SOURCE: Shady, Raymond C. “Thomas Heywood's Masque at Court.” Elizabethan Theatre 7 (1980): 147-66.

In the following essay, Shady contends that in Love's Mistress Heywood created a hybrid dramatic genre that incorporates features of both plays and masques.

For one dizzy week in mid-November, 1634, Thomas Heywood, at the age of sixty, was the favourite Court Poet. A lively play called Love's Mistress, or The Queen's Masque catapulated him to this royal favour, and in a sense, marks the apex of Heywood's forty-odd year career on the London stage. Within a period of eight days, Love's Mistress was performed three times before Charles and Henrietta Maria—first at a private dress-rehearsal at the Phoenix, and twice again at Denmark House. For the latter two productions, the play was graced with what Heywood calls the “excellent inventions” and “rare decorements” of Inigo Jones, “to every act, nay almost to every scene.”

There...