the independent productions of the time.  The masques introduced into plays were necessarily, for the most part, of a slighter and less elaborate character than those performed at court, or for the entertainment of persons of rank.  This is more particularly the case with the serions portions of the masques, since the actors, who were engaged for the performance of the antimasques in court revels, frequently transferred their parts bodily on to the public boards.  Thus, in the entertainment in the Winters Tale, in which shepherds also appear, the main feature was a dance of satyrs, which was no doubt borrowed from Jonson’s Masque of Oberon.[343] The Tempest masque, however, is of the simpler type, without antimasque.  At Juno’s command Iris summons Ceres, and the goddesses together bestow their blessing on the young lovers.  Then at Iris’ call come the naiads and the reapers for the dance.  The date of the play may be taken as late in 1610, or early the next year, a time at which the popularity of the masque was reaching its height.

Although the mythological element is everywhere prominent, the pastoral is comparatively of rare occurrence in the regular masque literature of the seventeenth century.  This, considering the adaptability and natural suitability of the form, is rather surprising.  Probably the masque as it evolved itself at the court of James needed a subject possessing a traditional story, or at least fixed and known conditions of a kind which the pastoral was unable to supply.  Be this as it may, on one occasion only did Jonson make extended use of the kind, namely, in the masque which in the folio of 1640 appears with the heading ’Pans Anniversarie; or, The Shepherds Holy-day.  The Scene Arcadia.  As it was presented at Court before King James. 1625.  The Inventors, Inigo Jones, Ben.  Johnson[344].’  Even here, however, we learn little concerning the condition of pastoralism in general, from the highly specialized form employed to a specific purpose.  As in all the regular masques of the Jonsonian type the characters and situations exist solely for the opportunities they afford for dance and song.  Shepherds and nymphs constitute the personae of the masque proper, while those of the antimasque are supplied by a band of Bocotian clowns, who come to challenge the Arcadians to the dance.  Some of the songs are very graceful, suggesting at times reminiscences of Spenser, at others parallels to Ben’s own Sad Shepherd, but the piece does not possess either sufficient importance or interest to justify our lingering over it.  Outside this piece the nearest approach to pastoral characters to be found in Jonson’s masques are, perhaps, the satyr and Queen Mab in the fairy entertainment at Althorp in 1603, Silenus and the satyrs in Oberon in 1611, and Zephyrus, Spring, and the Fountains and Rivers in Chloridia in 1631.