The Triumph of Peace
Encyclopedia
The Triumph of Peace was a Caroline era masque
Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...

, "invented and written" by James Shirley
James Shirley
James Shirley was an English dramatist.He belonged to the great period of English dramatic literature, but, in Lamb's words, he "claims a place among the worthies of this period, not so much for any transcendent genius in himself, as that he was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly...

, performed on February 3, 1634
1634 in literature
The year 1634 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 1 - The King's Men perform Cymbeline at the court of King Charles I of England.*January 22 - The King's Men perform Davenant's The Wits at the Blackfriars Theatre....

 and published the same year. The production was designed by Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...

.

Inspiration

The masque was lavishly sponsored by the four Inns of Court
Inns of Court
The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. All such barristers must belong to one such association. They have supervisory and disciplinary functions over their members. The Inns also provide libraries, dining facilities and professional...

, through a political and social motive. In 1632
1632 in literature
The year 1632 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*On February 14, Tempe Restored, a masque written by Aurelian Townshend and designed by Inigo Jones, is performed at Whitehall Palace....

 the Puritan controversialist William Prynne
William Prynne
William Prynne was an English lawyer, author, polemicist, and political figure. He was a prominent Puritan opponent of the church policy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. Although his views on church polity were presbyterian, he became known in the 1640s as an Erastian, arguing for...

 (himself an Inns of Court man) had dedicated his anti-theatre diatribe Histriomastix
Histriomastix
Histriomastix: The Player's Scourge, or Actor's Tragedy is a critique of professional theatre and actors, written by the Puritan author and controversialist William Prynne....

to the Inns; since Histriomastix was perceived as insulting to Queen Henrietta Maria
Henrietta Maria of France
Henrietta Maria of France ; was the Queen consort of England, Scotland and Ireland as the wife of King Charles I...

, the masque was the Inns' signal of their total rejection of any connection with Prynne's book or his views.

Shirley was chosen to write the masque because he was a member of Gray's Inn
Gray's Inn
The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...

. He was not a law student or a lawyer; rather, he was a gentleman boarder, an arrangement preferred by some literary figures of the time. (John Ford
John Ford (dramatist)
John Ford was an English Jacobean and Caroline playwright and poet born in Ilsington in Devon in 1586.-Life and work:...

 was another gentleman boarder). Shirley produced an acceptable text — though he was bold enough to offer some tactfully-phrased advice to his king.

Publication

The masque was entered into the Stationers' Register
Stationers' Register
The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England...

 on January 24, 1634, and was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...

, on the date it was acted, February 3, 1634. (Some sources give the date for the masque as 1633, failing to compensate for the difference in Old Style and New Style dates
Old Style and New Style dates
Old Style and New Style are used in English language historical studies either to indicate that the start of the Julian year has been adjusted to start on 1 January even though documents written at the time use a different start of year ; or to indicate that a date conforms to the Julian...

.)

The work was published in the same year, in a quarto
Book size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...

 printed by John Norton for the bookseller William Cooke
Andrew Crooke and William Cooke
Andrew Crooke and William Cooke were London publishers of the mid-17th-century. In partnership and individually, they issued significant texts of English Renaissance drama, most notably of the plays of James Shirley....

. The quarto exists in three impressions, with slight differences between the first and second and greater changes in the third. (W. W. Greg
Walter Wilson Greg
Sir Walter Wilson Greg was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century....

 wrote an article titled "The Triumph of Peace: A Bibliographer's Nightmare.")

Manuscript

A manuscript relating to the masque also exists, now in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library
Folger Shakespeare Library
The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period...

 (it is item #25 in Folger MS. Z.e.1). The MS. provides a cast list that names 184 of the participants in the procession (among a total of 882), along with details on the distribution of equipment and props.

Music

The music for the masque was composed by William Lawes
William Lawes
William Lawes was an English composer and musician.-Life and career:Lawes was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire and was baptised on 1 May 1602...

, Simon Ives, and Bulstrode Whitelocke
Bulstrode Whitelocke
Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke was an English lawyer, writer, parliamentarian and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England.- Biography :...

.
Musical aspects of the performance were managed for the Inns of Court by Whitelocke, the jurist and Parliamentarian, who was also an accomplished musician. Documents pertaining to the masque were preserved among Whitelocke's unpublished papers. As a result, more is known about the production of The Triumph of Peace than perhaps any other masque of the Tudor
Tudor dynasty
The Tudor dynasty or House of Tudor was a European royal house of Welsh origin that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including the Lordship of Ireland, later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1485 until 1603. Its first monarch was Henry Tudor, a descendant through his mother of a legitimised...

 or Stuart
House of Stuart
The House of Stuart is a European royal house. Founded by Robert II of Scotland, the Stewarts first became monarchs of the Kingdom of Scotland during the late 14th century, and subsequently held the position of the Kings of Great Britain and Ireland...

 eras — including "a cast list, the names and voice parts of all the singers, the names and instruments of all the musicians, diagrams with musicians' names for soloists and chorus positions during the mask, a cue sheet for the serious part of the mask, names of musicians who played at the Blackfriars
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name of a theatre in the Blackfriars district of the City of London during the Renaissance. The theatre began as a venue for child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs; in this function, the theatre hosted some of the most innovative drama of Elizabeth and...

 and Cockpit
Cockpit Theatre
The Cockpit was a theatre in London, operating from 1616 to around 1665. It was the first theatre to be located near Drury Lane. After damage in 1617, it was christened The Phoenix....

," and other data.

(Murray Lefkowitz, the musicologist who discovered the masque papers at Longleat
Longleat
Longleat is an English stately home, currently the seat of the Marquesses of Bath, adjacent to the village of Horningsham and near the towns of Warminster in Wiltshire and Frome in Somerset. It is noted for its Elizabethan country house, maze, landscaped parkland and safari park. The house is set...

, has written extensively on the subject. Musicologist Andrew Sabol also published some of the relevant documents.)

The performance

The performance was given at Whitehall Palace by members of the Inns of Court and was seen by the King, Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

, and the Queen. The masquers started out at Ely House
Ely Place
Ely Place is a gated road at the southern tip of the London Borough of Camden in London, England. It is the location of the Old Mitre Tavern and is adjacent to Hatton Garden.-Origins:...

, then the London residence of the Bishops of Ely, and moved in procession or "cavalcade" down Chancery Lane and the Strand
Strand, London
Strand is a street in the City of Westminster, London, England. The street is just over three-quarters of a mile long. It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar, which marks the boundary of the City of London at this point, though its historical length...

 to Whitehall. This parade was led by the King's Marshall and his men bearing torches, who were followed by 100 members of the Inns of Court, 25 from each of the four Inns, dressed in gold and silver lace. Then came two music chariots; the first held eight lutenists dressed as priests and Sybil
Sybil
In antiquity, the oracular seeresses of the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean were referred to by the Greek term "sibyls". In modern times, when "Sibyl" is adopted for a woman's name, the conventional spelling is "Sybil".-People:...

s, while the second carried singers "who struck picturesque poses in costumes representing the celestial bodies in harmonious motion." The came the actors of the masque; the boys in one anti-masque were costumed as birds. The principal masquers came last, in four chariots, each drawn by four horses; the horses were decked in silver and crimson cloths and white and red feathers, and each chariot bore two "flaming huge flambeaux" on its sides. (Each of the Inns of Court furnished twenty dozen torches and 15 flambeaux for the procession.) Charles and Henrietta Maria, watching this from Whitehall, were so impressed that they had the parade turn around and pass them again.

The theme of the masque was relatively simple and straightforward: the spirits of Peace, Law, and Justice descend to honor the English monarchs. Yet the expression is complex, with seven changes of scene; at one point the moon sets in an open landscape and "Amphiluche," the harbinger of morning, rises in turn. There are no fewer than eight anti-masques.

The masque featured the personifications standard to the form, including Opinion, Confidence, Fancy, Jollity, Novelty, and others; also, generic tradesmen, a Tailor, Carpenter, Painter, Feathermaker's Wife, Embroiderer's Wife, etc. The costumes were rich and fantastic: "Fancy in a suit of several-colored feathers, hooded, a pair of bat's wings on his shoulders...Jollity in a flame-colored suit, but tricked like a morris dance
Morris dance
Morris dance is a form of English folk dance usually accompanied by music. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers. Implements such as sticks, swords, handkerchiefs and bells may also be wielded by the dancers...

r, with scarfs and napkins, his hat fashioned like a cone...." Some of the costumes were "wrought as thick with silver spangles as they could be placed." At one point in the masque, a windmill, a knight and his squire entered — an obvious allusion to Don Quixote — and engaged in a mock combat. Shirley deliberately included elements in the masque, including "two wanton gamesters," that were precisely the type of elements criticized by Prynne in Histriomastix.

Queen Henrietta liked the masque so much that she arranged for a repeat performance at Merchant Taylors' Hall
Merchant Taylors' Hall
A Merchant Taylors' Hall is a hall used by the Guild of Taylors. For specific halls, see:* Merchant Taylors' Hall, London* Merchant Taylors' Hall, York...

on February 13. The cost for the show was extraordinary: £1000 for the music; a hundred costumes at £100 each. The total cost of the extravaganza was, according to Whitelocke, £21,000, all paid by the Inns of Court (at a time when a squire might earn £100 in a year). By some accounts (including that of Shirley himself), The Triumph of Peace was the most spectacular masque of the period.
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