of private theatricals because little skill in acting was required. The Queen and her maids of honour and courtiers could render the songs and execute the dances and rhythmic movements with all due effect, and satisfy the slender demands on their skill as players; though professional actors were sometimes employed for the Anti-masque, and professional musicians (usually the singers at the Chapels Royal) when the solo parts presented great difficulty.

Great ceremonies and occasions were signalised by Masqueperformances, such as the Twelfth Night festivities at Whitehall, royal visits to noblemen's houses and weddings. Of course, the subject and allegory of a Masque were suited to the occasion for which it was composed. Thus in a Wedding-Masque the characters are Juno, Venus, Hymen, the Graces, etc., powers whose blessing is invoked on the wedded pair. And there is often, as in Comus, an element of personal compliment and local allusion.

The Masque declined somewhat on the death of James in 1625. Charles I. indeed was equally devoted to amusements. He was a good actor. As a boy he had played in several of Jonson's pieces, and Love's Triumph through Callipolis (1630) was performed "by his Majesty, with the Lords and Gentlemen Assisting." But the novelty was gone. An art or taste which depends on the whims of wealth and fashion has no element of permanence: what is in vogue to-day is voted obsolete to-morrow. Moreover the Masque had become too costly. We are told that Daniel's Masque Hymen's Triumph cost about £3000; Jonson's Masque of Blackness also about £3000, and his Hue and Cry of Cupid nearly £4000; while the expense of producing Shirley's Triumph of Peace reached the fabulous amount of £21,000 (which we must multiply by 4 to get its modern equivalent).

Entertainments which swallowed up a sum equivalent to the revenue of a small country could not be matters of frequent occurrence, especially when the royal purse was none too full. Moreover, as literature, the Masque had suffered inevitably by the mania for elaborate scenery, dresses and the like features of representation. Ben Jonson indeed insisted that the words were the real life and anima of the Masque: that the poetry should have the place of honour, and the other arts-music, sculpture, painting-serve as her handmaids. But this was not the popular

view. Even his contemporary and fellow writer of Masques, Daniel in the preface to the Masque of Tethys declared that the poet's share in a Masque was "the least...and of least note: the only life consists in show, the art and invention of the architect gives the greatest graces, and is of the most importance."

The Masque in fact has come to be regarded as merely a peg whereon to hang costly extravagance. "Painting and carpentry are the soul of Masque" was Ben Jonson's final and bitterly ironical summing up of the whole matter. Just so nowadays a piece may attract by the splendour of its stage-spectacle rather than by any merit in the drama itself.

Curiously enough, when the period of its decadence was far advanced the Masque had a sudden and passing revival of life. This happened just before the composition of Comus. "In 1633 the Puritan hatred to the theatre had blazed out in Prynne's Histriomastix, and as a natural consequence, the loyal and cavalier portion of society threw itself into dramatic amusements of every kind. It was an unreal revival of the Mask, stimulated by political passion, in the wane of genuine taste for the fantastic and semi-barbarous pageant, in which the former age had delighted"—(Mark Pattison). This revival was marked by the production of the famous Masque already mentioned, Shirley's Triumph of Peace, and of Carew's Calum Britannicum. The former was acted on Feb. 3, 1634, by the four legal societies, who desired, says a writer of that period, to express thereby "their love and duty to their majesties...and to manifest the difference of their opinion from Mr Prynne's new learning." Carew's Masque was given by the Court a fortnight later. Probably Milton was then busy with the composition of Comus, acted some months after. Each of these Masques has some association with Comus, as Lawes wrote the music for each, while two of the performers in the Calum Britannicum were Viscount Brackley and Mr Thomas Egerton, the "Brothers" of Milton's Masque. The occasional representations of Masques after the Restoration, and even in this century, have merely an antiquarian interest. As a form of dramatic art the Masque lost its identity in the opera.

Ben Jonson's primacy in masque-writing stands unchallenged, but the art counted other distinguished exponents-e.g. Beaumont and Fletcher; Dekker and Middleton, who wrote city-pageants; Daniel, Chapman and Marston, patronised mainly by the Court

and nobles; and Shirley and Carew, the representatives of its waning glories.

Nor was Shakespeare uninfluenced by the Masque. A Midsummer-Night's Dream is rather a Masque-comedy than comedy proper. The classical characters and locality, the supernatural beings, the picturesque scenery required, the fanciful story, the rhymed and various types of verse, the large element of music and dance, the comic "interlude" of Bottom and his friends, who not only serve as contrasts to the classical characters of Theseus and his courtiers and to the fairies, but also parody in their "tragical mirth" the love-element of the serious scenes: all these are features in which Shakespeare's play reveals its kinship with the Masque. The pageant of Hymen in As You Like It, V. 4, is an episode which might have been detached from an ordinary Masque; and so is the Vision in Cymbeline, V. 4. The Masquerade in Henry VIII. I. 4, reminds us of the simple type of Masque described by Hall. The Masque in the fourth Act of The Tempest, though brief, contains the characteristic features. The theme is an allegory of marriage-bliss. The characters are taken from my. thology. The Nymphs and Reapers represent the bands of 'Masquers.' Their dresses1 are emblematical. There are songs, a "graceful dance," music. The verse is rhymed and varied. And the interlude akin to a Masque in the third Act, scene 3, illustrates the use of scenery and stage-machinery.

II.

"SABRINA FAIR": Comus, 824-842.

The story of Sabrina, the "nymph" of the Severn, had been previously told by several poets: by Drayton in the Polyolbion, Sixth Song, by Warner in Albion's England, and Spenser in The Faerie Queene, II. 10. 14-19, and in the old play Locrine (absurdly attributed at one time to Shakespeare). The first presentment, however, of the legend occurs in the Latin History of the Britons by Geoffrey of Monmouth (made Bishop of St Asaph in 1152). This Milton reproduced in his own prose History of England. He relates how Brutus the great-grandson of Æneas, landed in Albion, built Troja Nova

1 Thus the "Nymphs" of the brooks are bidden to come with their "sedged crowns," IV. 129, sedge being symbolical of water-deities (cf. Lyc. 104), and the "Reapers" are "properly habited" (Stage-direction).

(afterwards called Trinovantum=London), and at his death divided his territory between Locrine, Albanact, and Camber, his three sons. Locrine later on defeated Humber, king of the Huns, who had invaded Britain, and, says Milton, "among the spoils of his camp and navy were found certain young maids, and Estrildis above the rest, passing fair, the daughter of a king in Germany; whom Locrine, though before contracted to the daughter of Corineus [a Trojan warrior who accompanying Brutus to Britain had received Cornwall], resolves to marry. But being forced and threatened by Corineus, whose authority and power he feared, Guendolen the daughter he yields [consents] to marry, but in secret he loves the other [Estrildis]: and..........had by her a daughter equally fair, whose name was Sabra. But when once his fear was off by the death of Corineus, divorcing Guendolen, he makes Estrildis now his queen. Guendolen, all in rage, departs into Cornwall, where Madan, the son she had by Locrine, was hitherto brought up by Corineus his grandfather. And gathering an army of her father's friends and subjects, gives battle to her husband by the river Sture [i.e. Stour]; wherein Locrine, shot with an arrow, ends his life. But not so ends the fury of Guendolen: for Estrildis, and her daughter Sabra, she throws into a river: and, to leave a monument of revenge, proclaims that the stream be thenceforth called after the damsel's name; which, by length of time, is changed now to Sabrina, or Severn"-P. W. v. 173, 174.

Cf. Spenser (II. 10. 19) describing how Guendolen, having taken "the faire Sabrina" (cf. Comus, 859) and her mother prisoners, slew the latter,

"But the sad Virgin, innocent of all,

Adoune the rolling river she did poure,

Which of her name now Severne men do call: Such was the end that to disloyall love did fall.” So also at the close of the play Locrine (v. 5), where Sabren drowns herself, and Guendolen says:

"because this river was the place

Where little Sabren resolutely died,

Sabren for ever shall this stream be call'd."

Milton had hinted at the legend previously; cf. the Vacation Exercise, 96, “Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death.”

CRITICAL OPINIONS ON COMUS.

[JOHNSON: LIFE OF MILTON.]

"THE greatest of his juvenile performances is the 'Masque of Comus,' in which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise Lost. Milton appears to have formed very early that system of diction, and mode of verse, which his maturer judgment approved, and from which he never endeavoured nor desired to deviate.

Nor does Comus afford only a specimen of his language; it exhibits likewise his power of description and his vigour of sentiment, employed in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truly poetical is rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive epithets, embellish almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines, therefore, it may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with which the votaries have received it.

As a drama it is deficient. The action is not probable. A masque, in those parts where supernatural intervention is admitted, must indeed be given up to all the freaks of imagination, but so far as the action is merely human, it ought to be reasonable, which can hardly be said of the conduct of the two brothers; who, when their sister sinks with fatigue in a pathless wilderness, wander both away together in search of berries too far to find their way back, and leave a helpless lady to all the sadness and danger of solitude. This, however, is a defect overbalanced by its convenience.