E1289 - The £21,000 Masque

With a cast of over 800, and a budget equivalent to £3 million, James Shirley’s extravagant masque ‘The Triumph of Peace’ was performed on 3rd February, 1634. Unusually, it was such a popular show that, despite the enormous cost of staging it, King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria requested that it be repeated.

Though replete with all the arse-kissing allegorical tableaux that typified these celebrations of the monarchy - and requisite set designs by Inigo Jones - this spectacular was also markedly different from its predecessors in that it was especially designed to appease Henrietta, who had been slurred...