SOURCE: “The Masque,” in The Essex House Masque of 1621: Viscount Doncaster and the Jacobean Masque, Duquesne University Press, 2000, pp. 70-119.

In the following excerpt, Raylor discusses the function and sources of the Jacobean masque by examining the specifics of Viscount Doncaster's presentation of The Essex House Masque for King James and the French Ambassador.

Performance

Having feasted and sampled the delicacies of the first banquet, Doncaster and his guests would have retired upstairs to the “large roome” set aside for the masque. Such retirement—often to the chamber adjoining the hall—was a traditional procedure in the case of an entertainment following a banquet, allowing, in this case, for the supper to be cleared and the second banquet set out.¹ From Chamberlain's remarks and a conjectural plan of Essex House in 1640, we may infer that the supper was held in the Low or Long Gallery on the third...