The Masque of Flowers was an entertainment on 6 January 1614 to celebrate the marriage of Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset and Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset.Christine Adams, 'Francis Bacon's Wedding Gift of A Garden of a Glorious and Strange Beauty for the Earl and Countess of Somerset', Garden History, 36:1 (Spring 2008), p. 45. Francis Bacon funded the masque to earn favour with King James VI and I and cement his connection with Carr, the King's favourite.David Lindley, Court Masques (Oxford University Press, The World's Classics, 1995), p. x.

Masque for a wedding The masque was performed by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn at the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace.John Nichols, Progresses of the James the First (London, 1828), p. 734. Francis Bacon gave £2000 towards the expenses, refusing an offer of £500 from Henry Yelverton so that he would pay the whole charge and have the honour.David M. Bergeron, The Duke of Lennox 1574–1624: A Jacobean Courtier's Life (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), p. 128: Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 8, 77, 214: Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 493. Courtiers called it "Mr Attorney's Masque".Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 499. Bacon owed his promotion to Attorney General to Somerset.David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard: Fact and Fiction at the Court of King James (Routledge, 2013), p. 130: Roger Lockyer, Buckingham (London: Longman, 1981), p. 214. Flowers was the last of a number of entertainments, including Thomas Campion's The Somerset Masque, Ben Jonson's A Challenge at Tilt and The Irish Masque at Court, and Thomas Middleton's lost Masque of Cupids.David Lindley, Embarrassing Ben: The Masques For Frances Howard, English Literary Renaissance, 16:2 (Spring 1986), pp. 347–48: Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1939), pp. 495–98.Masque of Cupids, Lost Plays Database

The author is unknown. The masque was published with a dedication to Francis Bacon. The music is attributed to John Coprario and John Wilson. James VI and I, Anne of Denmark, and Prince Charles attended and afterwards held a banquet with the performers.John Nichols, Progresses of the James the First (London, 1828), p. 745.

The theme has the Sun devise a contest between Winter "Invierno" and Spring "Primavera". That wine was more worthy than tobacco was debated. Men transformed to flowers would be men again.Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 71, 216.

Silenus, companion of Dionysus the ancient god of wine, entered riding an artificial ass. "Kawasha" dressed with tobacco leaves was carried into the hall by two actors dressed as the inhabitants of Florida, followed by his sergeant carrying a tobacco pipe as big as a caliver rifle. Thirteen masque dancers represented flowers.John Nichols, Progresses of the James the First (London, 1828), pp. 734–745.

Kawasha was the name of a Native American god of tobacco in Virginia, according to Thomas Harriot.Edward McLean Test, Sacred Seeds: New World Plants in Early Modern English Literature (University of Nebraska, 2019), p. 60.Lauren Working, The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis (Cambridge, 2020), p. 189. Samuel Purchas described the worship of "Kiwasa" in Florida.E. A. J. Honigmann, 'The Masque of Flowers', Gerald Eades Bentley, A Book of Masques: In Honour of Allardyce Nicoll (Cambridge, 1967), p. 154. The wedding entertainments reference colonial enterprise because the bride's father, Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, was an investor.Rebecca Ann Bach, Colonial Transformations: The Cultural Production of the New Atlantic World (Palgrave, 2000), p. 178.

Flower costumes According to the 1614 publication, the flower dancers were "apparelled in doublets and round hose of white satin; long white silk stockings; white satin pumps; the doublet richly embroidered in curious panes with embossed flowers of silver, the panes bordered with embroidery of carnation silk and silver; the hose cut in panes answerable to the embroidery of the doublets; the skirts of the doublets embroidered and cut into lily-flowers, and the wings set forth with flowers of several colours, made in silk and frosted with silver; ruff-bands edged with a lace of carnation silk and silver, spangled very thick, and stuck full of flowers of several kinds; fair vizards and tresses; delicate caps of silk and silver flowers of sundry kinds, with plumes of the same, in the top whereof stuck a great bunch of egrets; every Masker's pump fastened with a flower suitable to his cap; on their left arms a white scarf fairly embroidered sent them by the Bride, and on their hands a rich pair of embroidered gloves, sent them by the Bridegroom".John Nichols, Progresses of the James the First (London, 1828), pp. 743–744 modernised here.

Bacon, probably informed by his experience funding The Masque of Flowers,Lesley Mickel, 'Glorious Spangs and Rich Embroidery: Costume in The Masque of Blackness and Hymeniae', Studies in the Literary Imagination, 36 (2003), p. 46. wrote: "colours that show best by candlelight are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water green; and oes and spangs as they are of no great cost, so they are of most glory. As for rich embroidery it is lost and not discerned". Sea green costume was used in the masques of Anne of Denmark and also appears in her wardrobe inventory.Samuel Harvey Reynolds, Essays: Or, Counsels, Civil and Moral of Francis Bacon (Oxford 1890), p. 270: Andrea Stuart, 'Court Masques: Tableaux of Modernity in the Early Seventeenth Century?', Christopher Breward, Caroline Evans, Caroline Edwards, Fashion and Modernity (Berg, 2005), p. 91: Maria Hayward, Stuart Style (Yale, 2020), p. 73: Jemma Field, 'The Wardrobe Goods of Anna of Denmark, Queen Consort of Scotland and England (1574–1619)', 51:1 Costume (March 2017), p. 16.Jane Ashelford, Dress in the Age of Elizabeth I (Batsford, 1988), p. 126.

References

External links The Maske of Flowers ... London, 1614 The maske of flowers· Presented by the gentlemen of Graies-Inne, at the court of VVhite-hall, in the Banquetting House, vpon Twelfe night, 1613 (London, 1614), text by Early English Books Online Masques by the Inns of Court, 1612–1614: REED London