The Fortunate Isles and Their Union is a Jacobean era masque, written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, and performed on 9 January 1625.
"It reflected perfectly the image that he [James] had tried, in his rough-hewn way, to cultivate – even if history, in allotting him part of the blame for the catastrophe that was to befall his son, would be less generous to his reputation.
Johphiel has a long conversation with Merefool, "a melancholic student," which involves much material on the then-new and controversial subject of "the brethren of the Rosy Cross."
[3] Inigo Jones's staging featured a floating and moving island (another element that would have appeared in the cancelled masque of the previous year).
For source material for his text, Jonson relied upon the Speculum Sophicum Rhodo-strautoricum of Teophilus Schweigardt (1618) and the Artis Kabbalisticae of Pierre Morestel (1621).