ABSTRACT
Coe/um Britannicum was presented in Inigo Jones's Banqueting House on the evening of Shrove Tuesday , 18 February 1634. The chief masquer was King Charles and the chief spectator was his consort, Henrietta Maria . She had presented the pastoral The Faithful Shepherdess to Charles at Somerset House on Twelfth Night and the King's masque was understood by a Venetian observer to be a reciprocal offering: 'in return for the entertainment given him by the Queen a few days ago', he wrote on 24 January; he anticipated that it would be 'very solemn and stately' .1 But the new masque was also intended to be a response to the great pageant presented by the Inns of Court, The Triumph of Peace. This was given on 3 February, also in the Banqueting House, and beneath the customary flattery of the monarch could be discerned suggestions that royal power should be circumscribed by the processes of law. The King's masque would celebrate Charles's own views of Stuart absolutism and provide an ideal and improving view of courtly virtues. It would be, in a phrase from the masque itself, 'the crystal mirror of your reign' (I. 85) .2
