Note 577 — V THE MASK

J. A. Lester, Some Franco-Scottish Influences on the Early English Drama (Haverford Essays, 1909), 145, notes the vogue of the mask at Holyrood under Mary Stuart and the pompae written for such occasions by Buchanan. He asserts that Anne acquired the taste for masks during her thirteen years' residence in Scotland, but in fact he cites no example of a mask proper during 1590-1603, and only one, in 1581, during the reign of James. There were other forms of mimetic revelry. The pageants introduced by Bastien Pagez into a banquet at the baptism of James in 1566 and accompanied with verses by Buchanan are analogous to those at the baptism of Henry Frederick in 1594 (Somers Tracts, ii. 179).