only hangs great actions on her file;

She to this lesser world and greatest isle

Tonight sounds honour, which she would have seen 355

In yond bright bevy, each of them a queen.

Eleven of them are of times long gone.

Penthesilea, the brave Amazon,

Swift-foot Camilla, queen of Volscia,

Victorious Thomyris of Scythia, 360

Chaste Artemisia, the Carian dame,

And fair-haired Beronicè, Egypt’s fame,

Hypsicratea, glory of Asia,

Candacè, pride of Ethiopia,

The Britain honour, Voadicea, 365

The virtuous Palmyrene, Zenobia,

The wise and warlike Goth, Amalasunta,

And bold Valasca of Bohemia;

These, in their lives, as fortunes, crowned the choice

Of womankind, and ’gainst all opposite voice 370

Made good to time, had, after death, the claim

To live eternized in the House of Fame.

Where hourly hearing (as what there is old?)

The glories of Bel-Anna so well told,

Queen of the Ocean, how that she alone 375

Possessed all virtues, for which one by one

They were so famed; and wanting then a head

To form that sweet and gracious pyramid

Wherein they sit, it being the sovereign place

Of all that palace, and reserved to grace 380

The worthiest queen, these, without envy, on her

In life desired that honour to confer

Which, with their death, no other should enjoy.

She this embracing with a virtuous joy,

Far from self-love, as humbling all her worth 385

To him that gave it, hath again brought forth

Their names to memory; and means this night

To make them once more visible to light;

And to that light from whence her truth of spirit

Confesseth all the lustre of her merit. 390

To you, most royal, and most happy king,

Of whom Fame’s house in every part doth ring

For every virtue, but can give no increase,

Not though her loudest trumpet blaze your peace;

To you, that cherish every great example 395

Contracted in yourself, and being so ample

A field of honour, cannot but embrace

A spectacle so full of love and grace

Unto your court; where every princely dame

Contends to be as bounteous of her fame 400

To others as her life was good to her.

For by their lives they only did confer

Good on themselves; but by their fame to yours,

And every age, the benefit endures.

Here the throne wherein they sat, being machina versatilis, suddenly changed; and in the 405

place of it appeared FAMA BONA as she is described in Iconologia di Cesare Ripa: attired

in white, with white wings, having a collar of gold about her neck, and a heart hanging at

it; which Orus Apollo, in his Hieroglyphica interprets the note of a good fame. In her right

hand she bore a trumpet, in her left an olive branch; and for her state, it was as Virgil ⁴⁷ describes her

at the full, her feet on the ground, and her head in the clouds. She, after the music 410

had done, which waited on the turning of the machine, called from thence to Virtue, and spake

this following speech:

FAME

Virtue, my father and my honour, thou

That mad’st me good as great, and dar’st avow

No fame for thine but what is perfect, aid 415

Tonight the triumphs of thy white-winged maid.

Do those renownèd queens all utmost rites

Their states can ask. This is a night of nights.

In mine own chariots let them crownèd ride,

And mine own birds and beasts in gears applied 420

To draw them forth. Unto the first car tie

Far-sighted eagles, to note Fame’s sharp eye;

Unto the second, griffins, that design

Swiftness and strength, two other gifts of mine;

Unto the last our lions, that imply 425

The top of graces: state, and majesty.

And let those Hags be led as captives, bound

Before their wheels, whilst I my trumpet sound.

At which, the loud music sounded as before, to give the masquers time of descending. And here

we cannot but take the opportunity to make some more particular description of their scene, 430

as also of the persons they presented; which, though they were disposed rather by chance than

election , yet is it my part to justify them all, and then the lady that will own her presentation,

may.

To follow, therefore, the rule of chronology which I have observed in my verse, the most

upward in time was PENTHESILEA. She was Queen of the Amazons, and succeeded Otrera 435

or, as some will, Orithya; she lived and was present at the war of Troy, on their part against

the Greeks, and, as Justin ⁴⁸ gives her testimony, Inter fortissimos viros, magna eius

virtutis documenta extitere. She is nowhere named but with the preface of honour and

virtue, and is always advanced in the head of the worthiest women. Diodorus Siculus makes

her the daughter of Mars. ⁴⁹ She was honoured in her death to have it the act of Achilles . Of 440

which Propertius ⁵⁰ sings this triumph to her beauty:

Aurea cui postquam nudavit cassida frontem,

Vicit victorem candida forma virum.

Next follows CAMILLA, Queen of the Volscians, celebrated by Virgil,⁵¹ than whose verses

nothing can be imagined more exquisite, or more honouring the person they describe. They are 445

these, where he reckons up those that came on Turnus his part against Aeneas:

Hos super advenit Volsca de gente Camilla,

Agmen agens equitum, et florenteis aere catervas,

Bellatrix, non illa colo calathisve Minervae

Femineas assueta manus, sed praelia virgo 450

Dura pati cursuque pedum praevertere ventos.

Illa vel intactae segetis per summa volaret

Gramina nec teneras cursu laesisset aristas,

Vel mare per medium fluctu suspensa tumenti,

Ferret iter celereis nec tingeret aequore plantas. 455

And afterward tells her attire and arms, with the admiration that the spectators had of her.

All which if the poet created out of himself , without nature, he did but show how much so

divine a soul could exceed her.

The third lived in the age of Cyrus, the great Persian monarch, and made him leave to

live: THOMYRIS, Queen of the Scythians, or Massagets, a heroine of a most invincible and 460

unbroken fortitude. Who, when Cyrus had invaded her, and, taking her only son – rather by

treachery than war, as she objected – had slain him; not touched with the grief of so great

a loss, in the juster comfort she took of a greater revenge, pursued not only the occasion

and honour of conquering so potent an enemy, with whom fell two hundred thousand soldiers,

but – what was right memorable in her victory – left not a messenger surviving of his side to 465

report the massacre. She is remembered both by Herodotus ⁵² and Justin, ⁵³ to the great renown

and glory of her kind, with this elogy: Quod potentissimo Persarum monarchae bello

congressa est, ipsamque et vita et castris spoliavit, ad iuste ulciscendam filii eius

indignissimam mortem.

The fourth was honoured to life in the time of Xerxes, and present at his great expedition 470

into Greece: ARTEMISIA, the Queen of Caria; whose virtue Herodotus, ⁵⁴ not without

some wonder, records; that a woman, a queen without a husband, her son a ward, and she

administering the government, occasioned by no necessity, but a mere excellence of spirit,

should embark herself for such a war; and there so to behave her, as Xerxes beholding her fight

should say: Viri quidem extiterunt mihi feminae, feminae autem viri. ⁵⁵ She is no less 475

renowned for her chastity and love to her husband, Mausolus, ⁵⁶ whose bones, after he was

dead, she preserved in ashes, and drunk in wine, making herself his tomb; and yet built to his

memory a monument deserving a place among the seven wonders of the world , which could

not be done by less than a wonder of women.

The fifth was the fair-haired daughter of Ptolomaeus Philadelphus, by the elder Arsinoë, 480

who, married to her brother Ptolemaeus, surnamed Euergetes, was after Queen of Egypt.

I find her written both BERONICE and Berenice . This lady, upon an expedition of her

new-wedded lord into Assyria, vowed to Venus, if he returned safe and conqueror, the offering

of her hair; which vow of hers, exacted by the success, she afterward performed. But her father

missing it, and therewith displeased, Conon, a mathematician who was then in household 485

with Ptolemy and knew well to flatter him, persuaded the king that it was ta’en up to heaven

and made a constellation, showing him those seven stars ad caudam Leonis, which are since

called Coma Beronices. Which story, then presently celebrated by Callimachus in a most

elegant poem, Catullus more elegantly converted; wherein they call her the Magnanimous,

even from a virgin: alluding (as Hyginus says) ⁵⁷ to a rescue she made of her father in his flight, 490

and restoring the courage and honour of his army, even to a victory. Their words are

Cognoram a parva virgine magnanimam.⁵⁸

The sixth, that famous wife of Mithridates, and Queen of Pontus, HYPSICRATEA,

no less an example of virtue than the rest, who so loved her husband as she was assistant

to him in all labours and hazards of the war in a masculine habit. For which cause (as 495

Valerius Maximus observes) ⁵⁹ she departed with a chief ornament of her beauty: Tonsis

enim capillis, equo se et armis assuefecit, quo facilius laboribus et periculis eius

interesset . And afterward, in his flight from Pompey, accompanied his misfortune with a

mind and body equally unwearied. She is solemnly registered by that grave author as a notable

precedent of marriage loyalty, and love , virtues that might raise a mean person to equality 500

with a queen, but a queen to the state and honour of a deity.

The seventh, that renown of Ethiopia, CANDACE, from whose excellency the succeeding

queens of that nation were ambitious to be called so. A woman of a most haughty spirit

against enemies, and a singular affection to her subjects. I find her celebrated by Dion ⁶⁰ and

Pliny, ⁶¹ invading Egypt in the time of Augustus; who, though she were enforced to a peace 505

by his lieutenant Petronius , doth not the less worthily hold her place here, when everywhere

this elogy remains of her fame, that she was Maximi animi mulier, tantique in suos

meriti, ut omnes deinceps Aethiopum reginae eius nomine fuerint appellatae.

She governed in Meroë.

The eighth, our own honour, VOADICEA, or Boodicea, by some Bunduica, and Bunduca; 510

Queen of the Iceni, a people that inhabited that part of our island which was called East

Anglia, and comprehended Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, and Huntingdon shires . Since she

was born here at home, we will first honour her with a home-born testimony from the grave

and diligent Spenser: ⁶²

Bunduca Britoness, 515

Bunduca, that victorious conqueress,

That, lifting up her brave heroic thought

’Bove woman’s weakness, with the Romans fought;

Fought, and in field against them thrice prevail’d: etc.

To which, see her orations in story, made by Tacitus ⁶³ and Dion, ⁶⁴ wherein is expressed 520

all magnitude of a spirit breathing to the liberty and redemption of her country. The latter of

whom doth honest her beside with a particular description: Bunduica, Britanica femina,

orta stirpe regia, quae non solum eis cum magna dignitate praefuit, sed etiam

bellum omne administravit; cuius animus virilis, potius quam muliebris erat.

And afterwards, Femina, forma honestissima, vultu severo, etc. All which doth weigh 525

the more to her true praise, in coming from the mouths of Romans and enemies. She lived in

the time of Nero.

The ninth in time, but equal in fame and the cause of it, virtue, was the chaste ZENOBIA,

Queen of the Palmyrenes, who, after the death of her husband Odenatus, had the name to be

reckoned among the thirty that usurped the Roman empire from Gallienus . She continued a 530

long and brave war against several chiefs; and was at length triumphed on by Aurelian, but,

ea specie, ut nihil pompabilius populo Romano videretur. Her chastity was such, ut

ne virum suum quidem sciret nisi tentatis conceptionibus . She lived in a most royal

manner, and was adored to the custom of the Persians . When she made orations to her soldiers,

she had always her casque on. A woman of a most divine spirit, and incredible beauty . In 535

Trebellius Pollio, ⁶⁵ read the most noble description of a queen, and her, that can be uttered

with the dignity of an historian.

The tenth succeeding was that learned and heroic AMALASUNTA, Queen of the Ostrogoths,

daughter to Theodoric, that obtained the principality of Ravenna and almost all

Italy. She drave the Burgundians and Almains out of Liguria, and appeared in her government 540

rather an example than a second. She was the most eloquent of her age, and cunning in all

languages of any nation that had commerce with the Roman empire. It is recorded of her, ⁶⁶ that

sine veneratione eam viderit nemo, pro miraculo fuerit ipsam audire loquentem.

Tantaque illi in decernendo gravitas, ut criminis convicti, cum plecterentur, nihil

sibi acerbum pati viderentur. 545

The eleventh was that brave Bohemian Queen, VALASCA, who for her courage had the

surname of bold, that, to redeem herself and her sex from the tyranny of men which they

lived in under Primislaus, on a night, and at an hour appointed, led on the women to the

slaughter of their barbarous husbands and lords. And, possessing themselves of their horses,

arms, treasure, and places of strength, not only ruled the rest but lived many years after 550

with the liberty and fortitude of Amazons. Celebrated by Raphael Volaterranus, ⁶⁷ and in

an elegant tract of an Italian’s in Latin ⁶⁸ (who names himself Philalethes, Polytopiensis

civis) inter praestantissimas feminas.

The twelfth, and worthy sovereign of all, I make BEL-ANNA, royal Queen of the Ocean;

of whose dignity and person the whole scope of the invention doth speak throughout; which, 555

to offer you again here, might but prove offence to that sacred modesty, which hears any

testimony of others iterated with more delight than her own praise, she being placed above the

need of such ceremony, and safe in her princely virtue against the good or ill of any witness.

The name of Bel-Anna I devised to honour hers proper by, as adding to it the attribute of fair,

and is kept by me in all my poems wherein I mention Her Majesty with any shadow or figure. 560

Of which, some may come forth with a longer destiny than this age commonly gives to the best

births, if but helped to light by her gracious and ripening favour.

But here I discern a possible objection arising against me, to which I must turn: as, how

I can bring persons of so different ages to appear properly together? Or why, which is more

unnatural, with Virgil’s Mezentius I join the living with the dead? I answer to both these at 565

once: nothing is more proper, nothing more natural. For these all live, and together, in their

fame, and so I present them. Besides, if I would fly to the all-daring power of poetry, where

could I not take sanctuary ? Or in whose poem? For other objections, let the looks and noses of

judges hover thick, so they bring the brains; or if they do not, I care not. When I suffered it to go abroad,

I departed with my right . And now, so secure an interpreter I am of my chance, that 570

neither praise nor dispraise shall affect me.

There rests only that we give the description we promised of the scene, which was the

House of Fame. The structure and ornament of which, as is professed before, was entirely

Master Jones his invention and design . First, for the lower columns, he chose the statues of

the most excellent poets, as Homer, Virgil, Lucan, etc. as being the substantial supporters of 575

Fame. For the upper, Achilles, Aeneas, Caesar, and those great heroes which these poets had

celebrated . All which stood as in massy gold . Between the pillars, underneath, were figured

land-battles, sea-fights, triumphs, loves, sacrifices, and all magnificent subjects of honour,

in brass, and heightened with silver. In which, he professed to follow that noble description

made by Chaucer of the place. Above were sited the masquers, over whose heads he devised two 580

eminent figures of Honour and Virtue, for the arch. The friezes, both below and above, were

filled with several-coloured lights, like emeralds, rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, etc., the reflex

of which, with other lights placed in the concave, upon the masquers’ habits, was full of glory

. These habits had in them the excellency of all device and riches, and were worthily varied by

his invention to the nations whereof they were queens. Nor are these alone his due, but diverse 585

other accessions to the strangeness and beauty of the spectacle: as the hell, the going about

of the chariots, the binding the witches, the turning machine with the presentation of Fame. All

which I willingly acknowledge for him, since it is a virtue planted in good natures that what

respects they wish to obtain fruitfully from others, they will give ingenuously themselves.

By this time, imagine the masquers descended, and again mounted into three triumphant 590

chariots, ready to come forth. The first four were drawn with eagles ( whereof I gave the

reason, as of the rest, in Fame’s speech ), their four torchbearers attending on the chariot sides,

and four of the Hags bound before them. Then followed the second, drawn by griffins, with

their torchbearers and four other Hags. Then the last, which was drawn by lions, and more

eminent, wherein Her Majesty was, and had six torchbearers more, peculiar to her, with the like 595

number of Hags. After which, a full triumphant music, singing this song while they rode in

state about the stage:

Song

Help, help all tongues, to celebrate this wonder;

The voice of Fame should be as loud as thunder. 600

Her house is all of echo made,

Where never dies the sound;

And as her brows the clouds invade,

Her feet do strike the ground.

Sing then, Good Fame, that’s out of Virtue born: 605

For who doth Fame neglect, doth Virtue scorn.

Here they lighted from their chariots and danced forth their first dance, then a second,

immediately following it, both right curious and full of subtle and excellent changes, and

seemed performed with no less spirits than of those they personated . The first was to the

cornetts, the second to the violins. After which they took out the men and danced the measures, 610

entertaining the time almost to the space of an hour with singular variety; when, to give them

rest, from the music which attended the chariots, by that most excellent tenor voice and exact

singer, Her Majesty’s servant Master John Allin, this ditty was sung:

Song

When all the ages of the earth 615

Were crowned but in this famous birth;

And that, when they would boast their store

Of worthy queens, they knew no more;

How happier is that age can give

A queen in whom all they do live! 620

After it succeeded their third dance, than which a more numerous composition could not

be seen: graphically disposed into letters , and honouring the name of the most sweet and

ingenious Prince, Charles, Duke of York. Wherein, beside that principal grace of perspicuity,

the motions were so even and apt, and their expression so just, as if mathematicians had lost

proportion, they might there have found it. The author was Master Thomas Giles. After this, 625

they danced galliards and corantos . And then their last dance, no less elegant in the place than

the rest, with which they took their chariots again and, triumphing about the stage, had their

return to the House of Fame celebrated with this last song, whose notes, as the former, were

the work and honour of my excellent friend, Alfonso Ferrabosco.

Song

630

Who, Virtue, can thy power forget,

That sees these live and triumph yet?

Th’Assyrian pomp, the Persian pride,

Greeks’ glory, and the Romans’, died;

And who yet imitate 635

Their noises, tarry the same fate.

Force greatness all the glorious ways

You can, it soon decays,

But so good Fame shall never;

Her triumphs, as their causes, are for ever. 640

To conclude which, I know no worthier way of epilogue than the celebration of who were the

celebrators.

The Queen’s Majesty

The Countess of Arundel

The Countess of Derby 645

The Countess of Huntingdon

The Countess of Bedford

The Countess of Essex

The Countess of Montgomery

The Viscountess Cranborne 650

The Lady Elizabeth Guildford

The Lady Anne Winter

The Lady Windsor

The Lady Anne Clifford

THE END 655

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

The Masque of Queens (1609)

Edited by David Lindley

Introduction

THE MASQUE OF QUEENS

THE MASQUE OF QUEENS