Written by Sir William Davenant, with costumes, sets, and stage effects designed by Inigo Jones and with music by Lewis Richard, it was performed at Whitehall Palace on 21 January 1640.
[1] The masque was intended to convey a message of yielding and pacification; Charles I had just ended his eleven-year period of personal rule and called for a new session of parliament.
The anti-masque figures, as shown in Jones's surviving sketches, were "bizarrely dressed, physically deformed, and even obscene...one of them is equipped with an enormous erect penis...."[2] The King dispels evil influences from a "golden throne surrounded by palm trees and heroic statues.
The public response, such as there was among the restricted audience, appears to have been less positive, as contemporary witnesses reported more "disorder" among the crowd than usual.
An element of negativity in the masque's reception was comprehensible, since it attributes the disorder of the realm to the stubbornness of the King's subjects ("the people's giddy fury"), and hints that the royal power won't always be held in check.