Tempe Restored - The Show

The Show

At this point in the reign of King Charles I, two large-scale masque productions were being staged at Court each winter season. For 1632, Albion's Triumph, another masque written by Townshend and dedicated to the King, had been staged on Twelfth Night, January 6; Tempe Restored, a masque dedicated to Queen Henrietta Maria, followed a month later. (It had originally been scheduled for mid-January but was delayed by an illness of the Queen — a "soreness" in one of her eyes.) The Queen was intimately involved in the creation of the masque; she appeared and danced in it, along with fourteen of her ladies in waiting. (One of the fourteen was Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle.) The role of Circe in the masque was filled by a Frenchwoman, identified in the text as "Madame Coniack;" this may have been Elizabeth Coignet, a gentlewoman of the Queen's court. A "Mistress Shepherd" was also in the cast; she sang the role of the ancient Greek goddess of Harmony.

Townshend based his text on a French masque (or ballet de cour) of fifty years before; titled Balet Comique de la Royne, it was written by Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx and performed in 1581 by the French queen, Louise de Vaudemont. In the production of Townshend's masque, a young Thomas Killigrew, then a page to the King, appeared in the role of "a Fugitive Favourite." In Townshend's version as in the French work, Circe is enraged at the escape of one of her captive lovers, who has run to the Vale of Tempe. Circe dominates the first part of the performance, which features anti-masques danced by American Indian, barbarian, and animal figures. (The animals were Circe's transformed lovers, who combined human and animal characteristics; one, for example, was a scholar or "pedant" who'd been changed into an ass. In addition to the pedant/ass, six barbarians, and seven Indians, the anti-masques featured dancers costumed as five hogs, four lions, three apes, two hounds, and a hare.) The anti-masque is dominated by a montrous being called the "Pagoda," a faux-Oriental demon with black wings, long claws, and a bestial countenance. Circe is supplanted by Harmony for the masque's serious second portion, which includes figures from classical mythology like Jupiter and Pallas Athena. Henrietta Maria danced the role of "Divine Beauty," and descended to the stage in a bejeweled golden chariot.