Note 81 — DIALOGUE III. ON THE AGE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Reading edition
Hence then it is that a celebrated dramatic writer of those days represents the entertainment of MASKS and SHOWS, as the highest indulgence that could be provided for a luxurious and happy monarch. His words are these;
“Music and poetry are his delight. Therefore I’ll have Italian masques by night, Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows; And in the day, when he shall walk abroad, Like Sylvan Nymphs, my pages shall be clad: My men, like Satyrs, grazing on the lawns, Shall, with their goat-feet dance the antic hay: Sometimes a lovely boy in Dian’s shape, With hair, that gilds the water as it glides, Crownets of pearls about his naked arms, And in his sportful hands an olive-tree, Shall bathe him in a spring, and there hard-by One like Actæon, peeping through the grove, Shall by the angry Goddess be transform’d— Such things as these best please his Majesty.” Marlow’s Edward II.
And how exactly this dramatist painted the humour of the times, we may see from the entertainment provided, not many years after, for the reception of King James at Althorp in Northamptonshire; where this very design of Sylvan Nymphs, Satyrs, and Actæon, was executed in a masque by B. Jonson.