The Hue and Cry After Cupid

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Title page of first edition of the masque (1608)

The Hue and Cry After Cupid, or A Hue and Cry After Cupid, also Lord Haddington's Masque or The Masque at Lord Haddington's Marriage, or even The Masque With the Nuptial Songs at the Lord Viscount Haddington's Marriage at Court, was a

Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace. The work was written by Ben Jonson, with costumes, sets, and stage effects designed by Inigo Jones, and with music by Alfonso Ferrabosco – the team of creators responsible for previous and subsequent masques for the Stuart
Court.

The marriage

The masque celebrated the marriage of

James I to favor close ties between his two kingdoms. The groom, the former Sir John Ramsay, was a close confederate of the King, and had saved James from assassination eight years earlier.[1] The preparation of the masque was supervised by James's Queen, Anne of Denmark, who was the key promoter of masquing at the Stuart Court.[2]

The show

The principal masquers, nobles and gentlemen of the Court, appeared in the guise of the twelve signs of the

Cyclops
beat time with their hammers.

The set for the masque was noteworthy in that it may well have been the first instance in which the

proscenium arch was employed in British theatre.[4]
Within the arch, the initial set took the form of a large red cliff (suggesting "Radcliff"); clouds broke over it to reveal the chariot of Venus. The red cliff split open (a trademark Inigo Jones effect) to display a silver sphere that held the masquers, who emerged to perform four dances. Contemporary accounts state that the "singular brave masque" and the general dancing that followed lasted till three o'clock in the morning.

The twelve principal masquers reported spent £300 each on their costumes of carnation and silver.

The source

Illustration by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

The masque adapts a tale from the Idyll of the Ancient Greek pastoral poet Moschus. The Idyll was extremely popular during the Renaissance and was known in various French and Italian adaptations; the actual version that Jonson employed for his text is uncertain.

Publication

The masque was published in quarto, in an undated edition that probably (to judge by the examples of previous masques) was issued soon after the February performance. The text was reprinted in the first folio collection of Jonson's works in 1616, and in subsequent collections of Jonson's works.

Notes

  1. ^ Ramsay killed John Ruthven, 3rd Earl of Gowrie in the so-called Gowrie Conspiracy.
  2. ^ Leapman, pp. 94.
  3. ^ Chambers, Vol. 3, p. 382: Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), p. 223.
  4. ^ Leapman, p. 95.

References

  • Chambers, E. K.
    The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
  • Leapman, Michael. Inigo: The Troubled Life of Inigo Jones, Architect of the English Renaissance. London, Headline Book Publishing, 2003.

External links

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