Dancing a role in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue marked a sort of "coming out" for Charles, just as Henry's appearance in the Jonson/Jones masque Oberon, the Faery Prince (1611) had been significant in his career.
Orazio Busino, the chaplain to the Venetian ambassador to London, Piero Contarini, and a member of the audience, described Charles as "an agile youth, handsome and very graceful.
"[1] Jonson's text for the masque was dominated by the usual figures of classical mythology – in this case, Hercules faces a conflict between the competing demands of duty and pleasure; under the guidance of Mercury, a mean between the two is found in the person of Daedalus.
In one interpretation, the masque may have failed with James because it was too obviously critical of the King's personal vices — "his excessive fondness for Buckingham, upon whom he lavished titles, wealth and sexual favours; his frequent inebriation; and his squandering of court revenues on over-lavish banqueting and drink.
"[3] The difficulties of the masque's creators were compounded by the fact that James's queen and Charles's mother, Anne of Denmark, who had missed the first performance due to illness, commanded a second, which occurred on Shrove Tuesday, 17 February.