ut knowledge! And now, to close our Masques, let me apply
the forcible style of Ben Jonson himself: "The glory of all these
solemnities had perished like a blaze, and gone out in the beholder's
eyes; so short-lived are the bodies of all things in comparison of their
souls!"[13]

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Sir Philip Sidney, in his "Defence of Poesy," 1595, alludes to
the custom of writing the supposed locality of each scene over the
stage, and asks, "What child is there that coming to a play, and
seeing _Thebes_ written in great letters on an old door, doth
believe that it is Thebes." As late as the production of Davenant's
_Siege of Rhodes_ (_circa_ 1656), this custom was continued, and is
thus described in the printed edition of the play:--"In the middle
of the frieze was a compartment wherein was written _Rhodes_." In
many instances the spectator was left to infer the locality of the
scene from the dialogue.--"Now," says Sidney, "you shall have three
ladies walke to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage
to be a garden. By and by we heare newes of shipwracke in the same
place; then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock." In
Middleton's _Chaste Maid_, 1630, when the scene changes to a
bed-room, "a bed is thrust out upon the stage, Alwit's wife in it;"
which simple process was effected by pushing it through the curtains
that hung across the entrance to the stage, which at that time
projected into the pit.

[3] The play of _Pyramus and Thisbe_, performed by the clowns in
Shakspeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream_, is certainly constructed in
burlesque of characters in court Masques, which sometimes were as
difficult to be made comprehensible to an audience as "the clowns of
Athens" found _Wall_ and _Moonshine_ to be.

[4] It is due to a great poet like Ben Jonson, that, without
troubling the reader to turn to his works, we should give his own
description of these characters, to show that they were not the
"perplexed allegories" they are asserted to be by Granger; nor
inappropriate to the _Masque of Christmas_, for which they were
designed. MINCED-PIE was habited "like a fine cook's wife, drest
neat, her man carrying a pie, dish, and spoon." BABY-CAKE was "drest
like a boy, in a fine long coat, biggin-bib, muckender (or
handkerchief), and a little dagger; his usher bearing a great cake,