ABSTRACT
After the unrewarded venture into high tragedy with Sejanus, Jonson received an unlooked-for opportunity to display his craftsmanship and to promote his status as an artist in a quite different mode. In 1604 he received a commission to write the queen's masque for the first full season of Christmas revelry since James VI acceded to the throne, the court still having observed the mourning dues to Queen Elizabeth in the winter of 1603-4. Jonson's debut was accorded the signal honour of being placed last in the twelve days of the court's continuous revelry, a mark of favour all the more remarkable for being accorded to a novice masque-maker. The masque, that strange and vanished form of entertainment now seeming remoter than the drama of the ancient Greeks, was at that time not only new to Jonson, but new in itself. The court of Elizabeth had seen over the years a variety of dances, displays and 'mummeries', and Britain's best-loved queen was no stranger to loyal pageants and country compliments such as the 'Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth', the great show with which Leicester declared his welcome to her in 1575. But it was only under the aegis of an improvident king ever hungry for adulation, and a queen whose love of 'masking and balling' had seemed to the grim Scots to outrun her judgement, that these extravagant, costly and difficult productions enjoyed the conditions which could permit of their full growth. It was an unprecedented artistic opportunity; and Jonson had the good fortune to be present from the beginning.
